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Home · Colleges · Cutoff Trends

Reading college cutoffs honestly

Cutoffs are the single most-searched college admission data. They're also the most-misread. Rank predictors over-promise. "Last year's cutoff" is misleading. Here's the framework that actually works.

Official sources by exam

The only data worth trusting. Coaching-institute "cutoffs" are retrofitted from these.

  • JEE Advanced (IITs)

    JoSAA portal ↗

    JoSAA publishes opening + closing rank for every IIT × branch × category × gender combination after each round (Round 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). The Round-6 closing rank is the 'final cutoff' for that year.

  • JEE Main (NITs / IIITs / GFTIs)

    JoSAA portal ↗

    Same JoSAA portal — Choice Filling for NIT / IIIT / GFTI rounds. CSAB Special Rounds happen after JoSAA closes (for vacant seats).

  • NEET UG (MBBS / BDS)

    MCC portal ↗

    MCC runs All-India 15% quota + Deemed + Central Universities counselling. State counselling runs separately for state quota (85% in most states).

  • CLAT (NLUs)

    Consortium of NLUs portal ↗

    Published merit + cutoff per NLU + category. Top NLU (NLSIU) closing rank typically 50-100 in general category.

  • CUET UG (Central Universities)

    NTA / Samarth portal ↗

    CUET admission via individual university portals (DU, BHU, JNU, etc.). Each university publishes its own closing percentiles + scores.

  • CAT (IIMs)

    IIM CAT portal ↗

    IIMs publish their cutoff sectional + overall percentile annually. Top IIMs cutoff ~99 percentile overall; gender + category-specific cutoffs vary.

  • GATE (PSUs + IIT MTech)

    GATE portal ↗

    GATE scores feed into individual IIT MTech admissions + PSU-specific cutoffs (NTPC, ONGC, IOCL etc each publish own).

The 5-step method to use cutoffs

  1. Step 1 — Get the previous 3-5 years' closing ranks

    From JoSAA / MCC / NLU consortium / IIM-CAT websites. Build a spreadsheet — year × college × branch × category × gender × your rank. Trends matter more than single-year cutoffs (seats + applicants change).

  2. Step 2 — Filter to YOUR category + gender

    OBC-NCL cutoff for Mech at NIT Trichy is very different from General cutoff for CSE at IIT Bombay. The number you should track is YOUR demographic's cutoff.

  3. Step 3 — Look at the TREND line, not single year

    JEE Advanced 2022 saw a sudden CSE rank inflation due to seat increases. Single-year cutoffs misrepresent. Use 3-year median + a safety margin.

  4. Step 4 — Apply rank predictor logic conservatively

    Rank predictors are typically ±2000 rank accurate (sometimes worse). If a predictor says 'CSE @ IIT BHU likely with rank X', confirm X is well below the 3-year closing rank, not equal to it.

  5. Step 5 — Plan a 5-college choice list with safety margin

    JoSAA lets you fill 80+ choices. Front-load with stretch options (3-4 above your predicted rank), midload with likely-fit, and back-load with safety colleges. Skip the 'wishful thinking' choices that need ranks far above yours.

What Shishya doesn't ship (yet)

We don't yet publish a per-college × branch × year cutoff table on Shishya. Reasons:

  • JoSAA / MCC publish authoritative data in real-time — caching it on a third-party site is value-light + creates staleness risk.
  • Single-year cutoffs are misleading; we'd need to build trend visualisations + category filters to publish responsibly.
  • Premium players (e.g., Careers360) have this; the real gap is in honest framing + decision-help, which is what we do here.

Roadmap: A cutoff explorer tool with 5-year trend charts per (college × branch × category × gender), driven from JoSAA + MCC scraped + maintained yearly. Shipping in Phase 6 of the colleges roadmap.

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