JEE (Main) online will be offered at 235 locations for 5 lakh candidates

Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will conduct the Joint Entrance Examination (Main) for enrolling students to engineering/architecture programmes. This year, the exam could turn out be bigger online exam of the country surpassing Common Admission Test conducted by the Indian Institute of Management.

CBSE is offering the online exam (computer-based exam) in 235 cities across the country, in which nearly 5 lakh students will appear in four days. Previously, the exam was known as AIEEE, which used to be the world’s largest single day entrance exam.

CBSE experimented with the online mode in 2011 when more than 1.25 lakh aspirants have registered for the online exam. In the second year, the number has increased to 1.75 lakh. Over 14 lakh candidates are expected to register for this prestigious exam. CAT conducts the online test for nearly 2 lakh students over the duration of 20 days.

According to CBSE Chairman, Vineet Joshi, one out of every three urban centres will have an exam centre for the online mode of the JEE (Main) 2014. He said, “There are around 600 cities/ towns in the country. Since the offline exam is offered in just 85 locations, candidates need to travel long distance. In order to ensure that majority of the aspirants don't have to travel long distance, specially for female candidates it becomes a problem as they have to look for accommodation and security is also a concern, the Board is offering the option of taking the exam online exam in as many as 235 cities/ towns of the country. This is apart from the 85 cities/ towns which will have centres for offline (pen-paper) mode of the exam.” The main idea behind establishing so many exam centres across the country is to candidates home as possible so that they can prepare well and perform well in the exam rather than spending time in travelling. JEE (Main) is conducted by CBSE for enrolling students in to National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), other centrally funded technical institutions (CFTIs), institutes under several participating State Government and several other institutions. This is preliminary exam out of which top 1.5 lakh candidates will get a chance to appear in JEE Advanced, the entrance exam for the IITs.

Stating that the ultimate aim of the authorities is to convert this exam into online exam, Joshi said, “Finally in the long-run we definitely want this to be an online exam.” He further added, “The online mock test will give the candidates the experience of the actual test. This will help them decide which mode they would prefer.”

The registration of the exam has started on 15th November, 2013 and the last date for registration is scheduled for 6th April, 2014, the online (computer based) exam will be conducted on 9th April, 11th April, 12th April and 19th April in 2014.