Must Read Books to Score 90+ in CBSE Class 10 Maths

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Best Books for CBSE Class 10 Maths: What Actually Helps vs What Just Sits on the Shelf Every year, sometime around June or July, something very predictable happens in homes across India. A Class 10 student sits down with their parents and makes a list. Books to buy for board preparation. NCERT. RD Sharma. RS Aggarwal. Some sample paper collection. Maybe a guide book someone's cousin recommended. By the time they're done, there's a small tower of books on the study table. Three months later, most of those books are in roughly the same condition as when they arrived. The NCERT has some pencil marks. RD Sharma has been opened occasionally. The sample papers are untouched because it's too early for those. This is not a rare story. It's almost the default story for students who don't end up where they hoped in the board exam. The problem isn't the books. The books are fine. The problem is that nobody explained which book is for what purpose, when to use what, and — most importantly — that using one book properly is worth far more than owning five books you've halfheartedly flipped through. This article is an honest attempt to fix that.

Before Talking About Books, One Thing Needs to Be Said There is a belief, quietly held by a lot of students and parents, that buying the right book is itself a form of progress. That having RD Sharma on the shelf means you're preparing seriously. It doesn't. Maths improves only through one thing: solving problems yourself, on paper, checking where you went wrong, and solving more. Books are just the source of those problems. Which book you use matters far less than whether you're actually sitting down and working through it. I've seen students score 92 in boards using nothing but NCERT and previous year papers. I've also seen students who owned every recommended book and scored in the 60s because they read more than they practiced. Keep that in mind through everything that follows.

NCERT: The Book Most Students Underestimate Until It's Too Late Let's start here because this is where almost every conversation about CBSE maths books should start and yet it's the book students are most casually dismissive about. I've done NCERT. That sentence, said with confidence, usually means: I've read through it, solved most of the exercises once, checked the answers, and moved on. That's not the same as having done NCERT. Here's what's actually true about NCERT and board exams: CBSE sets its papers based on the NCERT framework. Not inspired by it. Based on it. The concepts in the board paper come from NCERT. The theorem applications come from NCERT. The style of questions how they're worded, what they ask you to show, how marks are divided across steps is directly shaped by NCERT. Students who have genuinely internalized NCERT who can explain why each step in a solution works, not just reproduce the steps — walk into board exams with an enormous advantage. The way to actually use NCERT is this: first pass, read slowly. Don't rush the examples. Before you look at the solution, try to solve the example yourself. If you get stuck, look at just the first step, try again. This is slower and more frustrating than reading through, and it's also far more effective. Second pass, exercises. Solve every single question. Not most of them. All of them. If you get stuck on something, mark it, look up the concept, then come back and solve it again from scratch without referring to the solution. Third pass, before your exam: your marked questions. The ones that gave you trouble. Solve them again. If they still feel uncertain, that's your weak area. That's what needs more attention. One more thing about NCERT that doesn't get said enough: the examples inside each chapter are often harder than the exercises that follow. Students who only do the exercises and skip the solved examples are missing some of the best practice material in the book.

NCERT Exemplar: The Book That Tells You If You Actually Understand Something The Exemplar is published by NCERT itself and it's free available on the NCERT website and still somehow massively underused by students. Here's what Exemplar does that the regular NCERT textbook doesn't: it tests whether you can apply concepts, not just execute them. The questions are designed to probe understanding. They're not harder in the sense of requiring more calculation. They're harder in the sense of requiring you to think differently about the same concept. A typical NCERT exercise question on polynomials might ask you to find zeros of a given polynomial. An Exemplar question might give you the zeros and ask you to construct the polynomial, or might give you a graph and ask you to comment on the nature of the zeros without any calculation. That shift from applying a procedure to demonstrating understanding is exactly the shift that CBSE board exams have been making in recent years. The paper increasingly rewards students who can think, not just students who have memorized methods. The right time to use Exemplar is after you've completed and understood the NCERT textbook for a chapter. Not simultaneously. Not before. After. If you open Exemplar before your basics from NCERT are solid, the questions will feel disproportionately difficult and you'll either get frustrated or start depending on solutions neither of which helps. For students targeting 90 plus, Exemplar is not optional. It's where the gap between 85 and 92 often lives.

