The result of JEE Mains 2024 is out and every newspaper is reporting that the cutoff for eligibility of general category for JEE Advanced (for admission to IITs) has gone up to 93.2 percentile. In 2023, this cutoff was 90.7 an in 2022, this cutoff was 88.4.
Why has this happened. The simple answer is that the competition has increased. The number of students taking the JEE Mains exam has increased substantially this year and hence the percentile score has gone up.
To explain this with an example. If I want to select 10 students out of 100, I am selecting those who are above 90 percent of the students, or in other words, my cutoff is 90 percentile. But if I want to select 10 students out of 150, I am selecting those who are above 93.33 percent students, or in other words, my cutoff is 93.33.
If we look at the numbers, the total number of students who took JEE Mains (in either session) in 2023 was 11.13 lakhs, while the total number of students who took JEE Mains in 2024 was 14.15 lakhs, an increase of 3 lakh students. So clearly, if the same number of students is being selected for JEE Advanced (roughly 2.5 lakhs), the cutoff will go up. Please note that it is not dependent on the difficulty level of the question papers in different sessions. So one cannot interpret this data to imply that questions were easier or tougher this year.
But if this simple answer was the complete reason for increase in cutoff, I wouldn't be writing this blog. Enough media houses have pointed out the increased number of candidates. In fact, if the reason was only the increased number of students, the cutoff should have been around 92.7 percentile (and not 93.2).
There is another very interesting reason for increase in cutoff. And that is the impact of two sessions of JEE Mains exam.
A student can take JEE Mains once or twice (in January/April). The higher of the two scores is assigned to the student. Now, consider a scenario where 100 students take the exam in the first session, and the same 100 students take the exam in the second session. The top 10 of the first session is the same set as top 10 of the second session. And now, if I am selecting the top 10 students, I will select those who are above 90 percent students in either of the two sessions, or 90 percentile will be my cutoff. But if the two set of 10 toppers are completely disjoint, that is, there is no common person in top 10 (actually top 5), then I end up taking top 5 of first session, and top 5 of the second session, and my cutoff will be 95 percentile. So the interesting consequence of two session exam is that more than 1 percent students can be there within 1 percentile.
So, the cutoff crucially depends on not just the total number of students, but also on how many students took the exam twice and how many of them had inconsistent results in two attempts. Inconsistency here means that their performances in two sessions is significantly different. And that seems to have played a role in increasing this year's cutoff.
Last year, 5.94 lakh students appeared in both sessions out of 11.13 lakh unique students, which means that 53 percent of all unique exam takers appeared in both sessions. This year, 8.23 lakh students appeared in both sessions out of 14.15 lakh unique students, which means that 58 percent of all unique exam takers appeared in both sessions. So a lot more people have worked hard in the intervening period to see a significant increase in their performance compared to session 1, and that has increased the cutoff by another 0.5 percentile.
Please note that the exact cutoff would also be dependent on the distribution of the number of candidates of different categories, how many students from different categories get counted in general category because of their top performance, and so on. But there is no reason to think that across just one year, there would be significant differences in group performances.
What to do if you didn't meet the cutoff for JEE Advanced but still want to study in an IIT.
Most IITs have a scheme to allow students from other colleges to study as a non-degree student for a semester or two. But pretty much no college has a system of credit transfer despite NEP2020. To the best of my knowledge, the only university in India which sends a large fraction of their students to do coursework in IITs is JK Lakshipat University in Jaipur.
There is also a very liberal scholarship for those who have done well in JEE Mains. If you have 95+ percentile in JEE Mains, you study for free. If you have 90-95 percentile in JEE Mains, you get 75% fee waiver, and so on. And these scholarships can potentially last for all four years based on performance. Check out the details on the scholarship page.
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