The quota has increased from 17 last year to 20% this year. (Express Photo by Amit Mehra / Representational image) The quota has increased from 17 last year to 20% this year. (Express Photo by Amit Mehra / Representational image)

JEE Advanced 2020: There’s good news for females aspiring to study at Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). The IITs will now reserve 20 per cent supernumerary seats for females across campuses. This implies that additional seats will be created without any effect on those available otherwise. A separate merit list will also be created for females to allow them to have the flexibility of choosing a better campus.

Last year, the reservation was at 17 per cent and 14 per cent in 2018. These additional reserved seats were the recommendation of a committee headed by Timothy A Gonsalves, Director, IIT Mandi. The committee addressed several issues including the fact that the rate of qualifying IITs is lesser in girls as compared to boys, females further tend to take a seat closer to home rather than an IIT in a far-flung area. A girl is yet to top the JEE Advanced or entrance test of IITs.

Further, IITs have created 10 per cent supernumerary seats for students belonging to foreign nations. Additionally, over 1100 seats are reserved for foreign students across courses and campuses. Foreign nationals are not required to clear JEE Main. However, for Indian students, only top 2.5 rank holders from JEE Main are allowed to appear for JEE Advanced. Yet, the number of foreign students in IITs remain low. In 2018, only 51 foreign students registered for the exam and 36 students appeared for JEE Advanced

Apart from these, there is 15 per cent reservation for Scheduled Caste (SC) and 7.5 per cent for Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates in every course. Persons with Disability (PwD) also get 5 per cent seats reserved at IITs.

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This year, JEE Advanced is scheduled to be held on May 17. IIT Delhi will be conducting the exam. Last year Mumbai’s Kartikey Gupta has secured all India rank (AIR) 1 in JEE Advanced. He obtained 346 marks out of 372 marks.

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