On April 24, 2024, the National Testing Agency (NTA) announced that a historic number of 56 candidates, including two females, attained a perfect 100 NTA score in the engineering entrance exam JEE-Main. The qualifying percentile for the JEE (Advanced) exam, which is the gateway to admission into the 23 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), has reached its highest level in five years.
In the JEE (Main) January session, 23 candidates achieved a perfect 100 NTA score, while 33 candidates accomplished the same in the April session. Among the 56 top performers, there are 40 from the general category, 10 from the OBC category, and 6 from the Gen-EWS category.
As per officials, NTA scores are standardized scores that consider the relative performance of all candidates across multiple sessions of the examination. These scores convert the marks obtained into a scale from 100 to 0 for each session of examinees, ensuring fairness and comparability. Hence, the NTA score differs from the percentage of marks obtained and should not be equated with it. Candidates’ rankings are determined by considering the better of their two NTA scores, in accordance with the existing policy. 39 candidates have been disqualified from appearing in the JEE-Main for a period of three years due to their involvement in using unfair methods during the examination.
Telangana maintains its lead among states for the third year in a row, boasting 15 candidates in the top scorer list. Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh follow with 7 top scorers each at 100 percentile, while Delhi has 6 aspirants in the top scorer list. Rajasthan follows with 7 top scorers. However, this year, states like West Bengal, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, each of which had a topper last year, did not produce any 100 percentilers this time.
The qualifying percentile for JEE (Advanced) has reached a five-year high across all categories. This year, the minimum cut-off for the general category stands at 93.2, an increase from 90.7 in 2023 and 88.4 in 2022. Likewise, the general-EWS cut-off has risen to 81.3 from 75.6 last year and 63.1 in 2022. The qualifying percentile for the OBC category has also increased to 79.6 from 68 in 2022 and 73.6 in 2023. Notably, the SC category’s percentile has surged to 60, compared to 51.9 in 2023 and 43 in 2022, while the ST category’s percentile has risen to 46.6 from 37.2 in 2023 and 26.7 in 2022, marking significant improvements.
Nearly 96% of the 14.1 lakh candidates took the exam for undergraduate admissions to engineering and architecture programs in centrally-funded technical institutions and to qualify for the JEE (Advanced). This exam is the gateway to around 24,000 seats across National Institutes of Technology (NITs).
