The Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Mains has a reputation among students in India aspiring for engineering courses, especially with prestigious institutions like the IITs and NITs, as one of the hardest exams to undergo in the Indian education system. It must be noted that every academic cycle sees lakhs of students partake in JEE Mains, which is characterized by high levels of competition.
A percentile cut as a measure of performance only serves to complicate matters further, leading most students to ask at what level will they be able to comfortably secure a given mark, for example a 90 percentile mark, a figure that is common amongst those seeking admission to reputable colleges.
The focus of this blog will be on how much you need to score to achieve 90 percentile in JEE Mains 2025, while keeping in mind the various factors that influence the calculation.
Understanding the Context of Percentile Score in JEE Mains
Before we delve into the nitty-gritty details, it would be worthwhile to define what percentile means in relation to the exam that is JEE Mains.
- Percentile Score: The percent of students who are below or at your score card in the said exam is what the nominative score denotes. For example, You scored 90% on the exam. This means that 90% of students that sat the exam scored equal to or less than the student.
- JEE Main Marks vs Percentile: In JEE Mains, a student’s score does not determine the percentile. The reason for this is that the percentile is related based on the performance of other candidates as well as the difficulty level of the test and its corresponding strength in that particular session and also through normalization ring multiple sessions because the average of all sessions is considered as a single standard session.
How Marks Translate to Percentile
There is no standard “marks-to-percentile” conversion ratio that exists for JEE Mains marks, as the percentiles are dependent on the factors illustrated above. However, with this notice, we are able to make an estimation of approximate marks that a student should be able to score in order to reach the 90 hundredth percentile based on previous performances or trends in the papers as well as the conservative data findings.
How Many Marks Should One Aim For When Aiming 90 Percentile in JEE Mains
As observed in their previous year’s papers, in order to score above 90 percentile in JEE Mains, students have to score 70-80 out of 300 marks. However this range may vary a little from year to year depending on the exam candidates’ paper and the sheer difficulty level of the paper.
In simple terms:
If the paper is relatively easy, the number of marks that is set at the bar for 90 percentile is likely to be higher.
If the paper is tough, you might be able to achieve the 90 percentile with far lower marks than would otherwise have been the case.
Factors That Affect the Marks-to-Percentile Conversion
- Difficulty Level of the Paper: The exams for JEE Mains are known to be of varying degree of complexities. If the difficulty level of the paper is high, even a mediocre score would automatically translate into a higher percentile because the rest of the students would have also performed poorly. To the contrary, if the stature of the paper in terms of its complexity is low, then the marks needed to get a high percentile will most certainly increase.
- Number of Students Appearing: The total number in a given session of the examination also counts in the award of percentile. In sessions with many candidates, even slight differences in marks result in large differences in percentile ranking.
- Normalization Process: The procedure of Jee Mains is characterized by a number of sessions and it is a common occurrence that the difficulty level in some sessions is quite lower than the others. In this instance, to maintain a level ground, the scores obtained by the students in relation to their peers score who sat their session. Although the process may appear complicated, it guarantees that students from different sessions are evaluated on the same basis.
Example of Marks-to-Percentile Trends (Historical Data)
How marks are converted to percentile can be roughly estimated using historical data as follows:
| Marks Range (out of 300) | Percentile Range |
| 280 – 300 | 99.9+ percentile |
| 250 – 270 | 99+ percentile |
| 200 – 220 | 97 – 98 percentile |
| 150 – 170 | 94 – 95 percentile |
| 80 – 100 | 90 percentile |
| 70 – 80 | 85 – 90 percentile |
Note: These figures are indicative and may show slight fluctuations depending on the year and the specific session.
What can one do to Target 90 Percentile in JEE Mains?
If you want to get over the 90 percentile rank in JEE Mains, you will have to score between 70 to 80, clearly targeting this range will not be sufficient. Here is what you can do while preparing:
- Target the Strong Areas: Look for the subjects or topics where you are reasonably confident and try to do well in those areas. Since the JEE Mains examination has questions from Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics, a combination approach of preparation must be adopted.
- Practice Pacing Yourself: Take mock examinations and past question papers to practice and improve your speed as well as accuracy. During the real test, pace can often be a critical factor across the 3 sections of the test.
- Target Easy and Moderate Questions First: First, prioritize the simple and medium level question set before the hard level. Even answering a good number of questions of the moderate level will be enough to gain a good score, which can cross the 90 percentile.
- Revising Key Concepts: Make sure that your fundamentals are well established. Revision of certain key formulas, and theorems and concepts from time to time can help to decrease any possible mistakes in the exam.
- Take Mock Papers: Performing certain exercises in the same way as the examination would be conducted can be done by regularly practicing mock tests. This not just hones your skills of time management, but also brings out the shortcomings in your practice.
In JEE Mains, to achieve a score close to 90 percentile in JEE Mains, around 70 to 80 marks is needed on average, but this can vary depending on how hard the session was and how the students performed overall. But one should not be over ambitious about marks alone. One should rather look to develop a well-rounded preparation in which understanding the key ideas and concepts, practice, and evaluation through mock tests take the center stage.
One should know that a target like 90 percentile in JEE Mains makes possible the chances for intake in good NITs and other reputed engineering colleges and for that preparation needs to be consistent and focused on the target. If worked hard with the right strategies, reaching the desired percentile and getting into a reputed engineering college should not be too much of a hassle.
FAQs on How to Score 90 percentile in JEE Main 2025
Students must score a minimum of 70 to 80 marks to achieve 90 Percentile.
To secure admission in IIITs, IITs, NITs, and other centrally funded institutions in India through the JEE Main exam, candidates should aim for a percentile score between 94 and 96.
The JEE Main percentile is influenced by several factors, including the total number of candidates, raw scores, percentile calculation, the difficulty level of the paper, among others.
