CHENNAI/MUMBAI:
Ved Lahoti
from Indore shattered the JEE (Advanced) records by scoring the highest-ever marks of 355 out of 360 in the 2024 exam. Dwija Patel (332 marks) from Gujarat, who ranked 7 in the country, topped among the girls. Of the 1.8 lakh candidates who took JEE (A), 48,248 qualified. Of them, 7,964 are girls. This year, 455 more girls have qualified compared to the previous year.
The JEE (A) results were declared on Sunday by IIT Madras, the organising college for this entrance exam that is the final gateway for the country’s premier tech colleges.
Students complained that the results website was slow and broke down twice.
Topper Ved Lahoti had initially scored 352, also secured by Chirag Falor in JEE (A) 2020 who opted to pursue his education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, instead of joining an IIT.
Apart from bagging four spots in the top 10 ranks this year, the highest number of candidates – 11,180 – have qualified from IIT Madras zone, followed by IIT Delhi (10,255) and IIT Bombay (9480). The board tilts northwards as one looks at the top 100 ranks.
The IIT Bombay zone has 30 in the top 100 ranks, 29 from IIT Delhi, and 25 from IIT Madras. While nine candidates from IIT Roorkee zone secured ranks within the top 100, four from IIT Bhubaneswar, two from IIT Guwahati, and one from IIT Kanpur also secured ranks within the top 100.
Last year, IIT Madras monopolised the top 100 merit list with 40 candidates. IITs have a total of 17,740 seats for admission this year, up from 17,385 in 2023. This year, around 100 top rankers bagged scores above 300, a figure last recorded in 2017 when again IIT-Madras had organised the exam, observed a coaching class teacher. Sreedhar Babu, an IIT Bombay alumnus and mathematics teacher from a tutorial, said the mathematics paper this time was easier compared to the previous years. “Students who are strong at mathematics, which is supposed to be the heart of engineering and science, could not get the advantage over others. The paper favoured students who had good memory and practice over those with intellectual aptitude,” he said.
The minimum qualifying aggregate score for the open category went up to 109 as compared to 86 last year – up 6.5% to touch 30.3%, which is the highest in the last four years. The cutoff for the OBC-NCL list and general EWS is 98, and 54 for SC, ST and persons with disabilities, said a release from the organising chairman, JEE (A ) 2024, IIT Madras. The qualifying marks have increased by 3% to 5.8% this year compared to last year. B Pavan Kumar from a tutorial said this was done due to fewer difficult questions. “The number of easy questions has gone up, while the moderately difficult questions have remained more or less the same.”
