Number of JEE qualifiers dip, IITs to lower cutoff

PUNE: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) management was forced to reduce its cutoff this year with fewer students qualifying for the benchmark that IIT had set for the 10,006 available seats.

Before the exam, the IIT had declared a cut off of 35% or more in the joint entrance examination ( JEE) Advanced, the results for which were declared on Thursday. However only 8,600 candidates, against 19,000 last year, scored 35% or more marks. About 1.17 lakh candidates appeared for the examination held on May 24.

Education experts said the IIT management was forced to reduce the cut-off to 24.5% and not because the number of scheduled tribe students had dipped, as declared by the IIT in its June 12 notification.

Durgesh Mageshkar of IIT Prashikshan Kendra said, "The fact is that not enough students could meet the 35% cutoff due to which it was reduced. The harsh negative marking system introduced in the exam this year affected the students' performance."

Half the questions in both Paper I and Paper II carried two negative marks for every wrong answer.

25 from Super 30 clear the exam

The famed coaching centre 'Super 30', run by mathematician Anand Kumar churned out 25 success stories in this year's JEE. His students from financially weak backgrounds -including son of a daily wage earner, roadside vendor, taxi driver, farm labourer and painter - all made it to IITs. "Super 30 is a big family for me, all my team members get attached to it," Kumar said.