These engineering branches dominate IIT BTech students’ choices

Here is the graph representing the number of students applying for Computer Science Engineering (CSE) from 2019 to 2024

Mechanical Engineering has also been this year’s one of the most popular branches with 3,18,477 students applying it. In 2019, the candidate choice count for ME was 2,97,817, which had then drastically increased to 3,37,115 in 2020, but took a massive hit in popularity in 2021 when it slummed down to 2,52,906. There was a slight improvement in the popularity (2,78,629) in 2022 and 2023 (2,76,384).

Another popular branch this year is Electrical Engineering, with 3,12,631 students showing interest in it in 2024. Before 2024, it was only in 2020 when the number of candidates showing interest in this engineering branch had crossed three lakh (3,38,352). In 2023, a total of 2,86,966 students showed interest in EE. In 2022, a total of 2,80,724 and 2,80,724 candidates in 2021 had put EE as their desired branch. In 2019, too, the figure had failed to touch three lakh (2,92,267).

Here is the graph representing the number of students applying for Electrical Engineering (EE) from 2019 to 2024.

The number of students applying for Civil Engineering has seen some increase and decrease since the pandemic. As per JIC reports, the candidate choice count for Civil Engineering was 2,15,651 in 2019, which then decreased to 241096 in 2020 and further slumped to 1,82,000 in 2021. However, it then increased to 198620 in 2022, but took a hit again (to 1,95,248) in 2023. This year, though, there was a dramatic increase (2,22,027) in the number of candidates showing interest in this engineering branch.

Here is the graph showing the number of students applying for Civil Engineering from 2019 to 2024.

In CSE, the most popular IIT is IIT Bombay where a total of 25,481 choice count was recorded this year. A similar trend was observed in Mechanical Engineering where 19,469 students showed interest in IIT Bombay’s ME programme.

However, IIT Delhi turned out to be more popular for Electrical Engineering as 21,855 students showed interest in pursuing this four year programme from this IIT based in the capital of India. Delhi was also popular for Civil Engineering programme as 15,122 students showed interest in this IIT.

Interestingly, IIT Patna appeared as the most popular one in this year’s ‘candidate choice count for all courses’ list in JIC Report 2024, followed by IIT (BHU) Varanasi, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Kanpur and IIT Roorkee. However, it should be kept in mind that this does not determine the popularity of the institute, as this can also be due to more or less number of seats, programmes and a combination of various other factors.