JEE Exam Marks: What You Need to Know About Scores, Cutoffs, and Rankings

When you take the JEE exam marks, the scaled scores from JEE Main and JEE Advanced that determine admission to India’s top engineering colleges. Also known as JEE scores, these numbers don’t just reflect how many questions you got right—they decide whether you get into an IIT, NIT, or even a private college with a good reputation. There’s no magic number. One year, 90 percentile might get you into a top NIT. The next, you might need 95. It all depends on how tough the paper was and how many students scored high.

What most students don’t realize is that JEE Main and JEE Advanced work completely differently. JEE Main gives you a percentile based on your rank compared to everyone else. If you’re in the top 2.5%, you qualify for JEE Advanced. But JEE Advanced? That’s raw marks. Your score out of 360 or 396. No percentiles. No normalization. Just you and the paper. A score of 180 in JEE Advanced might land you in a mid-tier IIT one year, and barely make the cutoff the next. The system doesn’t care about your effort—it cares about how you ranked against the top 25,000 students in the country.

And it’s not just about the total. Subject-wise performance matters too. If you score high in Math but low in Physics, some IITs will still reject you—even if your overall score is above cutoff. The IIT JEE, the combined entrance exam system for India’s premier engineering institutes is designed to find well-rounded candidates. That’s why coaching centers drill students on balancing sections, not just chasing high totals.

What about the cutoffs? They’re not fixed. Every year, the Joint Entrance Examination Board releases them after results. In 2023, the general category cutoff for JEE Advanced was around 90 marks out of 360. In 2021, it was 75. Why the drop? More students took the exam. The paper was harder. Or maybe the top scorers didn’t perform as expected. No one knows for sure. That’s why guessing your cutoff based on last year’s numbers is a gamble.

And here’s the thing most guides won’t tell you: your JEE marks don’t guarantee anything. They get you a rank. That rank gets you a seat during counseling. But if you don’t fill your choices right—if you pick IIT Bombay over IIT Madras because of name alone—you might end up in a college you didn’t want. Or worse, you might miss out because you didn’t apply for enough options.

Some students think scoring 200+ in JEE Main means they’re safe. Not true. That might be enough for a good NIT, but it won’t touch an IIT. Others think they need 300+ in JEE Advanced to get into IIT Delhi. Maybe. But last year, a student with 215 got into IIT Roorkee. It’s not about the number—it’s about where you stand in the pile.

And don’t forget the category cutoffs. OBC, SC, ST, EWS—they all have lower thresholds. But even within those, your marks matter. A 70 in JEE Advanced might get an SC candidate into IIT Guwahati, but not IIT Kanpur. The system is stacked, but it’s not random. It’s predictable—if you know how to read the patterns.

Below, you’ll find real posts that break down how JEE marks translate to ranks, what scores past students actually got to enter top colleges, and how to plan your prep so your marks count when it matters most. No theory. No guesswork. Just what works.