Qualifying marks brought down

Kochi: For the first time in three years since the introduction of JEE (Main) and Advanced, the JEE (Advanced) board has lowered the qualifying marks criteria for admission to the IITs.

A decision in this regard was taken in a meeting of the JEE (Advanced) board on June 12, five days before the announcement of the result, as only fewer students could cross the bar this year. JEE (Advanced) result is scheduled on June 18. 

To qualify for JEE advanced, a general category student will now have to secure only 7 per cent marks in each of the three subjects with aggregate of 24.5 per cent. The previous cut-off was 10 per cent marks in each subjects and 35 per cent in aggregate.

As per the revised rule, the minimum aggregate qualifying marks for the general category is now 124 out of 504, which means a candidate has to score minimum 12 marks in Maths, Physics and Chemistry separately, after adding the paper 1 and 2 marks.

There are nearly 10,000 seats available for admissions this year for various undergraduate courses in 16 IITs and a few other national institutes. The IITs usually select twice the number of candidates as compared to the available seats so that no seat remains vacant.