Is H.C. Verma enough for JEE Advanced?
Let us divide JEE Aspirants into 4 categories: One who focus on Boards
One who focus on JEE Mains
One who focus both on JEE Mains and Advanced One who focus on only JEE Advanced
I could have added another level, who focus on Olympiads and exams like KVPY, but they are on just another level.
Starting with category 1 - The one who focus on boards
I also once belonged to this category as I studied only for boards for about 1 month. During this time I idealized NCERT problems, and HC Verma was super difficult for me. I had no problem solving ability, no application of concepts, just plain memorizing. The people who study only for boards generally have extremely bad concepts. Just compare the “extremely difficult" physics paper of CBSE 2019. I say this because I have been in this phase. If you throw some JEE mains previous year questions at them, they will literally be rattled, and forget about JEE Advanced. I once saw a child preparing for boards solve a previous year JEE main Question for about 40 minutes with no success, and I solved it literally in 2 minutes after joining the coaching.
Then after studying tuition for 1 month, I decided to leave them for a reputed IIT JEE coaching institute.
I was rattled by the coaching, I could not understand a thing. I realized that I was not good enough despite being a 97.2% scorer in ICSE class X Boards. I felt like quitting IIT JEE and starting preparing for NDA. But somehow I
decided to give one last effort, an effort which continued for 2 months before I reached their level.
If you think what I am saying is false, just try to solve one JEE mains paper’s Physics Section in 2 hours.
Coming to category 2 and 3, they both are similar to each other in many ways. They ate the ones who realized that HCV is not that hard a book, and harder books exist like Cengage and DC Pandey. In this phase children are extremely afraid of books like IE Irodov or Anurag Mishra.
In category 4 you will feel HCV as a joke. DC Pandey and Cengage will also be average to you, but still IE Irodov will be a little tough to you.
I started as a category 1 student and progressed all the way to category 4 in the duration of 1 year. Despite this there are children who think IE Irodov is nothing tough rather average.
So to conclude HCV, is a decent book, which can form your concepts at mains level. I am not saying that HCV is a bad book, but in the present days coaching has taken problems to the next level. Just don’t expect to clear JEE advanced with just HCV, as it is outdated and highly overrated by one belonging to category 1. Il
Expressing on a difficulty scale : Board - 25
JEE Mains - 45
JEE Advanced - 70
IIT JEE subjective - 80
Olympiads - 95
HCV is on 45–50
Cengage on 65–70
Irodov on 85–90.
Sorry about all the ranting regarding the Boards, I just told you the truth after reading an answer who treats HCV as a God level problem book.