Joint Entrance Examination – Advanced

The Joint Entrance Examination – Advanced (JEE-Advanced) (formerly the Indian Institute of Technology – Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE)) is an academic examination held annually in India that tests the skills and knowledge of the applicants in physics, chemistry and mathematics. It is organised by one of the seven zonal Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs): IIT Roorkee, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, and IIT Guwahati, under the guidance of the Joint Admission Board (JAB) on a round-robin rotation pattern for the qualifying candidates of the Joint Entrance Examination – Main(exempted for foreign nationals and candidates who have secured OCI/PIO cards on or after 04–03–2021). It used to be the sole prerequisite for admission to the IITs' bachelor's programs before the introduction of UCEED, Online B.S. and Olympiad entries, but seats through these new media are very low.

Other universities, such as the Indian Maritime University Kolkata, the Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy, the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology and the Indian Institute of Space Technology, use the score obtained in the JEE-Advanced exam as the sole basis for admission. The Indian Institute of Science also uses the score obtained in the JEE-Advanced exam as one of the basis for admission. The JEE-Advanced score is also used as a possible basis for admission by Indian applicants to non-Indian universities such as the University of Cambridge and the National University of Singapore.

The JEE-Advanced has been consistently ranked as one of the toughest exams in the world. High school students from across India typically prepare for several years to take this exam, and most of them attend coaching institutes. The combination of its high difficulty level, intense competition, unpredictable paper pattern and low acceptance rate exerts immense pressure on aspirants, making success in this exam a highly sought-after achievement. In a 2018 interview, former IIT Delhi director V. Ramgopal Rao, said the exam is "tricky and difficult" because it is framed to "reject candidates, not to select them". In 2024, out of the 180,200 candidates who took the exam, 48,248 candidates qualified.