JEE (Main) to be held at 235 cities, 5 lakh candidates expected to attempt exam

Joint Entrance Examination (JEE-Main) will be conducted by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for enrolling aspirants in engineering/architecture programmes. The exam would turn out as the biggest entrance exam of the country surpassing Common Admission Test held by the Indian Institute of Management.

CBSE will conduct this online exam (computer-based exam) in 235 cities/towns. In this exam, nearly 5 lakh candidates will appear and the exam window will remain open for four days. Previously, the exam was popular as AIEEE, which was globally known as the largest single day entrance test.

CBSE started this online exam in the year 2011, in that year more than 1.25 lakh candidates registered for online exam. In the second year, the number reached to 1.75 lakh. Over 14 lakh candidates are expected to register for the exam. CAT conducts online exam for nearly 2 lakh candidates and candidates attempted for the exam over a period of 20 days. As per the chairman of CBSE, Vineet Joshi, one out of every three urban centres will have an exam centre for online mode for JEE (Main) in 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 reason behind this initiative is avail a location of the test centre near to their home as they can prepare well and will not worry much about travelling and other things.

The registration for the exam has already started and the last date for registration 26th December, 2013. The offline exam will be held on 6th April, 2014, the online exam will be held on four days on 9th, 11th, 12th and 19th April, 2013.