The Joint Entrance Examination (Main) 2021 has set new records this year. As per reports, an all-time record 11 lakh candidates registered for the JEE Main scheduled to be held this year. The National Testing Agency conducts the national level examination for admission to UG programs in Engineering, Technology, Architecture and Planning. This year, the NTA is conducting the examination in four sessions in order to allow candidates multiple attempts at the exam.
JEE is scheduled to be conducted in fours sessions in February, March, April and May 2021. NTA has already announced the exam dates at the official website jeemain.nta.nic.in. Reportedly, around 6.5 lakh registrations have been recorded for the February 2021 session. In addition, around 4.8 lakh registrations have been done for each of the subsequent sessions to be conducted in March, April and May 2021.
As a result of the widespread disruptions caused in the aftermaths of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NTA is allowing candidates multiple attempts at this year JEE Main exam. As per reports, out of the 11 lakh total registrations, around 50% of the candidates have registered for more than two attempts at the exam.
As the registered candidates are going to take the JEE Main 2021 exam multiple times, therefore, the total number of tests to be taken is expected to be more than 20 lakhs. The ratio of the unique candidate to the number of tests this year is estimated at 1:1.8. This means that each candidate is going to take the test in 1.8 attempts on an average this year. This ratio was 1:1.2 in the previous year when NTA conducted the JEE Main exam two times a year.
The aforementioned ratio of number of unique candidates to number of tests is deemed to alter in subsequent sessions. This is because the NTA is providing the option to registered candidates to opt out of subsequent tests or even join after the February 2021 exams are over.
This year, many technical institutes that offer UG Engineering, Technology, Architecture and Planning programs are going to conduct admissions on the basis of JEE Main score only. As such, the scope of the JEE Main exam has also been widened. With the inclusion of Madan Mohan Malviya University of Technology, Gorakhpur, the NTA recently extended the last date to register to January 23, 2021. Other states that solely use JEE Mains as the basis for engineering admissions include Haryana, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Nagaland.
