FAQ: What is the Eligibility Criteria for IIT Admissions in 2021?

IIT 2021 Admission Criteria: Union Education Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal said that JEE Advanced will be held on 3 July 2021. 

(Photo: The Quint)

After declaring dates for JEE Main 2021, Union Minister of Education Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal has now announced that JEE Advanced 2021 will be held on 3 July. But what is the eligibility criteria for admissions to IITs this year and who can appear for JEE Advanced?

What is the eligibility criteria for JEE Advanced?

JEE Advanced is a screening exam for admissions to undergraduate engineering courses in IITs, while JEE Main is a qualifying exam for UG admissions to NITs, IIITs, CFTIs and other colleges.

Only the top 2,50,000 students from JEE Main are eligible to appear for JEE Advanced, which is a much more complex and nuanced entrance test.

What is the Eligibility criteria for IIT admissions?

Usually, a student can only apply to IITs if she has scored 75 percent in her class 12 board exams or is in the top 20 percentile of the school-leaving exam.

However, education minister has said that since the coronavirus situation has not subsided completely, the ministry has decided to relax this criteria.

“Since we have not been completely able to come out of the pandemic, we have decided to relax the eligibility criteria of 75 percent in board exams for admissions to IITs.”

Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal, Union Minister of Education.

What was the eligibility criteria for IIT admissions in 2020?

In July 2020, Dr Pokhriyal had announced that the basic criteria of scoring at least 75 percent marks or ranking among the top 20 percentile in class 12 board exams for admissions in IITs had been relaxed, only for the year.

Dr Pokhriyal had added that the decision was taken since many examinations could not be conducted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

How will admissions take place?

After results have been declared and ranks have been published, students will have to go through the counseling process organised by the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (joSAA), explains Ramesh Batlish, an expert with the FIIT JEE group.

The authority is responsible for managing and regulating the joint seat allocation process for admissions to 110 institutes, including 23 IITs,  31 NITs, IIEST Shibpur, 26 IIITs and 29 Other-Government Funded Technical Institutes (Other-GFTIs).

What is counseling? How will seats be allotted?

The counseling process is designed to allow students to fill in the course and college in an unlimited order of preference, explains Batlish.

For this, students are provided with closing cut-offs of different IITs from the last year so that they can compare their rank and get a sense of where and which course they are likely to get admission.

The cut-off for each course at every IIT is calculated depending on the rank of students who have applied and the number of seats available.

For instance, if a course at IIT Delhi has 10 seats and all applicants between All India Rank 1 to 10 have applied for the given course, then the first cut-off would close at AIR 10.