How to calculate JEE Main rank? - Know All Steps Here!

The JEE Main is a gateway to the JEE Advanced and an important benchmark to get admission to various engineering institutes across India to opt for undergraduate courses. The JEE Main score was used to find a candidate’s rank till the year 2018, but since the year 2019, the NTA has declared a JEE Main percentile system to calculate the rank of a candidate.

Want to get selected for NITs, IIITs, or GFTIs? Or do you want to appear for the JEE Advanced? For all these your JEE Main rank plays the most important role followed by the eligibility criteria.

Every candidate you see around you is thriving for success, you need to know your expected rank beforehand so as to plan for the future.

The question is How to calculate JEE Main rank from percentile?

To find the answer to this question, we will walk you through this article. Here, we provide not only the JEE Main Rank Calculation formula but all the important definitions and information that you must know about the calculation of your JEE Main rank.

Check the complete list of JEE Formulas Here!

How to calculate JEE Main rank from percentile? 

Since the year 2019, the National Testing Agency (NTA) has declared that the JEE Main will be held multiple times a year. It was made in the favour of students because allowing multiple attempts will improve the chances of getting selected and those students who were not able to appear in the JEE Main for some unavoidable reasons will get a chance in the same year to appear for the missed exam.

However, there is a problem with this system.

Since there are multiple attempts and each session has multiple slots, it will be very difficult to maintain the students and furthermore, some slots will be easy and some relatively difficult. Now those students who got the easy paper slot will score more than those who unfortunately got the difficult paper slot.

This will be a total injustice to all the students who worked hard consistently for several years to appear for this examination. To solve this problem, NTA uses the JEE Main percentile system.

The logic behind the percentile system is that if the paper is easy, it will be easy for all the students or if the paper is difficult then it will be difficult for all the students.

Hence in the percentile system, the scores of all the students are compared with the topper who appeared at that particular slot, hence a relative marking system is established.

Now let us dig into the formula to calculate the JEE Main rank from your percentile score.

For example, if your percentile score is 99.97 and a total of 10,00,000 unique students appeared in the exam, then your rank will be [1-(99.97/100)]*10,00,000=30.

However, there is a flaw in this formula, if you are the topper in a particular slot then your percentile is 100.

According to this formula, your rank will be 0, but this is absurd, it has no meaning.

Hence sometimes a revised formula is used to calculate your JEE Main rank, the general formula is

Using this formula does not change your position. It is applicable to all candidates.

For example, if your percentile is 99.97 then your rank will be 31 which was previously 30.

Know about JEE Main Toppers Here!

JEE Main Free Tests

How is Percentile different from Percentage?

The percentage is based on your absolute marks whereas the percentile is based on relative marking.

For example, if your marks in a particular slot is 240 out of 300, then your percentage will be 240300100=80. But when the result was announced, you got about 99.96 percentile.

Your score is 80% and also 99.96 percentile, what is going on here?

The percentile score is not calculated in such an easy manner.

Consider x number of students scored less than or the same as you and a total of n students appeared in your slot (NOT the total number of students appeared), then the percentile is calculated using the formula

Consider the same example, suppose 9996 students scored less than or the same as you and the total number of students appeared in your slot was 10,000.

You percentile in this case, using the formula will be (999610,000)100=99.96.

This is how your percentile was calculated, it is a relative score, that means, if your get less marks due to the higher level of the examination, no need to worry, everyone will then get a low mark and your percentile will take care of the rest.

If the percentage is used instead of percentile, then the absolute marking scheme will let down a lot of students as only 80% is reached even at an excellent marks of 240 out of 300.

We hope the JEE Main Rank Calculator has been useful to you. For more informative and educational content like this, you can download the free Testbook App. Here you get preparation assistance for various competitive examinations in the form of Test Series, Online Classes, Quizzes, and many more.