RD Sharma: Genuinely Useful, But Not in the Way Most Students Use It RD Sharma is probably the most purchased maths reference book for Class 10 in India. It's also one of the most inefficiently used. The book is massive. Genuinely massive. There are chapters in RD Sharma that have more questions than most students will solve in three months of preparation. And that's part of the problem students look at the sheer volume and feel either overwhelmed or falsely reassured. Overwhelmed because it seems impossible to finish. Or falsely reassured because the book is thick and on their desk and that feels like preparation. RD Sharma is genuinely excellent for one specific purpose: building problem-solving fluency through varied practice. It has questions at multiple difficulty levels within each chapter, progressing from straightforward to challenging. If you work through RD Sharma seriously, you will become faster, more confident, and better at recognizing patterns. But and this is important you do not need to solve every question in every exercise. That's not how RD Sharma is meant to be used, and students who try to finish it cover-to-cover usually burn out or run out of time. The smarter approach is selective. Do NCERT first. Identify chapters where you feel uncertain or slow. Go to those chapters in RD Sharma and work through the exercises there at your pace. For chapters where you're already confident after NCERT, a light touch in RD Sharma is enough ten to fifteen questions to confirm you can handle variety, then move on. RD Sharma is most valuable for Algebra-heavy chapters Polynomials, Quadratic Equations, Arithmetic Progressions where extensive practice genuinely translates to speed and accuracy. It's less essential for chapters like Probability or Statistics, where conceptual clarity matters more than problem volume.

RS Aggarwal: The Cleaner, Less Intimidating Alternative RS Aggarwal covers similar ground to RD Sharma but feels less overwhelming to work with. The progression within chapters is smoother, the question sets are more manageable in volume, and for students who find RD Sharma's size discouraging, RS Aggarwal achieves most of the same goals. There's a debate that happens in almost every tuition center and WhatsApp parent group: RD Sharma or RS Aggarwal? The honest answer is that it doesn't matter much. What matters is which one you'll actually use. If RD Sharma's size makes you avoid picking it up, RS Aggarwal that you actually work through every day is better preparation. You do not need both. This bears repeating because a lot of students own both, dip into one when bored with the other, and end up with patchy preparation from two books instead of solid preparation from one. Pick one. Finish the relevant chapters. Move forward.

Previous Year Question Papers: The Most Underrated Part of Any Serious Student's Preparation If you had to choose only two resources for CBSE Class 10 Maths preparation, the right answer for most students would be NCERT and previous year papers. Previous year papers do something that no reference book can: they show you exactly what CBSE actually asks. Not what might be asked. Not what's theoretically possible. What has been asked, repeatedly, year after year, with remarkably consistent patterns. Some question types in CBSE Maths appear almost every year. The HCF using Euclid's algorithm question in Real Numbers. The relationship between zeros and coefficients in Polynomials. The proving question in Triangles. Trigonometric identity proof questions. When you've solved ten years of papers, these patterns become obvious, and obvious patterns mean predictable marks. Beyond pattern recognition, previous year papers teach you something that no amount of textbook practice does: how to write answers for a CBSE board examiner. The step breakdown, the way you should introduce a theorem before applying it, where the conclusion line should go, how to box or underline the final answer these are things you absorb naturally by working through marking schemes alongside previous year papers. The marking scheme for each year is available on the CBSE website and is worth reading carefully. It shows you exactly where marks are allocated within a solution. Most students are shocked when they first look at this they realize they've been writing solutions in a way that would lose step marks even when the final answer is correct. Start previous year papers after you've completed the syllabus and done at least one round of revision. Solve them in timed, exam-like conditions no phone, no referring to textbooks mid-paper, full three hours. Then compare against the marking scheme and be honest about where marks went.

Sample Papers: Useful Near the End, Damaging If Used Too Early Sample papers the books of mock tests that appear every year before boards are useful in a specific window of time: the last six to eight weeks before the exam, after the syllabus is done and at least one revision cycle is complete. Before that window, sample papers are more harmful than helpful for most students. Not because the papers are bad, but because solving a full paper before you've properly covered the syllabus teaches you to be okay with not knowing things. It normalizes incompleteness. And students who check solutions after each question rather than completing the whole paper don't develop the exam stamina and time management that sample papers are meant to build. When used correctly after solid preparation, under timed conditions, followed by honest analysis of mistakes sample papers are genuinely valuable. They expose specific weaknesses, build exam-mode focus, and help with time management in a way that chapter-wise practice simply cannot replicate. Two or three carefully analyzed sample papers are worth more than ten papers solved carelessly.

The Chapter Prioritization Most Students Get Wrong

Books are only as useful as the chapters you focus on. And a lot of students focus their hardest preparation on chapters they find interesting or chapters that feel familiar, rather than chapters that carry the most marks or chapters where their specific weaknesses live. For students targeting 90 plus, the chapters that deserve the most attention are Triangles, Trigonometry, and Arithmetic Progressions because they carry significant marks and have well-known question patterns that reward thorough preparation. Real Numbers is worth perfecting because the questions are predictable and full marks are genuinely achievable with the right practice. Statistics and Probability are relatively accessible and often underestimated by students who focus too much on harder algebra topics. Coordinate Geometry and Constructions also need honest attention. Constructions is a chapter many students casually revise because it's just drawing, and then discover in the exam that proper stepwise presentation of constructions carries marks they'd assumed were automatic. Know your own weak chapters. Not the chapters that are generally considered hard your chapters, specifically. That's what you spend extra time on.

