Students who achieved a score of above 87.89 in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE-Main) will be eligible to apply to write the entrance test for admission to the elite Indian Institutes of Technology, the National Testing Agency announced on September 15.
The Common Rank List cut-off score for general category students is lower than the 90.37 cut-off last year.
Among the 44 students who achieved a 100 percentile score , seven each were from Telangana and Delhi. Using the tie-breaker rules, 18 students were determined to share the top rank this year, including four from Andhra Pradesh, the highest among States. Overall, 9.39 lakh students wrote the examination, almost a lakh fewer than the 10.23 lakh who appeared last year.
This year’s examination was marred by an alleged cheating scandal at a centre in Sonepat, Haryana, where computers were hacked to provide illegal assistance to students who paid up to ₹15 lakh. So far, 11 people have been arrested and a CBI probe is on.
“On account of using unfair means, a total of 20 candidates have been debarred from appearing in future examinations for a period of three years. Their results have also been withheld,” said the NTA statement.
JEE Main is used as an entrance test for admission to undergraduate engineering programmes at the National Institutes of Technology, and several other Central, State and private institutions. The top 2.5 lakh ranked candidates are also eligible to appear for JEE Advanced, which is the admission test for the elite Indian Institutes of Technology, and will be held on October 3. Registrations for JEE Advanced will open on September 15.
This year’s Common Rank List cut-off score of 87.89 is more than two points below year’s cut-off of 90.37. For students from economically weaker sections, the cut-off is a score of 66.22; for those from Other Backward Classes, it is 68.02; for those in the Scheduled Caste category, it is 46.88; and for those from Scheduled Tribe communities, it is 34.67. Cut-offs for all these categories are significantly lower than last year.
Students can check their scores as well as the final answer keys at https://jeemain.nta.nic.in/.
This year, the computer-based examination was offered four times, with the last two sessions postponed due to the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Students were allowed to attempt the examination as often as they wished, with their best score being used for ranking purposes. More than 2.5 lakh chose to attempt all four sessions. Of the total 9.39 lakh students who wrote the examination, 70% were male.
