JEE Main high cutoff score: What NTA can learn from UPSC

In two sessions in January and April this year, the National Testing Agency (NTA) conducted the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) – Main 2024, the test for admission to undergraduate courses in state-funded engineering colleges across India. It is also the eligibility test to appear for JEE (Advanced), the next level entrance test for admission to undergraduate courses in 23 IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology).

Over 14 lakh students appeared in JEE-Main in both sessions, about three lakhs more than last year. In percentile terms, JEE 2024 Main cutoff was 93.23 for the General category, 81.32 for EWS, 79.67 for OBC and 60.09 for SC. This is the minimum percentile required to be eligible for JEE Advanced 2024 as also for admission to the participating institutions.

Climbing cutoff

Last year, the cutoff was 90.77 for the General category, 75.62 for EWS, 73.61 for OBC and 51.97 for SC.

The cutoff score has climbed steeply across categories. The crowding effect at the top is so intense that the cutoff is put out in seven decimal places! The percentile cutoff of General category was 93.2362181, EWS was 81.3266412, OBC was 79.6757881 and SC was 60.0923182.

These are the lowest category-wise scores required for admission to 31 NITs, 25 IIITs and 28 Government Funded Technical Institutes (GFTIs). While 43 students got 100 percentile last year, 13 more, totalling 56, got 100 percentile in 2024.

Now, consider this: a 99.68 percentile would mean 5,000th rank. A 99 percentiler would get 15,890th rank. A person who scored a very decent 98.432 percentile got 25,000th rank! An engineering aspirant got 94 per cent and landed at the 84,000th position.

These ranks matter in choosing a stream and college, even if one makes it above the cutoff. A lower rank would translate to least preferred engineering stream in least preferred colleges.

UPSC is better

In contrast, consider the UPSC exams, the toughest set of exams to crack in India, held to recruit eligible youth for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the Indian Police Service (IPS) and such other services. It is a multi-stage exam with MCQ (multiple-choice-questions), requiring short and long written answers as well as an interview.

In terms of size, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) compared well with JEE (Main). About 11-13 lakh students appear for the UPSC Prelims exam every year, competing for about 1,100 vacancies with the government of India.

The markings

Aditya Srivastava, who topped the list of successful candidates in 2023, scored 1,099 out of 2,025, translating to a modest 54 per cent. (In other words, with 54 per cent marks, he is a 100 percentiler, though the UPSC doesn’t deal with percentile grading). Over the years, the trend has remained the same. None had scored more than 1,126 out of 2,025 (55 per cent) over the last 10 years.

In comparison, the 100 percentilers in JEE Main 2024 have scored 300 out of 300. If one got 99 percentiles, one might end up with a rank beyond 15,000! Over the next few years, if we don’t do course correction, the cutoff would move up to 98 or 99 percentiles.

Nature of questions

What explains this? The high number of exam-takers could be one reason. A person familiar with the process points out that the focus on pattern-cracking skills, which coaching institutes are adept in imparting to students, is another.

Says a former professor of the IISER (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research), Pune: “In the past, the JEE exam questions used to be open-ended, making it possible to identify bright students who nevertheless may not have given a technically correct answer, or may have left some questions unanswered. Such students cannot get through JEE exams now. Given that there are more than 1.4 million aspirants, the only feasible format for testing is MCQ, which lends itself to computer grading. Unfortunately, the MCQ format of the exam prioritizes speed and meticulousness, leaving no time for thinking, reflection and creativity. It thus favours fast, surface-smart students and handicaps slower ones who may however be deep thinkers and creative explorers.”

The future

In addition to focusing on only surface-level smartness through extensive drilling in pattern-cracking, the coaching industry has also led to the system unjustly favouring the urban rich and the middle class, putting the poor and the rural students at a disadvantage.

Is there a way out? Yes, there are at least two options for progress.

Learn from UPSC

First, the NTA, a government-run agency, could learn some strategies from the UPSC, a fellow state-run entity, on how to successfully keep the lid on the top scores without allowing them to zoom to stratospheric levels. After a basic ‘elimination’ test, the selection process could have feasible and realistic combination of school grades, essays, MCQs, short answers and interviews. A fine-grained selection system of this kind would yield a far more reliable results, worth the additional effort. If the UPSC can do it on a large scale of equal size, so can the NTA. Sure, coaching factories would try to crack-patterns here too but it won’t be as easy for them as it is now.

Secondly, as the former IISER professor points out, even the MCQ format could be re-designed in such a way that the questions do not lend themselves to mindless mechanical routines. For instance, the format of the questions should be changed from the standard MCQs to ‘Enhanced MCQs’. (EMCQs).

The alternative

EMCQs would:

* Have a larger number of choices in a question – say 10 or 15 – which would increase the search space.

* Allow for 2–3 options to be the ‘correct’ choices without mentioning how many such ‘correct’ choices exist for a question.

* Give full marks to a combination of two or more options, with different weights different options.

* Give negative marks for the choice of inappropriate options.

Embrace relevance

The coaching institutes will try to master EMCQ too and eventually, will. However, the change may force the coaching institutes to turn the focus away from imparting pattern-cracking skills to teaching concepts. That will be a big step.

In any case, there exists a need for JEE Main to go beyond the traditional boxes of physics, chemistry and mathematics, to include areas of science that are becoming increasingly relevant to engineering and technology – such as logic and cognitive sciences.