JEE (A): IIT-Hyderabad zone bags 6 of top 10, has most qualifiers

GUWAHATI/MUMBAI: The IIT-Hyderabad zone produced six rankers in the top-10 in JEE (Advanced) 2023, the results of which were declared on Sunday morning by IIT-Guwahati (IIT-G). Apart from hogging the top-10 list, the Hyderabad zone also saw the largest number of candidates- 10,432-to qualify.
After the Hyderabad zone, the largest pool of qualified candidates, 9,290, are from the Delhi zone and the Bombay zone (7,957).Category-wise, the number of students from the open or general category are at its lowest since 2018, at 14,006, as compared to 15,277 in 2022. That has been offset by a larger share of Scheduled Caste candidates who made the cut; SC numbers increased from 7,998 to 11,021 taking the overall pool of qualified students to 43,773 as compared to last year's 40,712. A total of 1.8 lakh candidates took JEE (Advanced) 2023.
Vavilala Reddy topped the rank list with his impressive score of 341/360, a significant jump over last year's all-India topper who scored 314. Among female candidates, Nayakanti Sree (AIR 56), also from the IIT-H zone, topped with 298. One candidate each from IIT-D and IIT-Roorkee zone, figured in the top 10.
Overall JEE (A) qualifying cut-off increases to 86 from 55 last year
Officiating director of IIT-Guwahati, P K Iyer, dialled both the toppers (male and female categories) in JEE (Advanced) who expressed willingness to pursue computer science engineering. Nayakanti Naga bhavya Sree said she may opt for mathematics and computing. Overall, the qualifying overall cut-off this year has increased to 86 as compared to 55 last year. For the reserved categories too, the minimum qualifying aggregate scores have risen (see box). Professor Bishnupada Mandal, organising chairperson, JEE (Advanced) 2023, said there were fewer negative marking questions this year, compared to previous editions of the exam. “That could have resulted in the exam’s higher cut-off this year,” he said.
Subject-wise qualifying scores are also up after several years of only dipping cut-offs. The minimum qualifying marks in each subject this year has been eight, as against five in the previous year. Last year, a general category candidate with 55 marks out of 360 was eligible for a seat in the IITs, as the qualifying aggregate marks for common rank had dropped to its lowest ever. With the number of seats across the IITs increasing to 17,385, up from 16,598 last year, the total qualifying candidates also increased. “We now have 4,455 seats for OBC-NCL and we need to qualify double the number of students. That eventually decides all the other cut-offs—10% lower for SC and ST and 10% higher for the open category,” explained Mandal.
Interestingly, of all those qualified, 26,321 reserved category students are in the common merit list, who have scored at least 86 as aggregate marks. Organisers said the announcement of the exam schedule six months before helped students to prepare well and that significantly improved the results. “By July 28, we are hopeful that all BTech and BDes admissions will be over and the new batch will start the academic session like preCovid times, without any delay,” Iyer said.
Last year, the new session started from October because of the delay in the exam due to the pandemic. Pan-India, 43,773 candidates have qualified, of which 7,509 are female candidates. The supernumerary seats for women across campuses saw their registration climb by 25% this year, which saw 17.2% qualify, their best performance ever since the additional seats were set aside for them to improve diversity on the tech campuses.
The additional supernumerary seats do not have any effect on the existing seats. One hundred and eight foreign candidates appeared for JEE (Advanced) 2023, of whom 13 qualified. Continuing with previous years’ trends, the highest pool of candidates appeared from the OBC-NCL category—67,344 (9,212 qualified), followed by 39,808 (14,006 qualified) in the general category and 30,588 (5,438 qualified) in general (EWS) category.