The merit list for the Join Entrance Exam (JEE) Main will be will be based on percentile scores and not on raw marks, a senior HRD Ministry official has reportedly confirmed to the Times of India. Apparently, the percentile score to be used for the JEE Main exam will be based on the format used for the undergraduate MBBS test.

The JEE is used for admissions to engineering colleges in India, and the percentile system for the JEE Main merit list will reportedly be introduced from 2019, when the JEE Main is held twice a year.

Apparently, a senior official at the HRM Ministry told ToI that the “normalisation procedure based on percentile score” will be used to arrive at the NTA score.

“A core group of experts from IITs (Roorkee, Kanpur, Delhi, Guwahati), IIM-Lucknow, NITs, UGC, IASRI (Pusa) and AIIMS, Delhi, among others have been asked to finalise the process for calculating the NTA score,” the official reportedly added.

The thinking behind this seems to be that since the JEE will be held twice a year, some exams could be tougher than others, which means that students attempting those exams could face a tougher set of questions and consequently score lower raw marks. The percentile system could potentially be used to help bridge the gap between scores obtained for different JEE exam difficulties.