JEE Advanced 2026: SC, ST qualification rates jump; highest for women in 6 years

The qualification rate for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates in JEE Advanced 2026 rose sharply by 9.8 and 8.1 percentage points, respectively, from last year, while women recorded their highest qualification rate of 23.4% in the six years covered in the Joint Implementation Committee (JIC) report the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee released on Saturday. It fell by 3.2 percentage points to 39.8% for general category candidates, and for Other Backward Classes-Non-Creamy Layer (OBC-NCL) declined by 0.7 percentage points to 17.5%.

The SC qualification rate rose to 50.16% this year from 40.41% in 2025. The ST rate increased to 42.14% from 33.99%. About one in every two registered SC candidates and more than two in five ST candidates qualified this year, compared with roughly two in five SC candidates and one in three ST candidates last year. Overall, 56,880 candidates qualified, including 15,856 SC and 6,379 ST candidates, compared with 12,499 and 5,008 in 2025.

The qualification rate for women rose to 23.4% from 21.7% in 2025, making it the highest in the 2021-2026 period covered in the report. Nearly one in four registered women candidates qualified this year, compared with roughly one in five last year.

The number of general category qualifiers fell from 16,154 in 2025 to 15,883 this year, with the qualification rate declining from 43% to 39.8%. The Economically Weaker Section (EWS) qualifiers rose from 6,291 to 6,377. The qualification rate remained broadly stable at about 21%, compared with 21.6% last year. OBC-NCL qualifiers fell from 12,606 to 12,385, with the qualification rate declining from 18.2% to 17.5%.

The changes came even though qualifying marks were raised across categories. The Common Rank List (CRL) qualifying marks rose to 92 out of 360 from 74 last year, an increase of 18 marks. The CRL is the overall merit list prepared on the basis of candidates’ total marks, irrespective of their category.

The general category cut-off or qualifying marks in JEE Advanced rose to 92 from 74. For the OBC-NCL and GEN-EWS, they rose to 82 from 66. The SC and ST cut-off increased to 46 from 37.

The changes in qualification rates cannot be attributed to lower cut-offs, particularly since the qualifying marks rose across all categories this year. The JIC report does not attribute the category-wise changes to differences in candidate performance or the composition of the candidate pool. “The qualifying criteria were relaxed to ensure at least twice the number of candidates qualified as compared to available seats in each category,” it says.

The qualification rate depends on the distribution of marks among candidates and the qualifying threshold fixed for each category.

Of 43,112 women who registered, 40,562 appeared in both papers and 10,107 qualified. Although registrations were marginally lower than 43,413 in 2025, the qualification rate increased to 23.4% to 23.4% in 2026 from 21.7% in 2025 – an increase of 1.7 percentage points from last year and making it the highest in the six years between 2021 and 2026. The 2025 rate was the second-highest at 21.7%, with the latest increase meaning nearly one in four registered women candidates qualified this year, compared with roughly one in five in 2025.

The final IIT allotment included 3,814 women, or about 20.2% of the 18,861 seats allotted. Thirty-seven women secured seats through the gender-neutral pool. The remaining 3,777 were admitted through female-only supernumerary seats.

The figure is broadly in line with the impact of the Supernumerary Seats Scheme (SSS), introduced in 2018 to address the gender imbalance in IITs. The scheme creates additional seats exclusively for women, without reducing seats available to male candidates, to take female representation towards 20%. Before its introduction, women accounted for about 7% to 9% of BTech students at IITs. Their share rose to nearly 20% by 2020 and has remained around that level since.

A 2025 IIT Delhi and the University of Houston study found that the scheme increased the representation of women in traditionally male-dominated engineering branches and boosted the representation of SC/ST women at IITs.

The allotment data shows that qualifying JEE Advanced and securing an IIT seat remain two different stages. Of the 56,880 qualifiers, 52,559 registered for Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) counselling and filled choices, while 4,321 did not enter the choice-filling process.

Those who participated submitted choices across the 23 IITs and their programmes. The last CRL candidate allotted an IIT seat through the gender-neutral pool had a CRL rank of 28,480. This does not mean every candidate up to that rank secured a seat, as allotment depends on rank, category, choices, programme preferences and seat availability. For women in the female-only pool, the last CRL rank allotted an IIT seat was 29,824.

In the gender-neutral pool, the closing ranks were 4,432 for GEN-EWS, 9,002 for OBC-NCL, 4,075 for SC and 2,199 for ST. In the female-only pool, the corresponding ranks were 5,852, 11,941, 4,874 and 2,112.

The JEE Advanced rank is used beyond the IIT system. IISc Bengaluru, IIM Lucknow, the Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy (IIPE), Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) and Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology (RGIPT) signed agreements to use JEE Advanced 2026 ranks for undergraduate admissions.

BITS Pilani vice chancellor V Ramgopal Rao, a former IIT Delhi director, said the broader ecosystem should be viewed positively. “The larger policy objective should be to create many more institutions that students can choose with confidence. We cannot expect the IITs alone to meet the aspirations of a country of our size. Nor should we treat admission outside the IIT system as a poor outcome,” he said.

Rao said that only about one-third of qualifiers secure IIT seats should not automatically mean faster expansion of IIT intake. “Qualifying JEE Advanced is not an entitlement to an IIT seat. The qualifying pool has always been kept larger than the number of seats so that counselling, category allocations and student choices can be accommodated,” he said.

He said expansion should be accompanied by faculty recruitment, laboratories, hostels, classrooms and student-support systems.

IIT Kharagpur director Prof Suman Chakraborty said IIT seats’ expansion must keep pace with faculty, laboratories, classrooms, hostels and student-support systems. “The objective should not be the fastest possible expansion of seats, but the fastest possible expansion that does not dilute the quality of the IIT experience,” he said.

Chakraborty suggested expanding access beyond physical campuses through an “Outreach Course Network” combining online learning with local academic partners, laboratories, mentoring and assessment.

“India needs two parallel expansions: a carefully calibrated expansion of physical IIT capacity, without compromising quality, and a much more ambitious expansion of access to IIT-quality education beyond the geographical boundaries of IIT campuses.”