In its new avatar, the joint engineering examination (JEE) taken to seek admission to the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), has seen a record 1.4 million candidates register.
Last year around 1.1 million candidates registered for the exam.
Come April the first Joint Engineering Entrance (JEE) - Main will be held.
In July 2012, it was decided that JEE from 2013, would be held in two parts — Main and Advanced. Students applying to the IITs would have to appear for JEE-Main.
The new test is an amalgamation of the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) and the IIT-JEE, where the Main exam will be equivalent to AIEEE, and Advanced will be equivalent to the IIT-JEE.
Only the top 1,50,000 who qualify from these would be eligible for taking the JEE-Advanced, which would be held a few weeks after the Main exam.
For final admission to the IIT, based on the JEE-Advanced, a student should be ranked among the top 20 percentile of his respective Class XII Board. At present, any student scoring 60 per cent in their Class XII Board examination is eligible for a seat in the IITs. There are 32 Boards in India having different patterns of examination and evaluation.
JEE (main) is conducted for candidates aspiring for admissions to BE, BTech and architecture courses at National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), Delhi Technological University, and other centrally funded technical institutes (CFTIs).
