IIT female-only seats 2026: OPEN seats closed a median 89% later

In JoSAA 2026, a female-only seat at an IIT usually closed far later than the gender-neutral seat in the same program. Across 316 programs at 23 IITs and IISc Bengaluru, the typical OPEN female-only seat closed 89% later, close to double the gender-neutral closing rank. The female-only seat closed later in 315 of the 316 programs.

A later closing rank means the seat was easier to get. So at almost every IIT program, a female candidate could reach a seat with a much higher JEE Advanced rank through the female-only pool than through the gender-neutral one.

How we compared

• Two seat pools: JoSAA splits seats into a gender-neutral pool and a female-only pool. Female-only seats go only to female candidates; gender-neutral seats are open to all.
• Institutes: the 23 IITs and IISc Bengaluru, all of which admit through JEE Advanced ranks in JoSAA.
• Seats compared: OPEN category, All India quota. Both seats in a pair are ranked by the JEE Advanced Common Rank List (CRL), so the two closing ranks can be compared directly.
• Pairs: a program counts only if it had both a gender-neutral and a female-only closing rank in 2026. That gives 316 programs.
• Closing rank: the latest closing rank over all five JoSAA rounds of the year.
• Gap: the female-only closing rank divided by the gender-neutral one. A value of 1.89 means the female-only seat closed 89% later.

The female-only pool is much smaller. In these 316 programs it had 1,473 seats against 5,837 gender-neutral seats, so about one OPEN seat in five was female-only. In 24 programs there was just one female-only OPEN seat, so a single candidate decided its closing rank.

The gap at every institute

Sorted from the widest gap to the narrowest. "Median gap" is the typical gap across that institute's programs. The CSE columns show B.Tech Computer Science and Engineering, OPEN. IISc has no B.Tech CSE in JoSAA.

Institute	Programs	Female-only closed later in	Median gap	CSE gender-neutral	CSE female-only
IIT Bombay	16	16	162%	67	395
IIT Delhi	23	23	158%	128	733
IIT Guwahati	12	12	143%	822	2,903
IIT Kanpur	15	15	132%	283	1,223
IIT Madras	18	18	132%	151	539
IIT Roorkee	19	19	107%	587	2,034
IIT Hyderabad	15	15	102%	680	2,220
IIT Kharagpur	24	24	98%	509	1,906
IIT Indore	12	12	87%	1,676	4,321
IIT Ropar	12	12	87%	3,214	6,869
IIT Patna	26	26	85%	3,635	9,393
IIT Gandhinagar	8	8	84%	2,315	5,437
IISc Bengaluru	4	4	80%	–	–
IIT Mandi	15	15	80%	3,762	8,245
IIT Bhubaneswar	8	8	79%	4,899	8,782
IIT Jodhpur	13	13	73%	3,755	7,847
IIT (BHU) Varanasi	17	16	72%	1,439	4,270
IIT Goa	4	4	70%	7,024	13,954
IIT (ISM) Dhanbad	18	18	67%	4,167	8,539
IIT Jammu	9	9	62%	7,218	14,701
IIT Bhilai	7	7	59%	8,886	13,285
IIT Dharwad	10	10	55%	8,332	14,069
IIT Palakkad	6	6	55%	7,625	12,457
IIT Tirupati	5	5	53%	6,030	8,942

Eight institutes had a median gap near or above 100%: IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Guwahati, IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, IIT Roorkee, IIT Hyderabad and IIT Kharagpur. These are also the eight IITs whose gender-neutral B.Tech CSE seat closed within the top 1,000. At IIT Tirupati, IIT Palakkad, IIT Dharwad and IIT Bhilai, the gap was 53% to 59%.

Across the 23 B.Tech CSE programs, the female-only seat closed a median 135% later.

Bigger gaps at the top ranks

The gap depends heavily on how early the gender-neutral seat closes. Grouping the 316 programs by their gender-neutral closing rank:

• Within the top 1,000: 22 programs, median gap 255%
• 1,001 to 5,000: 88 programs, median gap 139%
• 5,001 to 10,000: 94 programs, median gap 90%
• After 10,000: 112 programs, median gap 59%

The five widest gaps were all at the most sought-after programs: CSE at IIT Bombay (67 against 395), CSE at IIT Delhi (128 against 733), AI and Data Analytics at IIT Madras (226 against 1,119), the Mathematics and Computing dual degree at IIT Delhi (403 against 1,937) and CSE at IIT Kanpur (283 against 1,223).

By branch

Computer Science had the widest gap. Median gap by branch group in 2026:

• Computer Science and IT: 140% (64 programs)
• Other programs: 113% (25)
• Electrical: 112% (26)
• Electronics: 99% (18)
• Mechanical and Production: 95% (34)
• Science programs: 82% (47)
• Chemical: 72% (33)
• Metallurgy and Materials: 69% (27)
• Civil: 64% (24)
• Biotechnology: 59% (13)
• Architecture and Planning: 25% (5)

The only program where the female-only seat closed earlier was B.Arch at IIT (BHU) Varanasi: 28,480 gender-neutral against 27,708 female-only, with two female-only seats.

Three years, and how IITs compare with NITs

The gap has narrowed a little but stays large. Using the same method, the median gap was 99% in 2024 (292 programs), 96% in 2025 (297) and 89% in 2026 (316).

At NITs the gap is much smaller. For Other State OPEN seats it was a median 38% in 2026, as our NIT female-only analysis shows. For gender-neutral CSE closing ranks at every IIT and how they moved since 2024, see our IIT CSE ladder. To check any program for your own category and seat pool, use the cutoff explorer.

Computer Science and related programs at IITs, OPEN female-only seats, that closed earliest in 2026:

All ranks here are JEE Advanced CRL closing ranks from JoSAA 2026. A later closing rank means the seat was easier to get.