IIT JEE Advanced 2018: Mere 14 Female Candidates in Top 500, 46 in 1000

This year, a mere 14 girls managed to grab the top 500 ranks of the IIT Joint Entrance Examination Advanced 2018.

New Delhi/26.06.2018: Compared to the last year’s list where 68 female candidates made the cut to the top 1,000 ranks, the IIT JEE Advanced 2018 saw a dip in number. This year, a mere 14 girls managed to grab the top 500 ranks of the IIT Joint Entrance Examination Advanced 2018, underscoring the gender divide in technical education.

MHRD’s Gender Diversity Plan:

Earlier, under the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s gender diversity plan, IIT Kanpur had conducted this year’s IIT JEE Advanced exam to bridge the gender gap. As per the plan, a minimum of 8% more seats (800 in all) would be added to the Indian Institutes of Technology to put up more female candidates. The 7 older IITs (IIT Kharagpur, IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, IIT Delhi, IIT Guwahati and IIT Roorkee) are given instructions to have 3% girls in computer science and electrical engineering streams with the female-only seats.

• 8% more seats to be added to IITs to accommodate more female candidates
• To enhance female students representation in streams like electrical engineering and computer science

IIT JEE Advance 2018 Female Candidates Rank:

In order to eliminate bigger gender gaps in technical programmes at the elite IITs, the Joint Admission Board (JAB) decided to add more seats and made sure that the female students should comprise 17% to total students (from 14%). Moreover, the Board (JAB) has shortlisted 3,000-odd girls from the top 24,500 ranks. The rank wise classification of girls selected in Joint Entrance Examination Advanced 2018 is mentioned beneath –

Female-only Pool for Girls:

As per reports, the female-only pool facility will only be executed when a female candidate fails to occupy a seat in the gender-neutral pool. A faculty-staff from IIT Bombay said, "But if you see the number of female candidates in the top ranks, they are very few and most will opt for the female-only pool to get into a popular course and a better institute".

On May 20, IIT JEE advanced 2018 was organised by IIT Kanpur in two sessions (Paper 1 and Paper 2).