Girls formed only 11 per cent of the total qualifying students, JEE in-charge and IIT Kharagpur professor M K Panigrahi told PTI.
Rajasthan's Chitraang Murdia topped JEE (Advanced) securing 334 out of a total of 360 marks. Aditi from IIT Roorkee zone is the topper amongst girl candidates securing seventh rank in the common merit list.
A total of 27,151 candidates out of the registered 1,26,997 qualified in the examination from across the country, he said.
"I got family support for engineering but most of my friends opted for medical or commerce subjects. That is the reason why you have less girl students in engineering. It does not mean girls cannot become good engineers," she said.
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Officials of FIITJEE, which conducts coaching classes for IIT aspirants, said the number of girl students were lesser.
"It is a trend that girls avoid engineering. We only had a handful of girl students," Debdoot Banerjee, deputy general manager of the coaching institute said.
Besides these, 6,000 students appeared in OBC, 4,400 in SC and 1,250 in ST merit lists.
A total of 243 candidates with disability cleared in the exam.
Compared to last year, 3,500 more candidates have qualified in CML and there was an increase of qualified candidates in all categories.
Candidates who have cleared the JEE (Advanced) can now seek entry into the 16 IITs and also Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad.
There are altogether 9784 seats available in all these institutes.
IIT aspirants have to clear two-phased JEE(Mains) and JEE (Advanced) exams to gain entry into the elite institutes.