WHICH IIT IS KNOWN TO SET THE TOUGHEST JEE ADVANCED PAPER TILL NOW?

Before I answer your question, let me clarify one thing. The question paper of JEE Advanced is not set by just one IIT. A team of professors from different IITs are chosen by the organizing institute. These professors are highly qualified and are the expert in this field. They assemble at an already decided place for the purpose of creation of questions for the paper. Privacy is given utmost priority while creating the paper.

What does Organizing IIT mean?

Whenever you hear that this IIT, called as organizing IIT, is conducting the JEE Advanced paper, it only means that the management and publicity activities like the intimation of important information regarding the exam, various notices, deciding dates and centers for the exam, introducing the website and information brochure, press-release, online and offline publicity, collecting fees from the candidates through various channels, allocating centers to the students as per their choice of preference, conducting the exam and results announcement etc is the key responsibility of that IIT. It doesn't mean that the whole paper of JEE Advanced is going to be set by that IIT i.e. organising IIT.

Which IIT is known to set the toughest JEE Advanced paper till now?

In my opinion, if I consider the past 20 year papers, JEE Advanced papers of 2015, 2016 and 2020 have been quite tough as compared to other years.

1. In 2015, the questions were not that tough as compared to 2016 and 2020 but the paper was quite lengthy. And it was the first time when “-2” for wrong answers was introduced. Also, there was no section of “ONLY ONE CORRECT”. In this year, the paper was of 504 marks and there was a total of 120 questions.
2. In 2016, the whole paper was very very tough and exhausting. People with almost 50–55% marks got under 1000 rank. The cutoff also went very low because of the toughness of the paper and people’s performance. And it was the first time when partial marking was introduced in “ONE OR MORE THAN ONE CORRECT” by IIT Guwahati but most of the people failed to understand it (even I failed at many questions) and went for “-2” where they would have easily scored “+1, +2, +3 or even +4”. In this year, the paper was of 372 marks and there was a total of 108 questions.
3. In 2020, the paper was quite tough and there was “-1” for wrong answers in integer-type questions. This year also, the cutoff went very low because of the toughness of the paper and people’s performance. But in this year, due to COVID-19, students got 4 months extra to prepare for JEE Advanced which might have helped a lot. In this year, the paper was of 396 marks and there was a total of 108 questions.

So overall, the order of toughness, in my opinion, is 2016 > 2015 > 2020. Another Quora post also says that the toughest ever JEE Advanced paper was held in 2016 which was organized by IIT Guwahati. And JEE Advanced 2016’s Maths Section was one of the toughest ever (even Kalpit Veerwal has also said that in one of his Quora post).

BTW, 2016 was also my year of JEE Advanced :D.

The list given below shows the organizers of the JEE Advanced (Formely IIT-JEE) in recent years:

Hope this helps you. Thank you for reading!

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