You turn the paper over. The first question is a three-part monster. Your mind goes blank.
What happens next decides more than the months of preparation you put in. One in three students preparing for JEE or NEET describes their stress as “unmanageable”. Nearly 70% of college students in eight major Indian cities report moderate to high anxiety (SRM University AP study, Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 2025). You are not weak. You are having a physiological reaction.
The part that most students never learn is that you can shut that reaction down in about a minute, sitting in a plastic chair, without moving. And the students who score well are not always the ones who studied the most. They are the ones who handled the hard question without letting it eat the rest of the paper.
Why Does Your Brain Freeze on a Question You Actually Know?
Your amygdala, the fear centre of the brain, mistakes a difficult question for a physical threat. It floods your body with adrenaline. Blood moves away from your prefrontal cortex, the thinking part, and towards your legs.
That is why your hands go cold and your ears start ringing. Your brain is preparing to run from a tiger. There is no tiger. There is only a numerical on electrochemistry.
The fix is not “study harder.” The fix is telling your body there is no tiger.
What Should You Do in the First 60 Seconds?
Put the pen down. On the desk. You are not writing anything useful in those thirty seconds anyway.
Breathe in for four counts. Hold for four. Out for four. Hold for four. Do it four or five times. A slower heart rate is a safety signal to the brain.
If counting feels like too much work, look around the hall. Find five things you can see. Four things you can touch. Three sounds. Two smells. One taste.
This is called grounding. It pulls your brain out of the panic loop and back into the room. It sounds like school-counsellor advice until you are the one whose heart is pounding.
Should You Skip the Question or Fight Through It?
Skip it. Not forever. Just for now.
Write the question number in the margin. Circle it. Move to the next question.
This feels like surrender. But it is not. A recent 100-percentile JEE Main scorer put it plainly: he focused on solving one question at a time without worrying about attempting everything, and left questions he was unsure of even while scoring extremely high. The students who start with the questions they are confident about build momentum first.
Bank the easy marks. Your body calms down. When you return to the circled question, it looks fine. Not easy, but fine. If the paper has negative marking, do not guess randomly on the circled questions when you return. Leave them blank if you are still unsure.
What If You Come Back and Still Cannot Solve the Question?
Write something. The formula. The given values. “This involves the Nernst equation but I am blanking on the exact form.”
A blank answer gets zero. Step marks exist. Students lose ranks over two marks. Write anything related to the question. The act of moving the pen shifts your brain from threat mode to task mode.
How Should You Divide Your Time in the Exam Hall?
Most students spend too long on difficult questions early and then rush the easy ones later.
There is a simple rule many coaching centres teach. Spend most of your time on questions you know, a smaller share on moderately difficult ones, and only a little on the hard ones.
One easy question can be four marks in twenty seconds. One hard question can be four marks in four minutes. Chasing the hard one first costs you the easy marks you never reached.
Keep the last ten to fifteen minutes for rechecking calculations, diagrams, and unanswered questions.
What Should You Do the Night Before?
Sleep. Seven hours minimum.
You will not learn a new chapter the night before. You will only confuse yourself.
Go through your own short notes. Review mistakes from mock tests, not entire books. Keep your admit card, ID, and travel route ready so the morning does not add panic.
If you are lying awake with your mind racing, write the fears down. “I will forget the periodic table.” “My parents will be upset.” Getting the fear out of your head and onto paper stops you from looping it.
What Makes Exam Panic Worse?
Comparing answers after the paper. Do not do it. Students convince each other they got questions wrong when they did not. It helps no one and fuels anxiety.
Caffeine before the exam. If you are already jittery, chai makes it worse. Caffeine and anxiety feel almost identical in the body.
Staring at the clock. Check it once every twenty minutes. Not every two.
What Are the NTA Rules for 2026 Exams?
NTA has tightened exam-day rules for 2026. AI surveillance and 5G jammers are in place at NEET centres. Candidates must report within a specific window. Gates close sharply. Candidates wearing customary dress for religious reasons must report one to two hours early.
Check your reporting time before exam day. A student who arrives late is already panicking before the first question.
When Is It More Than Exam-Day Nerves?
If you are losing sleep for weeks before an exam, or you feel sick every time you open a textbook, that is past normal nerves.
Tele-MANAS is the government’s free, confidential, 24x7 mental health helpline. The number is 14416. It is available in 20 languages across 36 states and union territories. Calls from students rise sharply during board and entrance exam periods.
Calling is not a weakness. It is using a tool that exists for exactly this.
Common Questions Students Ask About Exam Panic
The whole paper looks hard. What then? Then it is hard for everyone. The cut-off will reflect it. Your job is not to finish everything. Your job is to secure what you can, calmly.
I forgot everything I studied. Is it gone? No. The memory is there. The retrieval path is blocked by adrenaline. Start writing something related and it usually returns.
What if I get a full panic attack? Put the pen down. Drop your shoulders. Unclench your jaw. You can ask the invigilator for a moment. They have seen it before.
The question will still be hard. But the blood will be back in your brain.
That is the whole trick.
Be the first one to comment on this story.