Last leg of IIT admissions loom

Tougher competition possible over last year, with higher cut-off in main exam; results next month

Students taking the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced 2014 for admission to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) might have to face tougher competition than earlier, with higher cut-off marks and expectations of the top 20 percentile criteria on being more stringent.

The cut-off mark of the JEE Main 2014, Paper 1 (for admission to undergraduate IIT courses like BE and B Tech) is 115 in the Common Merit List (general) category, compared to 113 last year. The exam was held in April.

While 1.35 million candidates had aspired for an engineering seat to the IITs this year, only the top 150,000 of JEE Main 2014 will be eligible to appear for JEE Advanced 2014. JEE (Advanced) will be on May 25 and the results will be declared on June 19.

Chandan Dikshit, head of strategy and planning at Rao IIT Academy, said while the cut-off had increased, the online examination was relatively easier. His coaching institute has had about 600 students of the 900 in their Mumbai branch qualify for the next stage. Kota in Rajasthan, a hub for IIT entrance exam training and hosting a number of coaching institutes, has 27,000-30,000 students qualifying for JEE Advanced.

With several teachers also on election duty, there is some fear that board examination results could be delayed. Candidates whose results of the Class 12 or equivalent qualifying examination is not available by June 25 will not be considered for allotment of an All India Ranking of JEE Main.

A senior admissions official said if some state board exam results were delayed, there would be increased competition among students of other boards. The rank scored in the JEE Main is valid for two years.

The new format adopted by the IIT Council comprises a two-tier system, of a main and an advanced test. Students clearing the advanced test after being screened in the mains would be considered for admission to the IITs, provided they are among the top 20 percentile in their boards.

Every year, a list of the top 20 percentile in the different boards of Class 12 are given out, based on which IIT admissions are decided. Last year, CBSE’s cut-off was 78.2 percentage. For boards in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the cut-off had exceeded 85 percentage and even crossed 90.

Students who wish to improve their performance in the board examinations are given a chance to appear in all five subjects in Class 12 again the next year.  

Areeb Hussain, 19, from North India, who earlier managed to get past the cut-off marks in the Common Merit List of the JEE Main, is uncertain whether he’d be able to make it to the top 20 percentile. He’s opted to improve his Class 12 performance since he was not among the top 20 per cent scorers then but fears the criteria might tighten further. Plus, there have been no notices on when his board results would be announced.

The head of a Kota-based coaching institute said there’d been some complaints about some boards’ top 20 percentile cut-off being high and there could be some revisions in the cut-off this year.

For non-IITs like the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), the final admission would be based on a final ranking list based on JEE-Main scores (60 per cent weightage) and Class 12 exam marks (40 per cent weightage), after the board exam marks are normalised to eliminate the variations in marks given by different boards.

The online registration for JEE (Advanced) has begun. While JEE-Main was administered by the Central Board of Secondary Education, JEE-Advanced will be looked into solely by the IITs.