JEE Advanced 2022: The race to bag a seat at the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) is expected to get tougher this year, say experts, considering the difficult question paper for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) – Advanced held on Sunday. While the papers were on the lengthier side, Mathematics and Physics sections were more difficult, with trickier questions. The Chemistry section had a balanced approach, according to students. The students got no respite as they would have anticipated due to Covid, which according to some experts, is going to tell the difference between those who had access to coaching and the ones who did not. According to the information provided by the JEE office at IIT Bombay, which is organising the one-window entrance test for admission to all 23 IITs, this year, “Out of 1,60,038 candidates registered for JEE (Advanced) 2022, 1,56,089 were present for the exam.” This year, JEE (Advanced) was held in 577 centers in 124 cities. There is however still no clarity on the number of seats available in all IITs for admission this year. “The seat matrix for JoSAA is yet to be finalized by some Institutes,” shared the JEE office. “While Mathematics was lengthy, the Physics section had some new concepts compared with last year,” said Mohit Sardana, director and head of Mumbai territory for FIITJEE, a coaching institute. “The difficulty level of the question paper has shown that those having access to better coaching facility may have been in a better position as opposed to students who faced resource constraints during preparation time amid pandemic,” said Praveen Tyagi, founder and director of IITian’s PACE, a coaching institute for JEE. Agreeing with the increased divide between the ones who had coaching help and those who did not, Vinay Kumar, managing director and CEO at Rao IIT Academy, said, “The papers were difficult and definitely not something to be solved with online training alone. This required rigorous training of students for long hours at coaching institutes.” Kumar elaborated that the lengthy and tricky questions, combined with negative marking in all sections, may have startled some students. This, according to experts, is going to result in a drop in qualifying high-scores by 2-3 per cent.
