Respite for students as 1st JEE Main paper turns out easy

Coaching institutes believe cut-offs could go higher

The first Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main examination (offline) was held today by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) across 81 cities including four cities abroad—Bahrain, Dubai, Riyadh & Muscat.

A record 1.4 million candidates registered for the 2013 JEE Main, formerly known as the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE).

JEE Main online examinations will be held between  April 8 to 30 (on-line).

Students who took the examination said the paper was easy. "This is the maiden JEE after AIEEE was done away with. I was quite apprehensive and worried about how the kind of questions we would get. But I am glad the paper was quite easy," said Nainu Chatwal, an IIT aspirant from Navi Mumbai.

Earlier, coaching institutes were of the view that the paper could be tough. However, on Sunday they said given the paper was easy, cut-offs could be higher. “The paper was easy and based on the level of questions the cut-offs are expected to be high," said Ramesh Batlish of FIITJEE .

The test was held on an optical reader sheet. JEE (Main), paper-I had three sections—chemistry, mathematics and physics with 30 questions in each section (single correct answer from four options) in each section. The marking scheme was +4 for a correct response and -1 for an incorrect response and no marks will be deducted if unattempted.

JEE is a gateway for candidates aspiring to seek admissions to Bachelors in Engineering, BTech and architecture courses at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), Delhi Technological University, and other centrally funded technical institutes (CFTIs).

Currently there are 9647 undergraduate seats in 15 IITs, IT-BHU and ISM Dhanbad while the number of undergraduate seats in the 30 NITs of the country is 15678 including the seats in the new ones.

The results are scheduled to be declared on May 7, 2013.

This year saw highest ever registration for the test. Last year around 1.12 million candidates registered for the exam.

JEE (Advanced) will replace IIT-JEE and will be conducted by the IITs. Only top 150,000 students will take up JEE (Advanced) scheduled for June 2, 2013.

For selection of students to NITs and CFTI, ranking will be given based on score of 60% JEE Main +40% normalisation score of board results.

The JEE (Advanced) will have two objective type papers. Each paper will comprise of physics, chemistry and mathematics. Duration of each paper will be 3 hours.