JEE Advanced: At IITs, B.Tech Civil Engineering draws high rankers even as cut-offs fall in final JoSAA round

The BTech Civil Engineering programmes, across seven top Indian Institutes of Technology, have drawn candidates with much higher ranks in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced this year, shows admission counselling data from the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) 2026. The list of 10 includes IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi.

While opening ranks – the top rank at which admission opens – have risen at these 10, the closing ranks, or the BTech CE cut-offs, have fallen further, in comparison to last year’s levels. The JoSAA counselling process lasted for five rounds in 2026 but had stretched to six last year. Data from the final two rounds after which admissions closed have been considered.

Take IIT Delhi. The last rank to get admission in BTech Civil Engineering was placed at 4901, a cut-off nearly 600 places lower than where it was after Round 6 of JoSAA counselling in 2025. But the opening rank in the final round this year was 179, as many as 3065 places above last year’s opening rank of 3244. Similarly, the civil engineering department of IIT Bombay, opened the final round of 2026 admissions at rank 385, over 2,000 places above where the threshold was last year.

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IIT JEE Admissions: Civil engineering cut-off trend changes

Five other IITs – Bhubaneswar, Indore, Gandhinagar, ISM Dhanbad, Guwahati and – have shown increases in opening ranks, albeit less sharp ones. At Bhubaneswar, the opening rank rose by 170 places and at IIT Indore, by over 250 places.

However, as the table below shows, the cut-off – the last rank in the last round at which admission finally closed at the IIT – has fallen further everywhere. Candidates from a much wider range of JEE Advanced ranks opted for civil engineering this year, including many who had the ranks for BTech Computer Science Engineering – usually the most sought-after of the IIT programmes.

B.Tech Civil Engineering: Opening and closing ranks in JoSAA 2026

At some IITs, including IIT Kharagpur, IIT Roorkee, IIT ISM Dhanbad and IIT Guwahati, the opening rank for the first round of JoSAA counselling had risen – by over 1,000 places in the case of Kharagpur – but by the final round, both opening and closing ranks were lower than last year’s.

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JEE Advanced 2026: Civil engineering going up in ranks

According to news reports after the first round of counselling, the decline in jobs and mass layoffs in the IT sector caused students with high JEE Adv ranks to seek programmes in core engineering. The 2025-26 round of hiring saw tech giants returning to campuses but with smaller salary offers.

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