The Central Board of Secondary Examinations (CBSE) recently announced details for Joint Entrance Examination Main-2018. The exam will be held on April 08, in offline mode, and on April 15 and 16, 2018, in online mode. The process of the exam is mostly the same as last year. However, one striking change is the increase the number of exam centres. Until last year, the exam was held in 113 cities but for JEE Main 2018, CBSE has announced to establish 258 exam centres.
The centres for the online, as well as offline, paper has increased. Last time, out of the 113 cities, in 109 JEE Main was conducted in Pen and Paper mode. This year, there are total 111 cities where JEE will be held offline mode. The online exam will be held at all 258 centres.
Examination centres have increased remarkably in states like Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh. In all of these states, more than 10 cities have been added which had no centre last year but will have this year. A whopping 22 exam cities have been increased in the state of Maharashtra.
In other states like Assam, Bihar, Punjab, Rajasthan and West Bengal, CBSE has increased 5 to 10 examination centres, each. Whereas, less than five cities have been increased in both the states of Chattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh. The states where exam centres increase by one include Jammu & Kashmir, Odisha, and Uttarakhand. On the contrary, three exam centres have been reduced in the state of Haryana.
CBSE has also taken care of the centres abroad. Till now, candidates only had Dhaka as the centre abroad. However, now candidates have 10 options to choose from. Colombo, Kathmandu, Singapore, Bahrain, Dubai, Muscat, Riyadh, Sharjah, and Qatar are the new additions and of course, the JEE Main 2018 exam centre will be established in Dhaka.
Candidates opting for centre abroad can appear for the examination in Pen and Paper of Computer Based Mode, which is again a positive change because last year JEE was only held in CBT mode at Dhaka. All the aspirants will be required to submit the centre choice while filling the JEE Main 2018 Application Form. It should be noted that the candidates who will choose to appear for JEE Main in CBT mode will be required to choose date/slot of the exam after the fee payment. If a candidate does not choose a date/slot, they will be allocated one on a random basis.
The registration for JEE Main 2018 will begin from December 01, 2017. The candidates will only be able to apply online from jeemain.nic.in. CBSE will only accept applications until January 01, 2018. Candidates who will be registered successfully will be issued admit card in the month of March 2018. Through the admit card, the exam centre allocated will be confirmed.
The rise in the number of exam centres indicates the popularity of JEE Main in India and abroad. We are also experiencing a transition from analog to digital. With the advancement of technology, more and more students are getting comfortable with the computers and are opting for the online exam instead of the offline paper. Which medium do you think is better, Pen & Paper mode of Computer Based mode? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
The complete list of JEE Main 2018 Exam Centre can be checked from the window below:
