The percentage of female applicants for JEE Mains for January session has increased considerably this year. Despite the decrease in the total number of applicants appearing for the IIT-JEE Mains exam in January, the percentage of female applicants has gone up to 29% as compared to 25% last year.
Approximately, 9.65 lakh students are appearing for the exam for January Session. However, for the previous session, the total numbers of applicants were close to 11.5 lakh which was held in April 2018. As many as 10.4 lakh students appeared in the examination, out of which only 24% were girls.
Moreover, the IIT-JEE Mains exam will be conducted by National Testing Agency (NTA) from this year instead of CBSE which was the conducting body earlier. Also, the exam will be held twice a year as opposed to once previously.
In an attempt to restore gender diversity among engineering colleges in the country, government had issued a directive early this year. According to the directive, each of these institutes will have to admit at least 14% women by creating supernumerary seats. The plan is to achieve female enrolment of 14% in 2018-19, 17% in 2019-20, and 20% in 2020-21. NITs are also working towards increasing female enrolment in BTech programmes at the levels prescribed for IITs. “With such initiatives, the government is paving the roots for female enrolment in BTech programmes”, says Navin C Joshi, academic head and vice-president ( JEE and NEET ), Gradeup.
Adding supernumerary seats in 2018 has resulted in creation of an extra 1,000 seats across all technical institutions.
Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur director, Udaykumar R Yaragatti, says the “increase in enrolment of girls is due to supernumerary seats”.
A shift of the students is also being observed from the medical stream to engineering as the latter offers easy opportunities in respect to the students pursuing medical. The seats for medical is low and the expenses are also too much in the private colleges.
From 2019, JEE-Mains will be conducted only through the computer-based format. Earlier, students had choice between pen and paper mode and computer based exam.