Percentile and percentage
A percentage tells you how many marks you scored out of 300, while a percentile tells you what share of students in your shift scored the same as you or less. A 99 percentile means you scored at least as much as 99% of the students who wrote the same shift. (NTA calls each shift a "session" in its formula; the results of all shifts are then merged.)
NTA calculates it separately for each shift with this formula:
Percentile = 100 × (number of candidates in your shift with a raw score equal to or less than yours) ÷ (total number of candidates in that shift)
This means the topper of every shift gets 100 percentile, whatever their raw marks.
Why shifts are normalised
JEE Main runs over several days and shifts, and no two papers are equally difficult. When one shift gets a harder paper, everyone in it scores lower. Converting raw marks to a percentile within each shift removes this unfairness, so the student who topped a hard shift gets 100, the same as the topper of an easy one.
The percentiles of all shifts are then merged to produce the result for the session.
Why the marks for 99 percentile change every year
Your percentile depends on how everyone else did. A tougher paper means fewer marks are needed for the same percentile, and an easier one pushes the required marks up. The number of candidates also changes every year. Any "marks vs percentile" table you find online is therefore an estimate built from past papers, and it should be read only as a rough guide.
Each season our teachers analyse the actual papers and post an updated estimate on our YouTube channel.
Two sessions: the better score counts
JEE Main is held in two sessions, usually in January and April, and a student can appear in one or both. The better of the two NTA scores is used for the final rank. Many students treat January as a rehearsal in real exam conditions and improve in April.
From percentile to rank
A rough All India Rank can be worked out from your percentile:
Approximate rank = (100 − your percentile) × total candidates ÷ 100
For example, if 14 lakh candidates appear and you score 99 percentile, your approximate rank is (100 − 99) × 14,00,000 ÷ 100 = 14,000. At 99.9 percentile it would be about 1,400. Since the real number of candidates changes every year, this is only an estimate.
What percentile do you need?
- To qualify for JEE Advanced: NTA publishes a category-wise cut-off each year. For the general category it has been around 93 percentile in recent years.
- For NITs, IIITs and GFTIs: admission is through JoSAA counselling based on your rank, along with the Class 12 requirement of 75% (65% for SC/ST) or the top 20 percentile of your board. The closing rank depends on the college, branch, category and home state quota.
- For IITs: admission is decided by your JEE Advanced rank; the JEE Main percentile is not used.
What this means for preparation
Percentile is relative, so no fixed number of marks guarantees a result. What counts is how you do compared with everyone else who sits the same paper, and in our experience these things move a student's percentile the most:
- Accuracy. With −1 for a wrong answer, five careless mistakes cost 25 marks, which can mean several percentile points near the top.
- Covering the high-weight, scoring chapters thoroughly, which pays better than a patchy grasp of everything.
- Timed full-length mocks on the computer-based pattern, so that exam day feels familiar.
Common questions
Is 90 percentile good in JEE Main?
It puts you ahead of 90% of candidates. It may not be enough to qualify for JEE Advanced in the general category, where the cut-off has recently been around 93 percentile, but it can be enough for many state and private engineering colleges.
How is a tie broken if two students have the same percentile?
NTA uses a tie-breaking order based on subject percentiles (Maths, then Physics, then Chemistry) and other criteria listed in its information bulletin for the year.
Do Class 12 board marks affect JEE Main percentile?
No. The percentile depends only on the JEE Main paper, although Class 12 marks decide eligibility for NIT, IIIT and IIT admission.