IIT JAM or Indian Institute of Technology Joint Admission Tests for M.Sc.s is an exam conducted for Masters in Science and M.Sc. + PhD (integrated PhD) programs offered by IITs.

M.Sc. Biotechnology is offered at IIT Bombay and IIT Roorkee. For IIT Bombay (EDIT: Now also for IIT Roorkee, from JAM 2016 onwards), you need to have Mathematics in your 11th and 12th standard.

Application procedure is completed by September (your B.Sc. III year/ V semester).

Exam is now held in first week of February and mode of examination is now online.

One should ideally start preparing right from the beginning of third year of B.Sc. course. Better still, start going through the syllabus, pattern, kind of questions asked etc. from first year itself, if possible. I mean to say, start getting a feel of it as and when you get time, right from your first year itself. This will help you stay focused and motivated for the same.

Questions are asked from 10 + 2 + 3 syllabus. Physics of Std. XI and XII should be brushed up properly. In my opinion, this is the key for selection as most of the students don't pay much attention to it.  Physics questions are of average difficulty level and if you have revised the syllabus properly, you'll be able to solve them easily. Questions will be both application based and memory based.

Previous year question papers are available easily on every year's JAM webpage. You should practice them well as by the time you reach the last year of bachelor studies, mostly we lose the habit of taking 3 hour MCQ based tests.

Here I am listing some of the name of the books with respect to particular subject

1. Biochemistry: Biochemistry by Lehninger or Voet & Voet are the standard and most popular books. For analytical Biochemistry, there is this book called 'Biochemical Calculations'. This book is particularly good for solving biochemistry numericals like those based on pH and all.

2. Bioinformatics: David Mount [our professor in IITB generally gave us papers to read and different study materials for different topics, but I consulted this basic book only otherwise. Also, we had very basic Bioinformatics]

3. Cell Biology: Bruce Alberts or Lodish

4. Developmental Biology: Gilbert

5. Enzymology: No particular book. Found most of the topics in Biochemistry books.

6. Genetic Engineering: Genes series by Lewin, Molecular Cloning by Sambrook and Russel, Principles of Gene Manipulation by Old and Primrose

7. Immunology: Kuby/ Abbas and Litchmann

8. Microbiology: Prescott, Pelczar

9. Molecular Biology: Watson

10. Physics and Chemistry (+2 level): NCERT for general reading and MCQ banks/ self-scorers like Dinesh or Pradeep MCQ books will be sufficient.

Feel free to ask me in the comment box if you are having any further doubts

hope you find it helpful

Good Luck!