JEE Advanced answer keys reveal errors

The JEE Advanced answer keys of Paper I and II released this week show errors that could impact students’ all-India ranks. The model answers show errors in two questions – one each in maths and physics paper – that could cost students six marks thus affecting their overall rank.

Error 1: Question number 48 of Mathematics (paper I) shows three correct answers, A, C or AC. However, the question could have only one correct answer.

Error 2: Question number three of Physics (paper II) has been shown to have two correct answers – ABCD or BCD.

If a student ticks more than one correct answer, he is penalised with negative marking. So in the case of these questions, while more than one answer option is right, it's treated as wrong. It's a significant issue as candidates who would have spent time to actually solve the question and who also arrived at the correct answer would have found that these questions have more than one correct answer as shown in the options. This 'knowledge' would have confused these students amounting to many of them even leaving the question unanswered to avoid negative marking. Whereas, those students who might have just guessed the answer and marked one of the correct options would have got an advantage.

This year, the subject cut-offs are:

Each candidate who scores above the cutoffs gets an all-India rank, based on which he/she will be allotted an IIT and course. Now rankings go up to around 25,000, whereas, there are only a little over 5000 seats to be filled in IITs. Clearly, every student with an all-India rank will not make it to the IITs. And such errors would impact JEE ranks.