The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) will admit students who excelled in Olympiads to undergraduate programmes from the academic year 2025-26.
Under ‘Science Olympiad Excellence’ (ScOpE), two supernumerary seats per programme will be offered with one seat exclusively for girl students.
Candidates who have excelled in National and International Olympiads, which are competitive examinations that assess students in various academic subjects and skills, are eligible to apply. The admission will be outside the JEE (Advanced) Framework.
The eligibility criteria, such as age and educational qualification, will follow that of JEE (Advanced) for the respective year. Candidates should not have been admitted to an IIT in the previous year.
Applications for the first batch will begin from June 3. The guidelines and business rules are available at https://ugadmissions.iitm. ac.in/scope.
IIT-M director V. Kamakoti said it took up the new admission criteria based on the vision that “the world’s grandest puzzles aren’t solved by memorising textbooks but by those who dare to dismantle them, piece by piece, and create new wonders for the future generations”.
Urging students who excel in Olympiads to apply under the initiative, he said: “To those who have proven their brilliance on the international stage of Science Olympiads, we don’t just offer admission; we offer a sanctuary where their insatiable curiosity will find its most fertile ground amid the blissful IIT-M flora and fauna.”
A separate ScOpE rank list, based on the performance and achievements in five Olympiads — Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Informatics, and Biology — will be created to allot seats under the scheme.
Admission based on ScOpE rank list will be through https://jeeadv.iitm.ac.in/scope maintained by IIT-Madras and not the Joint Seat Allocation Authority portal.
To be eligible for admission under ScOpE, candidates must be Indian nationals or Overseas Citizen of India/Persons of Indian Origin, whose card was issued before March 4, 2021.
Additionally, in the last four years, they must have participated, in at least one of the following: Mathematics: International Mathematical Olympiad Training Camps organised by Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE); physics, chemistry, and biology: HBCSE’s orientation-cum-selection camps for science subjects; Informatics: International Olympiad for Informatics Training Camp organised by the Indian Association for Research in Computing Science.
Published – March 11, 2025 12:27 am IST