FRESHERS JOBS: IIT JEE Cut-Off marks Rank-wise Category-wise Subject-wise

What is the cut-off mark required in IIT-JEE to get a seat in the IIT’s - the best technical institutes in India? This is the most asked question by an IIT-JEE aspirants – say a student who begins to prepare for IIT-JEE 2012, he wants to have a fairly good idea as to what would be the cut-off mark required in IIT-JEE 2012, so as to set a target mark. This blog article tries to answer this very difficult question through the trend-analysis of IIT-JEE cut-off marks of last few years.

First, let us accept the fact that IIT-JEE happens to be one of the toughest entrance exams in the world – the success (i.e. acceptance) rate is only around 3% (In IIT-JEE 2011, only 13,602 qualified among 4, 68,240 who appeared). Compared this with the acceptance rate in the Ivy leage institutes like Harvard –7.1% (22,955 students applied, 2,058 accepted), Yale – 8.3%... source: NY Times.

But, why you should not fear about scoring bad marks in IIT-JEE:
The above low acceptance/success rate is only one side of the story: It should not deter you from appearing in IIT-JEE. Because there are yet other academic exams in India where the acceptance rate is still less – say in NTSE, close to 1,50,000 students appears and only 1000 of them gets the NTSE scholarship (the acceptance rate is only 0.67%!).. source: Wiki,

The other reason why you should not worry about cutting a sorry figure in IIT-JEE is: The cut-off marks are very very low – in IIT-JEE 2011, three students who had scored as low as 20/160 (12.5%) in Chemistry, 20/160 (12.5%) in Physics and 34/160 (21.25%) in Maths have qualified. This is the JEE cut-off mark for General category candidates. For SC/ST/PD category students, the subject-wise cut-off is still less: 10/160 (6.25%) in Chemistry, 10/160 (6.25%) in Physics and 17/160 (10.62%) in Maths.

So true IIT-JEE exam is very tough – the questions are seldom repeated and the pattern of IIT-JEE is changed very often. But this is true for all the students who appear in IIT-JEE. Therefore IIT-JEE happens to be a very low scoring exam and I think world-wide, the IIT JEE cut-off is the lowest among all competitive entrance exams.

IIT-JEE 2011 Result Analysis:
Before we go any further, let us analyze from which IIT-Zone, which category of students, whether a boy or a girl has performed better, based on IIT-JEE 2011 result. This throws up some interesting facts!

IIT-zone wise Success Rate
From the table at right, you can find how many students had appeared and how many had qualified, IIT-zone wise, in ascending order. You can find from this table that students who had appeared in IIT JEE 2011 from IIT Madras zone performed the best (4.97%) and those appearing from IIT-Guwahati zone had performed the worst (1.06%).

Again, you can find from the table at left, that boys outshone girls in IIT-JEE 2011 – 3.37% boys qualified, compared to 1.37% girls.

Now, how many students appeared from which category of student and how many qualified? This may take you by surprise, but you can find from the table below that besides PD (Physically Disabled) students, SC category students had the highest success rate: 4.35%, compared to 1.96% among General category students.
Category-wise IIT-JEE Success Rate
So above statistics may prompt you to decide immediately that – if you were a SC student, a boy from the south, appearing from IIT-Madras zone, there is best chance for you to crack the IIT-JEE 2012. Is it that simple? No. These are mere statistics.

How much mark to score to be an IIT-JEE TOPPER?
Are you a bright student wanting to top the IIT-JEE exam and hence want to know how much mark you should score to do that? You can find the category-wise, subject-wise marks secured by the IIT-JEE topper in JEE-2009 & JEE-2010 in each category as below:

IIT-JEE TOPPER marks
With above marks secured, following is the %age of marks secured by the toppers in JEE-2009 & JEE-2010:

IIT-JEE TOPPER percentage
So as you can see from above, there is not much of a difference in marks secured by a topper from General category & a topper from OBC category (around 85%). Similar is the case between an SC topper and an ST topper (around 65-75%).

Above marks/percentage of marks gives you a fairly good idea about how much mark you should score to be a topper in IIT-JEE.

IIT-JEE Cut-off mark Category-wise:
While the above JEE Topper mark-analysis would appeal to the brightest among you, most of the students wants to know just the IIT-JEE cut-off – what is the lowest mark I need to score to get a seat in IIT?

From the mark analysis of IIT-JEE 2009 & IIT-JEE 2010 below, you can find that cut-off mark for General & OBC category student is around 35-40% while for SC/ST/PD category student, the cut-off mark is only about 20%.

Category-wise IIT-JEE Cut-off marks:
Category-wise IIT-JEE Cut-off marks

Category-wise IIT-JEE Cut-off %age:

Category-wise IIT-JEE Cut-off percentage

IIT-JEE Cut-off mark subject-wise, year-wise:
While the above low cut-off mark in IIT-JEE may surprise you, the subject-wise cut-off mark may shock you! Yes, you can crack the IIT-JEE with as low mark as 13% in Physics & Chemistry and 22% in Maths for General category student. For SC/ST/PD, the cut-off mark is as low as 6.3% in Physics & Chemistry and 10.6% in Maths. In aggregate, you need to score about 45-50% for General/OBC students and only about 25% for SC/ST/PD student.

Subject-wise IIT-JEE Cut-off marks (MQMR):

IIT-JEE Cut-off mark Subject-wise
Subject-wise IIT-JEE Cut-off %age of marks (MQMR):

IIT-JEE Cut-off mark percentage Subject-wise
So this low IIT-JEE Cut-off mark should make you smiling…. and you should not be afraid of taking IIT-JEE just because it is tough. I am sure with above information you can put your mind to rest on the marks to be secured in IIT-JEE and concentrate on your test preparation to score the best possible marks. Although this blog post is made for IIT-JEE 2012 exam, the cut-offs are not going to change over night and hence even the aspirants of IIT-JEE 2013 can also use the above information to know what may be the IIT-JEE 2013 cut-off.

I have made the above marks trend analysis with IIT-JEE 2009 & IIT-JEE 2010 data and would shortly update this blog post with the IIT-JEE 2011 cut-offs as soon as they becomes available. So keep visiting me! Also keep visiting me as I am going to post more test prep materials – IIT-JEE Sample/Previous years papers, IIT-JEE prep book, IIT-JEE Coaching institutes soon.