JEE Main 2019 – five major changes
This year the JEE Main exam is truly different. It is no more the same as it used to be for the last so many years. A number of major changes have been brought in the JEE Main Exam, effective from 2019. Enumerated below, find all about them.
JEE Main – The most important of engineering entrance exams
JEE Main or the Joint Entrance Examination is one of the most important entrance exams for an engineering aspirant. It is one exam that has the potential to decide your career. For every engineering aspirant, it is the God of exam. No wonder lakhs of students year after year, across the country, appear for it. JEE Main is the gateway to many engineering colleges. Qualifying this exam makes you eligible to appear for the JEE Advanced, the exclusive gateway to the IITs and a few top institutions. Admission to the NITS, IIITs and GFTIs are based on the ranking that you obtain in JEE Main. Many other top private engineering colleges across the country consider it for absorbing students for their various engineering courses.
A highly competitive exam, more than 11 lakh students appeared for the JEE Main in 2018. Since it is one of its kind and the engineering dreams of many a student and parent depend upon it, the exam creates a lot of pressure on the students. To reduce the pressure and to ease things up, the government and the governing council this year has brought in drastic changes in the way the exam is conducted. Let us see all of these changes here. Two attempts in a year
Without a doubt, the most important of change, now a candidate will be able to appear for the JEE Main twice a year. The exam will be conducted first in January and then in April. The students thus get two opportunities in the same year itself. The unique thing about this feature is that the better of the two scores will be considered for ranking purpose. This benefits the students immensely, as it provides them with the opportunity to better their score, in case they have not done it well the first time. With the stress taken off to a great extent, with a better frame of mind the students are likely to perform better. Since one gets to appear for the JEE Main for three consecutive years, overall, one gets six chances to appear for the exam. That is a huge plus to anyone with an engineering dreamChange in testing agency
Another big change is the change in test agency. All these years the exam was being conducted by the CBSE. Even though CBSE was doing a great job with the conduct of this and various other exams, the government thought it prudent to offload the burden from CBSE to an agency, exclusively meant to conduct such high profile exams. Therefore, 2019 onwards the entrance exam will be conducted by NTA or the National Testing Agency. NTA is a new set up that has been established by the government to conduct entrance tests for admission to various educational programs in engineering, medical, pharmacy and management.Completely computer-based
Beginning with 2019, JEE Main will be entirely an online or computer-based exam. No more the pen and paper mode that the students have been accustomed to all these years. This is the third most important change brought into the format of the exam. The online mode will make the exam foolproof and more secure. However, it will take effort on the part of the candidates to get familiarized with the online system. Not many, especially in small towns and rural areas, are at ease with the computer-based exam. The NTA on its part is helping the students by providing many online mock tests. At every town and cities, numerous Test Practice Centers (TPCs) have been established. Candidates can register for the same and on weekends, they can visit the nearest centre and practice mock tests on computers. The NTA has made available an app through which the TPCs could be registered.Multiple sessions and shifts
The exam will be now conducted in sessions and shifts. In January, on four consecutive days, the Paper-1 of the exam will be conducted. Every day there will be two shifts, a morning and an afternoon. Likewise, Paper-2 will be conducted on a single day, but in two shifts. In all, there will be eight shifts for Paper-1 and two for Paper-2. The same format will be followed for the April exam also.Unique question papers
Candidates this time will get a unique set of question in JEE Main. No two paper will be the same. The questions will be drawn from a large databank of questions prepared by experts and secured safely. Artificial intelligence and advanced software technology will be used to sort out the questions randomly to the candidates. Based on the way the candidates answer the questions, the software will automatically process the questions from easy to difficult. That means the difficulty level of the questions will increase progressively.A few more changes
Other than these major changes many other changes have been brought in. The examination fee structure has been revised. The age limit of the candidates has been done away with. There will be no upper age limit for appearing for the exam. The date of notification has shifted. Since the exam will also be conducted in January, the notification of the exam will get published in August itself. There will be two result dates. One for the January exam and the other for April. The results will be published on 31 January and subsequently on 30 April. Based on the scores in both, the final common rank list will be declared. Moreover, the way the results will be computed will be different from previous years. Shift wise ranks will also be taken into consideration for deciding the final ranks. So ranking high in your shift will matter too.
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