Amidst speculations about the paper pattern, around 1.6 lakh engineering aspirants took the second level of the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) that was conducted on the existing two-tier model across 115 cities on Sunday, May 22, 2016. The biggest surprise in this year’s JEE Advanced, however, was the new Partial Marking Pattern in both the Paper I and II.

What is the partial marking pattern?

This pattern enables a student to gain full or partial marks dedicated to a particular question. For example, if a given question has three correct answers – A, B, and C – then a student will get +4 marks if he chooses all the three. A student will get +2 if he/she chooses any two among the correct choices and +1 for opting for any right option. This pattern may be beneficial to the students. However, if a student chooses a wrong option alone or along with the partially correct one, then he/she will be awarded -2 marks for the questions based on this pattern.

There were around 18 questions in Paper I and II based on the pattern as mentioned earlier. These questions together accounted for 64 marks out of the total 372. The above-mentioned pattern was not the only change introduced in this year’s JEE Advanced. The other change being comprehension format questions in the paper.