The Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) released the first seat allotment list on Saturday morning and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay once again attracted a large chunk of top rankers. Information shared by IIT-Delhi, the admissions authority this year, shows top ranks in most categories chose the four-year Computer Science and Engineering course at IIT-Bombay this year.

According to the data released by JoSAA, the four-year Computer Science course has once again received maximum applications across IITs, especially from the top rank holders and the top choice of institute included IIT-Bombay, Delhi Madras, Roorkee, Kharagpur and Kanpur, amongst others.

The total intake capacity of 23 IITs stands at 16,053 this year, up from 13,583 in 2019. Officials have attributed the increase in seats to the supernumerary seats added across institutes in order to accommodate female students as well as those under the 10% economically weaker section (EWS) quota.

Apart from IITs, JoSAA also looks into admissions to National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) and other Government Funded Technology Institutes (GFTIs) so the total intake capacity for all these institutes stands at 50,822 this year.

“All seats, except 128 seats across IITs, NITs, IIITs and GFTIs, have been allotted in the first round itself. These remaining 128 seats too will be allotted in the upcoming rounds and the aim is to ensure zero vacancy across institutes,” said professor Sidhartha Pandey, organising chairman, JEE Advanced 2020.

This year, JoSAA will be conducting six seat allotment rounds instead of seven, in order to complete the admissions process before Diwali. Similarly, due to Covid-19, students will be virtually reporting to their allotted IITs to complete the admission process this year. “We have received quite a few queries from students confirming admission online and we are helping everyone possible,” added Pandey.

This is the third year that all institutes have kept aside supernumerary seats for female students and IIT-Bombay alone has 156 seats under this category this year, as opposed to 96 last year, that have been allotted to excess number of students, in case some students don’t opt for the seat.

Admissions to IITs depend on the Joint Entrance Examination-Advanced (JEE-Adv) scores of students, results for which was declared on October 5. Of the 1.50 lakh students who had appeared for the exam, 43,204 were declared eligible for admissions through JoSAA this year.

IIT-Delhi lowered the bar to allow more students from all categories to make it to the ranking list and eventually avoid seat vacancy across institutes. The cut-off for the general category has been reduced to 17.5% from last year’s 25%, while that for scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) is 8.75%, down from last year’s 12.5%. The qualifying score for the general-EWS and OBC-NCL categories is at 15.75% this year, lower than the 22.5% last year.

Total seats available in 23 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs):

2020—16,053

2019—13,583

2018—11,279

2017—10,988

Top rankers choose Computer Science in IIT-Bombay—

AIR 2 in general category

AIR 17, also first ranker in all India female category (general)

AIR 1 in General (Persons with Disability) category

AIR 1 in ST category

AIR 1 ST (Persons with Disability) category

AIR 1 in SC category

AIR 1 in SC (Persons with Disability) category