More number of quota candidates registered for JEE applicants

Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main will be conducted in the month of April this year. The exam will be conducted on both the modes online and offline. This year in the JEE Main exam nearly half of the candidates who registered for the exam are from reserved category. The exam is conducted by the CBSE, to select students for engineering colleges such as IITs, NITs, IIITs and IISc across the country. Private engineering colleges too, enrol students on the basis of their JEE All India Rank. This is the qualifying exam for the advanced exam on the basis of which student will be able to take the advanced test, which will be gateway for prestigious IITs of the country.

The caste composition of JEE-Main candidates has dramatically changes over past few years. This year, out of 13.57 lakh candidates, 4.7 lakh are OBC, 1.36 lakh are SC and 56,000 are ST, totalling about 6.7 lakh reserved category candidates, the number of general category applicants is 6.9 lakh.

CBSE official said, “This year, an almost equal number of open and reserved category students will write the exam. The number of OBC candidates is rising and we feel their performance is improving with each passing year.” However in 2011, OBC candidates were just a bit more than 20% of the total number of applicants. But this year the situation is different, these candidates share a bigger chunk and comprise a share of 355. IIT faculty member further added, “Moreover, there may be several OBC candidates within the general category pool as they may belong to the creamy layer.

We have noticed over the years that several OBC candidates vie for seats from within the general category and do not need reservation.”

The gender breakup of candidates has also gone through a major change, with more girls applying for the exam 3.36 lakh girls, or nearly 27% of the total number of applicants, a percentage higher than before. Similar to the last year, most candidates have chosen the paper-pen mode which is almost 11.85 lakh, merely 1.72 lakh have chosen the online mode.