JEE Advanced 2015 exam is going to be held on May 24, 2015. It is one of the most prestigious and highly competitive engineering entrance exam in India – leading to admissions in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Out of over 13 lakh students who appeared for the JEE Main exam 2015, only 1,52, 401 managed to qualify for JEE Advanced exam. But 25,000 of these JEE Advanced qualifiers opted out of the IIT entrance exam and did not register themselves for it.
No. of IIT seats in 2015
As against 9,784 IIT seats available across the 16 IITs and ISM Dhanbad, this year candidates will have a chance to vie for about 11,000 IIT seats across 21 IITs (including ISM Dhanbad which will soon get converted to a full-fledged IIT). The other four IITs that will add to the student intake include – IIT Chhatisgarh, IIT Goa, IIT Palghat and IIT Tirupati.
Why did students stayed away from IIT JEE exam?
The trend is not new. In 2014 too, about as many students (25,000) had not registered for the JEE Advanced exam despite qualifying for it. Here are some of the reasons why these students prefer to stay away from IIT JEE:
According to H C Gupta – former JEE Advanced Chairperson, “Despite the lure of studying at IIT, many students choose to stay close to their parents and home. Especially students from states who do not conduct their own engineering entrance exams anymore prefer to take admission in their state engineering colleges based on their JEE Main ranks.”
There are many students who qualify for JEE Advanced under ‘Other Backward Classes (OBC)’ category but fail to furnish the related certificates and documents in time. Hence, they have no option but to stay away from the JEE Advanced exam.
Students who score low in JEE Main or are on the lower-end of JEE Advanced qualifying list often feel that they may not be able crack the JEE Advanced exam as it is said to have higher difficulty level. So, they stay away from it.
There are students who make it to the JEE Main merit list but do not meet the other eligibility criteria of JEE Advanced exam like being in the Top 20% of their respective educational boards in the qualifying exam (category-wise) or attaining at least 75% aggregate marks (for General and OBC category candidates (SC, ST and PwD candidates need 70% marks to qualify) in Class 12 board exams. Hence, they are ineligible to register for the JEE Advanced exams.
