Engineering entrance exams are the most competitive entrance exams in India, there are several entrance exams for different universities from the TANCET and Karnataka CET in the south to the Delhi CEE, WB JEE, Orissa JEE there are several exams that has to be taken to enrol in to a course of B.Tech or B.E in the university that belongs to the corresponding state.

There are two prestigious entrance tests that are conducted every year for the entrance into the top engineering colleges in the country, the AIEEE exam is held in may every year as an objective type question paper is providedfor the evaluation of the students. These scores are then used in the counselling of the students that take place consequently and can be used by the students to get an admission into any of the NIT’s across India and several Deemed universities that dot the country, many of these universities are popular in their own right. The IIT-JEE exam is held to fill up the seats at the premier engineering institutes in India, the Indian Institute of technology. The JEE exam consists of two parts, one is the screening and the second is the main exam, only the students who have secured the required cut-off marks in the screening exams are allowed to sit for the main exam.

The other premier institute of engineering like the BITS Pilani conduct their own entrance exams. BITS, Pilani conducts an online exam at several exam centres and this test is called BIT-SAT. The other deemed universities like the Vellore institute of technology also conducts its own test for the intake of the students.

Although many of the universities have entrance exams, some of them still fill up the seats through the evaluation of student with the class XII marks and conducting interviews to select candidates, this works only if the applications that the university or the college receives are less and manageable otherwise the screening of the students becomes a difficult job.

The minimum academic qualification for admission to an engineering college in India is a pass in the final examination of 10+2 (Class XII) or its equivalent. Many universities also have lateral entry schemes for students taking up different diploma courses after the 10th class.

For B.E. and B.Tech courses, one needs to have physics and Mathematics and any one of Chemistry, Biotechnology, Computer Science and Biology. For the B.Arch or B. Planning courses a student needs to have mathematics as compulsory subject with at least 50 % marks in aggregate at 10+2 level. Although there are several universities that have dropped the eligibility criterion to some extent, the rules more or less remain the same.