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An IIT, on rotation

JEE Advanced

The second stage on the way to the IITs. Only students who place near the top of JEE Main are invited to sit it, so everyone in the room is already well prepared.

PCM required2 attempts onlyNeeds JEE Main first PCMPCMB

Part of Engineering › the jobs it leads to

1 in 9.9

who appeared went on to a place (IIT seats allotted through JoSAA)

Highly competitive

Competition, recent cycles

Year Registered Appeared Qualified Seats Seat per appeared
2025 1,87,223 1,80,422 54,378 18,188 10.1%
2024 1,86,584 1,80,200 48,248 17,695 9.8%
2023 1,89,487 1,80,372 43,769 17,340 9.6%

Exam pattern

PaperTimingDurationSectionsSubjects
Paper 1 09:00–12:00 IST 3 h 3 Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics
Paper 2 14:30–17:30 IST 3 h 3 Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics

Who can appear

JEE Main rank
Among the top 2,50,000 in JEE Main, counted category-wise — 1,01,250 OPEN (incl. PwD), 67,500 OBC-NCL, 37,500 SC, 25,000 GEN-EWS, 18,750 ST
Age
Born on or after 1 October 2000. SC, ST and PwD candidates get five years' relaxation
Attempts
At most two, in two consecutive years
Class 12
First appeared in 2024 or 2025 with Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics compulsory. A first appearance in 2023 or earlier disqualifies you outright
Prior IIT admission
Must never have been admitted to an IIT, even if you did not continue — and even if that admission was later cancelled

Before you apply

Mode
Computer-based
Negative marking
Partial, on some question types. Some questions carry negative marks and some do not, and which is which is only published in the Instructions to Candidates on the day.
Attempts allowed
2 — in two consecutive years
Age — general
born on or after 1 Oct 2000
Age — SC
born on or after 1 Oct 1995. five years' relaxation
Age — ST
born on or after 1 Oct 1995. five years' relaxation
Age — candidates with disability
born on or after 1 Oct 1995. five years' relaxation
Fee — female candidates
₹1,600 · 2025 cycle · any category
Fee — SC
₹1,600 · 2025 cycle
Fee — ST
₹1,600 · 2025 cycle
Fee — candidates with disability
₹1,600 · 2025 cycle
Fee — general
₹3,200 · 2025 cycle · male candidates
Fee — OBC (non-creamy layer)
₹3,200 · 2025 cycle · male candidates
Fee — EWS
₹3,200 · 2025 cycle · male candidates
Paper available in
English (switchable during the exam; prevails in any dispute), Hindi (switchable during the exam)

What preparing for it involves

Body of knowledgePreparation
Physics ≈ 340 h
Chemistry ≈ 320 h
Maths & quantitative ≈ 360 h

A leading approximately marks hours that were estimated rather than counted from a syllabus topic list. How these figures are derived is set out in the overlap model.

How much of school it covers

83 of 87 chapters of the CBSE Class XI–XII curriculum in Physics, Chemistry, Maths & quantitative.

See every chapter, subject by subject →

Not examined

  • Semiconductor Electronics: Materials, Devices and Simple Circuits — No semiconductors, diodes, transistors or logic gates appear anywhere in the syllabus. A self-contained domain, and nothing else listed requires it.
  • Magnetism and Matter — "Electricity and Magnetism" runs Coulomb → Gauss → capacitance → Ohm and Kirchhoff → Biot-Savart and Ampère → force on a moving charge → magnetic moment of a current loop → induction and LCR. Magnetism is treated entirely as an effect of currents: no bar magnets, no earth's magnetism, no dia-, para- or ferromagnetic materials.
  • Mathematical Reasoning — Absent. Logical connectives and truth tables appear nowhere, and no listed topic depends on them.
  • Linear Programming — Absent. Graphical linear programming appears nowhere, and no listed topic depends on it.

If you are using this to decide what to skip rather than what to expect, check it against the syllabus below too. A chapter dropped in error costs more than one revised unnecessarily.

Read off JEE (Advanced) 2026 Syllabus (unchanged from 2025), checked 14 Aug 2026. Where that document is silent about a chapter, it is counted as examined: being told something is off the syllabus and then meeting it is the worse mistake.

Exam day and admin

Both papers, one day

Paper 1 and Paper 2 both run for three hours on the same day, and sitting both is compulsory. The date does not move, even if it falls on a holiday.

Seats reserved for female candidates

Supernumerary seats exist specifically to improve gender balance, with each IIT working towards at least 20% female enrolment. They are open to Indian nationals and OCI/PIO (I) candidates, and there is no equivalent pool within the foreign-national seats.

The marking scheme is not published in advance

Unusually, the brochure fixes only the structure — two papers, three sections each. Question counts, marks per question and which questions carry negative marking are released on the day.

Class 12 marks still matter, separately

Clearing the paper is not sufficient for admission — a separate Class XII performance criterion applies at the seat-allocation stage.

Sources