Many an aspiring engineer on Sunday encountered the first hurdle before even laying their hands on the new bridge or the flyover.

The physics paper in the Joint Entrance Exam-Main (JEE-Main) was so tricky that even some top students had to skip several questions to avoid negative marks for wrong answers.

The JEE-Main is conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for admissions to BE/BTech courses at National Institute of Technology, Indian Institutes of Information Technology and other Union government-funded technical institutions.

Om Prakash, an engineering aspirant, said: “The paper was easy as majority of questions was of the Class XII level but some questions of physics were tricky.”

The offline (pen and paper) examination was held on Sunday. It was a 360-mark paper with 90 questions — 30 each in physics, chemistry and mathematics. Each question carries four marks with deduction of 0.25 negative marks for every wrong answer.

Even teachers said the physics paper was tricky as many questions were confusing. Anand Kumar of Super 30 said: “The physics paper was not easy as many questions were confusing and solving these required conceptual knowledge of the subject.”

The Super 30 director, who has helped many students crack the IIT entrance test in the past, claimed that as physics was tricky this year, the cut-off marks would be 120-130 in the general category, while for the OBC students, the cut-off marks would be 100-110. Last year, the cut-off mark was 113 in the general category.

Sudhir Kumar, another engineering aspirant, said: “It has been generally observed from previous examinations that out of three papers, two are easy giving scope to many students but the third paper is tricky.”

However, he added that if a student has good conceptual knowledge on the subject he or she has good chances of marking correct answers.

On the other hand, many questions in the main exam were oft-repeated ones. If a student has gone through question papers of the last 15 years, he or she would have found many questions. A total of 13.56 lakh students, including 3.16 lakh girls, have registered for the JEE-Main of which 11.84 lakh took up pen and paper (offline) exam.

The rest 1.72 lakh students will take the online test on April 9, 11, 12 and 19. In Bihar, around 75,000 students appeared for the test. The JEE-Main results would be declared on May 4 while JEE-Advanced would be held on May 25.

The other significance of JEE-Main is only 1.5lakh of top rankers in the exam will be eligible for appearing in the JEE-Advanced for admission to IITs, IIT-BHU and ISM Dhanbad.