Chennai: The cut-off for Joint Entrance Exam (Advanced) can go up this year as the JEE (Main) exam was easy compared to last year. Over 10 lakh students wrote the JEE Main exam at 104 centres across the country on Sunday. The exam was conducted for 360 marks with each question carrying 4 marks for a correct answer and -1 wrong answer.
The top 2,20,000 candidates will be shortlisted to appear for JEE (Advanced) exam scheduled on May 21. Students who wrote the exam gave a mixed response to the paper. A student from Kodambakkam said, “Mathematics part was little difficult. To avoid negative marking, I attempted selective questions.”
Some other students said the Physics part was relatively easy. “Compared to last year, the level of difficulty of the JEE exam was reduced this year. Particularly, the Physics part was relatively easier, whereas the Maths and Chemistry remained more or less same compared to last year,” said Anand Nagarajan, academic head of the school division, TIME, Chennai.
“Since the level of difficulty is less, the cut-off for JEE (advanced) can go up. The general category cut-off was 100 last year. This year it will be anywhere between 105- 115 marks,” he said. By and large the question paper has been along the expected lines. “They have ensured the equal weightage to class 11 and 12 topics. Any serious test taker who is in contention for IIT seat is expected to score more than 180 out of 360,” they said.
As per the announcement, there will not be any weightage for Class 12 board exam marks. Last year, 40% weightage was given to board exam marks. ‘The students have to qualify purely based on JEE (Main) exam marks. In the absence of weightage marks, the students have to score slightly higher marks in JEE to get admissions in NITs,” he said.
Students can get admission to NITs with the JEE Main exam marks and to get admission to IITs, they have to get top ranks in JEE (Advanced) exam.
As per the new notification, the students should have secured at least 75% marks in class 12 exam or should be in the top 20 percentile in the exams conducted by the respective boards.
