The JEE Main, one of the toughest entrance exams in the country, is considered a qualification exam for entry into some of the most prestigious engineering institutes in the country, except the IITs. The examination is ultra-competitive, with around 12 lakh candidates battling for a select few seats every year. Since 2019, the pattern of the JEE Main has changed after the National Testing Agency (NTA) started conducting the exam.
One of the biggest questions students preparing for the engineering entrance exam have is “what score is a good score to crack JEE Main 2022?”
The scores that students achieve in the JEE Main bear a huge role in the complete process as these are used to calculate their All India Rank (AIR), based on which institutes like IIITs and NITs grant them admission into their engineering courses. So, what score is a good score in JEE? How much do you need to get in order to make it to your preferred college? Let’s discuss it all here.
Good score if you just want to clear the paper
The term ‘good’ is subjective. What’s good for one may not be very good for the other. For instance, a student looking to make it to NIT Surathkal, Computer Science, will surely not consider a JEE Main score of 100/360 as a good one.
Therefore, the definition of a good score depends on what you are hoping to achieve from the examination. If you want to clear the examination, and nothing more, then a score of around 80-100 should do it for you, assuming you belong to the general category. For SCs, STs, and OBCs, the cutoff scores are relaxed by a fair bit.
From previous years’ data, it can be clearly seen that the cutoff scores of the JEE Main have been following a downward trend, with the cutoff being at 115 marks in 2014, down to 81 marks in 2017. This can be thought of as an indicator of the increasing difficulty level of the examination.
Good score if you want admission into a decent college
Here comes the big part now. If you are looking to get yourself admitted into a core engineering course at some of the elite NITs and IIITs of the country, you must be looking to achieve at least a rank of 15000. This equates to around 220 marks or more, to be on the safer side.
If you want admission to the top branches, such as computer science or electronics, in the elite institutions, you should be aiming for a rank under 6000. Around 250 marks should get you there.
If your ambitions aren’t sky high, and you can make do with any NIT or IIIT, then a rank of under 25000 will be acceptable for most middle and lower-level institutions. The numbers mentioned here are for the general category, however. The criteria are relaxed by a fair margin for SCs and other backward classes.
So, what is your target for JEE 2022? Are you looking to ace the exam, or do you want to clear the cutoff? Whatever you want, we wish you all the very best!