JEE Advanced 2026: Adaptive test questions ready; IIT Kanpur to pilot this year on own students first

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur has prepared questions to pilot an aptitude test format for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced. With approval from IIT Roorkee, responsible for organising the entrance test for the IITs this year, it will be piloted “around JEE Advanced 2026”, said a senior academic from IIT K.

This comes after the top body of the premier engineering colleges, the IIT Council, tasked IIT Kanpur and the IIT’s Joint Admission Board with developing a “students friendly adaptive test” of qualitative and reasoning skills which, if successful, will replace the JEE Advanced. In the proposed format questions will be generated dynamically based on a student’s performance. The suggestion originally came from IIT Kanpur’s director, Manindra Agrawal, and was discussed during last-year’s IIT Council meeting.

The IIT Council had discussed redesigning the JEE Advanced before as well. The exam is the second part of a two-tier selection process for the IITs. The preliminary exam is the JEE Main which is open to all candidates hoping to study engineering. Only those in the top 2.5 lakh ranks of the JEE Main are eligible to write the JEE Advanced. JEE Mains 2026 is being held in two sessions. The Session 1 JEE Mains result was declared on February 16 with 12 students securing 100 percentile. The JEE Main Session 2 examination will be conducted from April 2-9 in two shifts. JEE Advanced 2026 is scheduled for May 17 and will be conducted by IIT Roorkee.

JEE Advanced 2026: Pilot test with IIT Kanpur students

The professor said, “While the questions are prepared, we plan to test it around the JEE Advanced exam with our institute students along with approvals from this year’s organising institute IIT Roorkee.” He added that this adaptive test will not be introduced in the IIT JEE Advanced exam this year but likely from next year. It needs to be cleared by the JAB first.

Manindra Agarwal, IIT Kanpur’s director, had raised concerns about the current structure of JEE Advanced and had suggested making IIT JEE more ‘student friendly and less stressful’.

According to the minutes of the 55th IIT Council meeting, this new model of question papers will reduce coaching dependency, enhance fairness, and allow flexible, secure testing environments.