I would agree with your friend that a ‘good’ performance in the IIT-JEE is probably comparable to a near-flawless performance in an A Level exam. If I remember correctly, IIT-JEE exams cover mathematics, physics and chemistry. The pupils that sit those are trained to think very quickly under pressure, and they are trained to understand and use concepts that would probably be deemed undergraduate material in the UK because of how competitive they are. I feel that in those exams, every advantage counts.
I feel that most pupils who are able to study for these exams greatly exceed much of what is needed to ace the UK exams. Having friends who know the Asian systems pretty well (at least from my perspective), it is truly a very different environment over there. Education and results are paramount. That mindset is already quite different and more tailored to the exams-based A Levels than the usual one in the UK, which definitely places less emphasis on education. Now, I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's something that I feel most persons would agree with.
In my humble opinion, I think Asian exams force pupils to be over-trained, giving their pupils' brains more technical speed. A lot of this knowledge is taught later in the UK, but far more advanced concepts may be taught earlier to truly differentiate between pupils in such a large population (e.g. China). Any pupil passionate enough from the West can definitely study for the sort of questions you'd see in Asia. After all, there are exams in the UK like national Olympiads which make A Levels look like child's play, and the few thousand that can complete those with minimal difficulty can probably handle Asia's pre-university exams.
I guess you could, yes. You're looking at it from a certain perspective, and that can definitely make it a lot easier to understand what may be easy or difficult.
I think you've hit the nail on the head there! Precisely! Our attitude to education starkly contrasts with the Orient's! We have more freedom on top of our revision, along with a more relaxed view of education, which is why we think this way.
We are certainly a little more indolent than our peers in the Far East.