New Delhi: In a bid to attract more Schedule Tribe students, Indian Institute Technology (IIT) has lowered down its qualifying score so that they can fit the cut offs.
A decision in this regard was taken in a meeting of the Joint Entrance Exam (Advanced) board on Friday night, five days before the announcement of the result.
The aggregate marks are down from 177 (35%) to 124 or 24.5% of 504. Similarly, the cut-offs for each subject have been revised from 10% to 7%.
Downsizing of qualifying marks has taken place across the board. The minimum percentage of marks in each subject is 6.30 for OBC students and 3.5 for SC/ST candidates.
“There weren’t enough ST students who had qualified. Although we now have more ST students than the seats, not everyone may take admission. They may not be happy with the IIT or the stream allotted. But we surely now have enough ST candidates who have qualified this year,” a JEE chairman was quoted by a leading daily.
With this revision in cut-off marks, IITs have now managed to fill in the ST candidates seats reserved for them.
This is for the first time in three years since JEE (Main) and (Advanced) have been introduced in India that admission criteria has been tweaked in the middle of the process.
“The bar was revised in the past as well though people might not know about it as JEE (Advanced) format was not in place,” the authorities said.
Last week, the IITs had uploaded the scanned copies of the ORS answer booklet and 150 candidates had challenged their scores.
Over 10,000 seats are available for admissions this year for various undergraduate courses in 16 IITs and a few other national institutes. Last year, 27,000 candidates had been declared qualified from among 1.5 lakh candidates selected through the JEE (Main).
JEE (Advanced) result is slated to be declared on June 18 for the examination conducted on May 24.