BENGALURU: The number of candidates writing the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Mains has fallen drastically, compared to the number of aspirants in January.While 82,857 aspirants registered in January, just about 43,894 students will be writing the examination from September 1 to 6. Experts believe the pandemic could have contributed to the dip, besides factors such as CET results.
Prof Gurushant V Valasang, head of Dyavappanavar Valasang Educational and Academic Trust, said a majority of engineering aspirants take the JEE Mains in April as the classroom syllabus also ends by then. The January test is taken as a trial, he added.“99 per cent of engineering aspirants who write the JEE Mains first exam, also write the second exam,” said Prof Narendra L Nayak, chairman, Expert Educational and Charitable Foundation, Mangaluru, an institute which has several rankholders, and has sent students to the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, over the years.
Nayak said that since the best of the two results is considered, these students write the examination both times. However, NEET aspirants also write the JEE Mains in mid-January for practice, since it’s the first all-India examination. These contribute to the drop in candidates in the second JEE Mains, as NEET is close on the heels of the exam.
He believed that the drop this year is due to CET and results being declared before the JEE exam. “If CET is difficulty level 4, JEE Mains is difficulty level 6. Each year, exams are written one after the other. This year, students who were not capable of jumping higher left,” he said.The pandemic and time gap between examinations would have affected 5 per cent of students, he said.
While Karnataka was among the many states that saw a dip in aspirants in the second JEE Mains examination, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Lakshadweep, Leh and Ladakh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal saw higher enrolments for the September examination.Even outside India, students writing the exam increased from 1142 to 1265.