The Mistake Pattern That Costs Students the Most Marks After all the books and all the practice, the marks that students lose in the actual exam are usually not lost on the hardest questions. They're lost on the easy and medium questions through a predictable set of errors. Sign mistakes in algebra. Missing the conclusion line in proof questions. Writing only the final answer without the working that earns step marks. Misidentifying the degree of a polynomial and applying the wrong formula. Getting the construction right but presenting the steps wrong. Running out of time on the last section because of slow work in the middle. None of these are intelligence problems. They're habit problems. And habits change through the kind of deliberate practice where you notice your mistakes, understand why they happen, and consciously practice avoiding them. Keep a mistake notebook. Every time you get a question wrong or lose a step mark, write down what happened and why. Review it every few weeks. This is the practice habit that separates students who plateau at 75 from students who break 90.

A Realistic Study Plan for the Final Months The specifics will depend on where you are and how much time you have, but the broad shape that works for most students looks something like this. Until two months before exams: NCERT as the primary source, chapter by chapter, with Exemplar following each chapter. Selective use of RD Sharma or RS Aggarwal for chapters needing more practice. Previous year questions for each chapter as you finish it — not full papers, just chapter-relevant questions. The last two months: shift to full paper practice. One previous year paper per week, timed and analyzed properly. Regular revision of your mistake notebook. Sample papers in the final four to six weeks. Final week: nothing new, only revision of marked questions and formulas. The students who consistently score 90 plus are not doing anything magical. They're doing these ordinary things with more consistency and more honesty about their weak areas than the students who plateau at 70.

For Parents Reading This

The most useful thing a parent can do during Class 10 maths preparation is not buy more books or arrange more tuition. It's create conditions where consistent daily practice is possible. Maths preparation needs roughly ninety minutes to two hours of focused work daily not necessarily more, but consistently, without days-long gaps. A student who studies maths for an hour and a half every single day for six months will outperform a student who studies in frantic bursts before tests. Pressure about marks often does the opposite of what parents intend. Students under high anxiety make more careless mistakes, avoid attempting questions they're uncertain about, and develop exam fear that affects performance beyond what their preparation warrants. Calm, consistent expectation you'll practice every day, we'll see how it goes produces better results than performance pressure does.

The Shortest Possible Summary

If you're a student with limited time and need a clear path forward: Start with NCERT. Complete it properly all exercises, all examples, slowly enough that you understand each step. Then NCERT Exemplar, chapter by chapter. Then previous year papers, analyzed against marking schemes. Add RD Sharma or RS Aggarwal selectively for chapters where you need more practice. Sample papers in the final six weeks. That's it. That's the path. It works not because it's complicated but because it's coherent each resource serves a clear purpose, used at the right time. The students who score 90 plus in CBSE Class 10 Maths are almost always students who chose less and did it properly. Not students who collected more and finished nothing.

FAQ Section

Q: Is NCERT alone enough to score 90+ in CBSE Class 10 Maths?

For many students, NCERT plus NCERT Exemplar plus previous year papers is genuinely enough for 90 plus. NCERT forms the conceptual base, Exemplar tests application, and previous year papers familiarize you with the exact question patterns and presentation style CBSE expects. Whether you need RD Sharma or RS Aggarwal depends on how much additional practice your weak chapters need. There's no universal answer it depends on your starting level and how thoroughly you've worked through NCERT.

Q: RD Sharma or RS Aggarwal which one should I choose?

Both are good. RD Sharma has more question variety and goes deeper in some chapters. RS Aggarwal is slightly cleaner in structure and less overwhelming in volume. The more important point is this: don't buy both. Pick one based on which one you'll actually use consistently, and stick with it.

Q: When should I start solving sample papers?

After you've completed the full syllabus and done at least one revision cycle roughly six to eight weeks before your board exam. Starting earlier usually means solving papers with gaps in preparation, which isn't useful practice. Sample papers work best when you can simulate real exam conditions: timed, no interruptions, no mid-paper reference to textbooks.

Q: I'm currently scoring around 65-70. Which books should I focus on to improve?

Start with NCERT and nothing else. Work through it slowly and seriously all examples, all exercises. Identify which chapters are weakest, based on your recent test performance. For those chapters, go back to basics before moving forward. Once NCERT is solid, move to previous year questions for each chapter. Adding reference books before NCERT is genuinely strong will not help much and may add confusion.

Q: My child has five or six books but isn't improving. What's going wrong?

Almost certainly: too many resources, not enough consistent practice on any one of them. Having multiple books creates the illusion of preparation without the substance of it. The fix is to remove everything except NCERT and a previous year question bank. Get those two right first. Add one reference book for extra practice only if needed. Depth in fewer resources beats breadth across many.