Balancing between JEE Mains and JEE Advanced preparation
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JEE Advanced is for admission to IITs. IITs do not accept any other score. JEE Main is for admission to NITs and other centrally funded institutes. Many private institutes also accept JEE Main score. A big difference between JEE Main and JEE Advanced is that of the difficulty level. JEE Advanced is generally far tougher as compared to JEE Main.
Balancing JEE Main and JEE Advanced Preparation Together
The JEE Mains and JEE Advanced exam are the two primary exams every engineering aspirants appear to get admission in their dream college. However, preparing for both at the same time with only one month gap between the two exams can be difficult, unless studied in a planned manner.
Essentially, two or more years of JEE preparation can be quite instrumental in deciding your career and life ahead. To do well in JEE Mains and Advanced, it is quite important to plan extensively what to be studied and how. One of the most important parts of planning is to decide how to create a balance between JEE Main and JEE Advanced preparation. In this article, we will try to see how to do that.
| JEE Advanced Chapterwise Weightage | JEE Advanced PYQ Chapterwise PDF |
| JEE Advanced Question Paper | JEE Advanced Syllabus |
- What are the major differences between JEE Main or JEE Advanced?
- Should I target JEE Main or, should I aim for JEE Advanced?
- When should this decision be made?
- How do I manage time between JEE Main preparation and JEE Advanced preparation?
What are the major differences between JEE Main or JEE Advanced?
JEE Advanced is for admission to all 23 IITs in India. IITs do not accept any other score. JEE Main is for admission to NITs and other centrally funded institutes. Many private institutes also accept JEE Main score. A big difference between JEE Main and JEE Advanced is that of the difficulty level. JEE Advanced is generally far tougher as compared to JEE Main. JEE Main has a reasonably consistent pattern wherein the exam is of 360 marks, equally divided across Physics, Chemistry and Maths. Each subject comprises of 30 problems with scoring of +4 for correct answer and -1 for incorrect answer. Each of the problem has exactly one correct answer. This is in complete contrast with JEE Advanced where the paper may consist of a wide variety of problems including single correct, multiple correct, integer type, matrix match, assertion reason and paragraph type problems. Further, the total marks keep on changing every year.
Commonly asked questions
The JEE Advanced passing marks or the JEE Advanced cutoff has been announced.
JEE Advanced 2026 Criteria for Inclusion in a Rank List:
| Rank List | Minimum Percentage of Marks in Each Subject | Minimum Percentage of Aggregate Marks |
| Common Rank List (CRL) | 7.30% | 25.56% |
| OBC-NCL Rank List | 6.51% | 22.78% |
| GEN-EWS Rank List | 6.51% | 22.78% |
| SC Rank List | 3.65% | 12.78% |
| ST Rank List | 3.65% | 12.78% |
| Common-PwD Rank List (CRL-PwD) | 3.65% | 12.78% |
| OBC-NCL-PwD Rank List | 3.65% | 12.78% |
| GEN-EWS-PwD Rank List | 3.65% | 12.78% |
| SC-PwD Rank List | 3.65% | 12.78% |
| ST-PwD Rank List | 3.65% | 12.78% |
| Preparatory Course (PC) Rank List | 1.83% | 6.39% |
JEE Advanced 2026 Qualifying Marks:
| Rank List | Minimum Marks in Each Subject | Minimum Aggregate Marks |
| Common Rank List (CRL) | 8 | 92 |
| OBC-NCL Rank List | 7 | 82 |
| GEN-EWS Rank List | 7 | 82 |
| SC Rank List | 4 | 46 |
| ST Rank List | 4 | 46 |
| Common-PwD Rank List (CRL-PwD) | 4 | 46 |
| OBC-NCL-PwD Rank List | 4 | 46 |
| GEN-EWS-PwD Rank List | 4 | 46 |
| SC-PwD Rank List | 4 | 46 |
| ST-PwD Rank List | 4 | 46 |
| Preparatory Course (PC) Rank List | 2 | 23 |
JEE Main exam is in two shifts each day. First shift is from 9 am to 12 noon and second shift is from 3 pm to 6 pm.
