JoSAA Counselling 2026 – Third Round seat allotment released

Increasing cut-offs for lower branches at top IITs Seat allocation for the third round is underway, reporting is due by July 8th.

The joint counselling process for 67,323 seats across 134 institutions, including IITs and NITs, is underway. Students can report online after the third round of seat allocation until 5 p.m. on 8^th July. Students whose documents uploaded during online reporting are found to be deficient must respond to the query by 5 p.m. on 9^th July, or their seats will be cancelled.

You May Also Like – JoSAA Counselling 2026 – IIT Bombay CS Continues to Lead as the Top Choice

Students have not prioritized them due to the lack of branch change options

Education expert at ALLEN Career Institute, stated that according to the data released for the three rounds conducted so far, students have not prioritized lower branches at Mumbai, Madras, Kharagpur, and Hyderabad, among the top IITs this year, due to the lack of branch change options.

This is why the cut-offs for lower branches at these top IITs have increased, and even students with lower ranks have secured branches at these IITs. In previous years, all branches at these IITs closed at higher ranks.

Looking at the statistics, the closing AIR for the BS Chemistry branch at IIT Bombay was 7360, the Biological Sciences branch at IIT Madras was 11666, the Applied Geology branch at IIT Kharagpur was 13667, and the Industrial Chemistry branch at IIT Hyderabad was 8541.

All these closing ranks are from the gender-neutral pool in the open category.

Must Read – JoSAA Round 2: NIT Seat Allotted to Male candidate with AIR 13.90 Lakh & female candidate with 14.97 Lakh

Reason for increase in cut-off ranks for lower branches of Top IITs

Expert explained that the primary reason for the increase in cut-off ranks for lower branches at these top IITs is the discontinuation of the branch change option at these IITs.

Previously, students had the option to change branches based on their first-year performance, which resulted in many students being promoted to core branches and better branches in the second year. Due to this reason, students used to give more priority to the lower branches of top IITs than the core branches of IITs opened in the year 2012 and 2017.

In such a situation, the cut-off of lower branches of top IITs used to go down. But now, due to the closure of this branch change option, the cutoff of lower branches of many top IITs like Mumbai, Madras, Kharagpur, Hyderabad has gone down. Due to which now students with lower ranks are getting admission in these branches.

Now, instead of these IITs, students are seen giving preference to other IITs where branch change option is also available.