Education Ministry of India has officially announced the relaxation of ‘75% Eligibility criteria’ in the JEE Main and JEE Advanced entrance examinations. The decision was conveyed through press releases of NTA and the personal Twitter handle of Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal, Former Education Minister of India.

JEE (Joint Engineering Entrance) Main is a national level entrance exam for admissions into B.E/B.Tech and B.Arch courses of the National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Central Government Funded Technical Institutes.Recently, NTA has announced that the JEE Main April Session would be held on July 20,22,25 and 27, 2021.The JEE Main Exam Dates of session 4 will be announced soon. Read more about the JEE Main Admit card

Only the top 2.5 Lakhs rank holders off the JEE Mains are eligible to undertake JEE Advanced, which is a national level entrance exam for admissions into the B.E/B.Tech and B.Arch courses of the top 23 IITs of India and other reputed private universities of India.JEE Advanced Exam Dates will be soon announced by the authorities.

What is 75% eligibility criteria?

The 75% eligibility criteria’ mandates that any student who has successfully qualified and obtained the required cutoffs , should have at least 75% aggregate marks in class 12th or the candidate should be amongst the top 20% percentile of his class 12th board for admissions into any Centrally funded institute such as - NITs, IITs, CFTI, IISCs and others. However, the candidates of SC/ST category were only required to archive 65% aggregate in their class 12th board exams.

Alongside the 75% eligibility criteria the centrally funded institutes also consider class 12th board marks of the candidate while preparing the merit list of the candidates accepted for admissions in the respective institutes.

Recent Changes in the JEE Main/JEE Advanced Eligibility criteria for Admissions

On January 19,2021 the official Twitter channel and the media and press handles the Ministry of Education announced several relaxations made to the admissions criteria of the centrally funded institutes. The changes were made considering the effect of COVID-19 Outbreak on the preparation of the students. The ministry’s decision to officially cancel the CBSE 2021 Board exams due to pandemic may also also be a significant contributing factor to the decision.

 The decision to cancel CBSE exam was announced after, On June 1,2021, the decision to lower the eligibility criteria, on January 19,2021. The earlier announcement of the changes strongly hint to the fact that the ministry was considering cancelling the CBSE exams since the start and the second wave of COVID 19 Pandemic provided impetus for cancelling the board exams. 

The details of the announcement include -

• Students who have successfully qualified JEE Main and achieved the required JEE Main cut-offs/ can seek admissions into the centrally funded institutes irrespective of their class 12th aggregate marks.However, the student should obtain a class 12th pass certificate from the board he has appeared in which effectively fixes the eligibility criteria at 35% as it is the percentage to obtain a pass certificate across several boards.
• The eligibility relaxation was provided to JEE Advance 2020 and similarly any student who has appeared for JEE Advanced 2021 and has achieved the required JEE Advanced Cutoff can seek admissions into the IITs and other centrally funded institutes irrespective of their class 12th aggregate marks, provided that they do have pass certificate in class 12th ( Minimum 35% of marks) 
• The class 12th marks of the candidate would not be considered for admissions by any centrally funded institute. The merit list prepared by the institute would be purely based on the rank achieved by the candidate in the respective exams.
• The students who have qualified the JEE Main 2020 exam and were eligible for JEE Advance 2020 exam but were unable to undertake JEE Advanced 2020 Examinations, can appear for JEE Advance 2021 Examination directly without Qualifying the JEE Main 2021 examination.

Official Information Releases Surrounding the Changes

• Twitter of Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal, The education minister of India on January 19,2021 tweeted:

 

• Official notice released by National Testing Agency, the conducting authority of JEE Main 2021:

 

• JAB (Joint Admission Board) has also scrapped 75% eligibility criteria for admissions into IITs this year as well. Candidates only need their 12th passing certificate to fulfill JEE Advanced Eligibility

Impact of Relaxation in 75% Eligibility criteria for Admissions

Students across the country have applauded the decision. Ravi Taneja, an JEE Main 2021 aspirant, says that the step has breathed a new life into his JEE Main 2021 Phase 3 Preparations as he was unable to archive 75% in his Class 12th boards in 2020 due to the disturbances caused by pandemic and subsequent lockdown.There are plenty of students like Ravi who for one reason or other were not able to perform well in their boards and are just short of 75% marks in their boards. These students have doubled down on their JEE Main 2021 preparation after the release of this notification as the release of this notification has given them new hope.

On the flip side, with so many students registering for JEE Main 2021 examination the level of competition is bound to go up. Harishankar Tiwari, who is a member of the faculty for a reputed JEE Mains coaching, clarifies that since the JEE Mains rakes are calculated on percentile basis and not directly on the basis of marks, the more the students appear for an exam the more the competition on each rank. He further elaborates that the intake of lakhs of additional students as well as the decision to conduct JEE Mains 2021 exams in four sessions would definitely heighted the JEE Main 2021 competition by a notch.

Other experts believe that Mr. Tiwari’s claims are a little bit exaggerated since the below 75% aggregate students would not be as competitive in the Mains exams as the 90+ aggregate archive candidates. The competition would definitely increase but the trend would be more prominent in the sub 3-4 Lakh ranks as the JEE Mains syllabus requires at least 8 Months of rigorous preparation to master and anyone achieving sub 75% in boards needs to work a lot on their basics to begin with.