National Testing Agency conducts JEE Main exam in a total of 13 languages. The languages in which paper is conducted are Assamese, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu in addition to Hindi English and Gujarati. Students can select the language of their choice from the available options while filling the application form. The language of JEE Main question paper during the exam will be available in 3 languages- English Hindi and the language selected by the candidates. The language of paper can be switched among these 3 languages during the exam.
JEE Main exam is conducted in online mode as a computer based test. This is conducted in 3 different courses. The exam for B.Tech and B. Plan is completely online while the exam for B.Arch is partially online and drawing part is conducted offline.
Should I target JEE Main or, should I aim for JEE Advanced?
It is a well-known fact that IITs are more sought after as compared to other engineering colleges. IITs take admission only on the basis of JEE Advanced rank. As a result, ideally, everyone should aim to qualify for and do well in JEE Advanced. However, not everyone is born equal. There are 1.5 million contesting candidates for JEE Main. There are only about 10,000 seats across various IITs. As a result, you should carefully decide what you are aiming for - a seat at an IIT or a seat at NIT or any other institute. When you are done with class 11th, you will be quite clear about your standing. It is at this time that you should decide whether to aim for JEE Main or for JEE Advanced. If you have been consistently performing well in mock tests and exams and are always at the top of the leaderboard, you should definitely aim for JEE Advanced. If however you are struggling with various concepts, you can fix your eye on JEE Main.
When should this decision be made?
Generally speaking, it would be a good time to decide the same by early class 12th. This is because 1 year of class 11th would have given you sufficient idea of your standing. At this time, you should make up your mind as to which zone do you belong to:
- Top performer: In this case, you should work hard and you will have good chances of nailing a top rank in JEE Advanced
- Average performer: In this case, you will probably be on the borderline. It would be wise to focus on JEE Advanced because with a slight push in class 12th, you can easily become a top performer.
- Below-average performer: In such a scenario, it would be wise and practical to focus more on JEE Main than on JEE Advanced. Though one should never give up and work hard, it is wise to keep the practical scenario in mind.
I’ve decided to perform well in both JEE Main and JEE Advanced. How should I study?
Generally speaking, the difficulty level of JEE Main is easier as compared to JEE Advanced. So, if you have prepared well for JEE Advanced, with a high probability, you will be able to do well in JEE Main. However, there are some points that you need to take care of specifically for JEE Main:
- There are certain extra chapters that you need to cover as a part of JEE Main syllabus. For instance, transistors and diodes, plane polarized light, Chemistry in everyday life, mathematical reasoning, etc. Generally speaking, the problems in JEE Main are often picked up directly from NCERT textbooks. As a result, it would be a good idea to prepare such chapters thoroughly from NCERT.
- In JEE Main, quite a few times problems from past year papers are asked again. As a result, it would be advisable to solve the past 10 year papers thoroughly. JEE Main was previously called as AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Exam). So, you may pick up any AIEEE past year paper book for practice.
Commonly asked questions
In 2027, NTA will hold the JEE Mains exam in 310 cities across India and abroad.
NTA Score in JEE Main result is the normalised score or percentile scores secured by the candidate.
JEE Main is conducted twice a year: in January and April.
The official website of JEE Advanced exam is jeeadv.ac.in. IIT Delhi will announce JEE Advanced 2027 dates for exam, registration, answer key, and result in the official website only. All the dates for JEE Advanced 2027 will be updated at Shiksha portal once announced.
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How do I manage time between JEE Main preparation and JEE Advanced preparation?
JEE Main is generally held in the first month of April. JEE Advanced is in May. Since JEE Advanced will now be a Computer-based test, it would be a good idea to opt for the same in JEE Main also (JEE Main still offers a choice of offline and online exam).
For JEE Main, your focus should be completely on NCERT textbooks. This will be quite beneficial for you for JEE Advanced as well since sometimes in JEE Advanced, questions are picked up from NCERT. This happens more frequently in Chemistry than in Maths/Physics.
Prepare hard for these two exams - they are going to be a deciding factor in your career and life ahead. All the best!
About the Author:
Aman Goel is a co-founder at a Tech Start-up. He holds a BTech in Computer Science Engineering from IIT Bombay with a JEE Advanced AIR 33 (Year 2013). During his free time, he enjoys writing articles/blogs. He is an Entrepreneur, Coder, Speed-cuber, gamer, and fan of Air crash investigation!
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