JEE Countdown begins

As many as 12.82 lakh high school graduates will take JEE Mains in April, 2013. The exams will be held in 112 cities across the country.

This year, however, most of these engineering aspirants seem to be travelling towards smaller, in-state districts to take the exam. Reason – in large metros, JEE (Mains) will be conducted only on computers. And ironically, most engineering aspirants are not comfortable with it.

The computer-based test will be held from April 8 to 25. About 1.74 lakh students will appear for it.

To be conducted by CBSE, JEE Main 2013 is a gateway for admissions to undergraduate engineering program in NITs, IIITs and other centrally funded technical institutions. The institutes will screen students based on a combination of scores of JEE (mains) and Class XII marks. The top 1,50,000 rankers in the Mains will be eligible to write the JEE Advanced to be held on June 2.

As many as 24 engineering entrance exams were held in India. AIEEE was taken by largest pool of candidates—11.87 lakh-last year, followed by IIT-JEE, taken by 5.6 lakh aspirants. It is expected that by next year, many more states will join the JEE (Main) club.

This year, Patna (exam on April 7) has the highest number of aspirants – 47,748, followed by Kanpur with over 43,000 candidates who hail from various parts of Uttar Pradesh. From Delhi, most students take the exam in Gurgaon and those in Hyderabad will go to Guntur. Kolkata candidates will travel either to Varanasi or Howrah where 38,000 and 22,000 engineering aspirants are appearing respectively. Mumbai-based candidates will take the test in Thane, where 23,000 candidates are appearing or in Pune with 42,000 aspirants or Amravati with 25,000 aspirants or Aurangabad with 17,500 candidates.