NEW DELHI: The first cycle of JEE (Main) 2021, conducted for the first time in 13 languages, for admission to engineering courses recorded an all-time high of 95.1% attendance. The exams concluded on Friday and the results are expected in the first week of March. The exams were conducted across 331 cities, which include 10 cities outside India.
In 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, Paper 1 (for engineering) and Paper 2 (architecture) had seen low attendance of 81.6% and 54.7% respectively. This year, 6.52 lakh engineering aspirants turned up for the exams which was conducted over three days, each day having two sessions. In paper 2, 81.2% of a little over 63,000 registered candidates took the test. Overall attendance for the JEE (Main) 2021 February cycle stood at 94%. In 2019, the overall attendance recorded was 90.4%, while in 2018 it was 87.5%.
A senior NTA official said, “This is a record attendance for paper one which is for BTech and BE programmes … It is also all-time high for overall attendance as generally it has been hovering around 90% to 92%.”
He said one of the reasons for high attendance is “probably because most of the Board exams including those of CBSE had been scheduled for May instead of mid-February, which allowed candidates to prepare for the exam and take it in a more relaxed manner”.
Apart from English and Hindi, the multiple choice computer-based exams were also conducted in Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. The second cycle of the test would be conducted from March 15 to March 18 for which new registration and correction window would open from March 1 for candidates to apply or opt out of the March and subsequent cycles.