New Delhi, June 19: Nearly 20,000 students today made it to the JEE-Advanced merit list, clearing the final hurdle of the two-tier test that aspiring engineers need to crack to enrol for BTech courses in the IITs and the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad.

The 16 Indian Institutes of Technology and ISM Dhanbad together offer some 10,000 seats.

Apart from the elite tech schools, institutes that offer admission based on JEE- Advanced rankings are the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, Rae Bareli, five Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

The JEE-Advanced results announced by IIT Kharagpur, which coordinated the exam this year, put 19,416 candidates in the common merit list. Last year, some 16,000 students had qualified.

The 19,416 meritorious students are among 27,151 candidates who qualified out of the 1.27 lakh who appeared for the JEE-Advanced exam on May 25. The 7,735 who have not made it to the merit list may be considered for seats in IITs depending on vacancies — that is, if those ranked above them decide against enrolling in the premier institutes.

Admission to IITs is now conducted through a two-tier test. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) conducts the JEE-Main, which the IITs consider the first filter.

Nearly 13 lakh students had appeared for the JEE-Main this year. Based on their performance, nearly 1.54 lakh were declared eligible to sit for the JEE-Advanced. Of them, 1.27 lakh sat for the final test.

Chitraang Murdia, who appeared from the IIT Delhi zone and belongs to Rajasthan, topped the JEE-Advanced, securing 334 out of a total of 360 marks, the IITs said in a statement.

Ms. Aditi topped among women, with an all-India rank of 7. Only five girls made it to the top 100.

Girls accounted for 11 per cent of those who found a place on the merit list.

The choice-filling portal will be opened tomorrow. It will stay open till June 24 for the first phase of allotment of seats at the IITs and ISM Dhanbad. Three rounds of counselling will be conducted.

The 30 NITs will admit students on the basis of a combined merit list the CBSE will prepare through 60 per cent weightage to the JEE-Main score and 40 per cent to normalised board scores.