Participation and success rates of different groups of candidates in IIT-JEE 2012

According to a report on the IIT-JEE 2012 (precursor of JEE-Advanced), the composition of the candidates registered for that examination was as under.

Composition by parents' income		Composition by place of dwelling		Composition by Class XII Board affiliation
More than Rs. 4.5 lakh	14.1%	City	51.1%	CBSE	44.3%
Between Rs. 1 lakh and 4.5 lakh	49.3%	Town	29.5%	ICSE	3.9%
Less than Rs. 1 lakh	36.6%	Village	19.4%	Other boards	51.9%
All three groups	100.0%	All three groups	100.0%	All three groups	100.0%

The group, which had disproportionately low representation from lower income households and villages and disproportionately high representation from certain boards, can hardly be said to be inclusive. As far as board affiliation is concerned, CBSE and ICSE accounted for less than 7% of all students appearing for Class XII Board examinations in 2012 in India. About a quarter of all the CBSE and ICSE students appearing in Class XII examination in 2012 had registered for IIT-JEE 2012. For all the other Indian Class XII examinees taken together, a paltry 2% had registered for IIT-JEE 2012.

The success rates of different sections of candidates (number of qualified candidates divided by the number of registered candidates) were as given below.

Parents' income	Success rate	Place of dwelling	Success rate	Class XII Board	Success rate
More than Rs. 4.5 lakh	10.3%	City	5.8%	CBSE	6.1%
Between Rs. 1 lakh and 4.5 lakh	4.8%	Town	4.2%	ICSE	4.7%
Less than Rs. 1 lakh	2.6%	Village	2.7%	Other boards	3.6%
All three groups	4.8%	All three groups	4.8%	All three groups	4.8%

While no reliable data on the effect of coaching is available, the unusually high success rates of candidates from the higher income group and city-dwellers suggest that access to coaching substantially increases the success rate.

The high popularity of IIT-JEE among CBSE students, together with their high success rate, meant that the IITs picked over 57% of their selected candidates in 2012 from a board that represents about 6% of their target group. Thus, the effective supply base of IIT students appears to be rather narrow.

Preliminary analysis of the JEE-Advanced 2013 indicates continued dominance of CBSE students among the qualified candidates.