‘Student-friendly’ JEE Advanced? IITs plan adaptive-testing shift; IIT Kanpur, JAB to lead pilot mock-test

JEE Advanced Reforms: The Indian Institutes of Technology are discussing major reforms for the IIT entrance exam, Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced, minutes of the IIT Council meeting reveal. IIT Kanpur and the IITs’ Joint Admission Board (JAB) have been tasked with evaluating a proposal to shift to “adaptive testing of quantitative and reasoning skills” in which the exam “dynamically generates questions based on a student's performance”.

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Led by education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, the IIT Council met in August but the minutes were published on January 5, 2026.

The proposal for the change came from IIT Kanpur’s director, Manindra Agrawal, who raised concerns about the “current structure” of JEE Advanced and about the “prevalence of a huge coaching industry and the significant emotional and financial stress on families”, say the IIT Council minutes. The goal is to make the IIT JEE, the second of the two-step process of BTech admissions in the IITs, more “student friendly” and “less stressful”.

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JEE Advanced: Critical thinking, not coaching

According to the 55th meeting report, Agrawal argued that the IIT JEE exam “needs to better assess critical thinking and reasoning skills and be made even more fool proof to operational issues etc”.

He proposed shifting to “adaptive testing of quantitative and reasoning skills, which dynamically generates questions based on a student's performance.” “This model further reduces coaching dependency, enhances fairness, and allows flexible, secure testing environments,” the minutes report him as saying.

The IIT Council has discussed redesigning the IIT JEE Advanced before. It considered doing so in 2023 and even then, it was to “minimise the coaching requirements for the students”.

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IIT JEE: Mock test, question generation tool, analysis

The IIT council recommends five steps towards this new model.

First, it said an expert committee led by the JAB and IIT Kanpur will “evaluate the adaptive testing proposal and its potential to reduce coaching dependency and exam vulnerabilities”.

Next, it recommends conducting an “optional, adaptive test” two months before the JEE Advanced, allowing students to “self-assess and improve” and the committee to gather performance data which they can later compare with the actual JEE Advanced results. It will also allow the committee to assess the feasibility of conducting such exams and the impact on students and use those findings for “future exam reforms”.

Alongside, the experiment will require a “question generation tool” that will “generate questions of varying difficulty levels dynamically, ensuring fairness and scalability”.

Based on this experience, IIT Kanpur and JAB will prepare a white paper that will “outline a phased roadmap with specific timelines for transitioning to adaptive testing in JEE Advanced”.

Supernumerary seats in JoSAA counselling

The IIT Council has also suggested bringing admissions to supernumerary seats in IITs to the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) counselling system as well. Thus far, BTech admissions through sports, culture and Science Olympiad quotas were managed separately.

IIT Madras and IIT Indore have sports quotas; IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur, IIT Gandhinagar and IIT Madras have introduced admission pathways through Olympiads.

"It was decided that all supernumerary seats and quotas may be integrated into the centralised JoSAA online counselling portal, ensuring transparency and eliminating information asymmetry for students,” say the minutes.

JEE Advanced 2026 is scheduled for May 17; it will be conducted by IIT Roorkee and only those in the top 2.5 lakh ranks on the JEE Main will be eligible to write it.