NIT Home State vs Other State 2026: HS seats closed a median 36% later

In JoSAA 2026, a Home State seat at an NIT usually closed well after the Other State seat in the same program. Across 322 programs at 30 institutes, the typical Home State (HS) OPEN seat closed 36% later than its Other State (OS) twin. The Home State seat closed later in 305 of those 322 programs.

A later closing rank means the seat was easier to get. So for most NIT programs, a candidate applying from the institute's home state could get in with a lower JEE Main rank than a candidate from outside.

How we compared

• Institutes: the 31 NITs and IIEST Shibpur, which our data groups with the NITs.
• Seat pool: OPEN category, gender-neutral seats. Both HS and OS OPEN seats are ranked by the JEE Main Common Rank List (CRL), so the two closing ranks can be compared directly.
• Pairs: a program counts only if it had both an HS and an OS closing rank in 2026. That gives 322 programs at 30 institutes.
• Closing rank: the latest closing rank over all JoSAA rounds of the year.
• Gap: the HS closing rank divided by the OS closing rank. A value of 1.36 means the HS seat closed 36% later.
• Left out: NIT Nagaland, where our data has no HS seats in these programs, and NIT Srinagar, which uses Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh quotas instead of HS. At NIT Goa, the HS quota in our data covers Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, and Lakshadweep; Goa candidates have a separate Goa quota, which is not included here.

In the 2026 data, NITs had 3,553 OPEN gender-neutral HS seats and 3,780 OS seats, so the two pools are close in size.

The gap at every institute

Sorted from the widest gap to the narrowest. "Median HS/OS" is the typical gap across that institute's programs. The CSE columns show B.Tech Computer Science and Engineering.

Institute	Programs	HS closed later in	Median HS/OS	CSE HS	CSE OS
NIT Mizoram	7	7	18.39	5,22,326	41,038
NIT Manipur	10	10	8.08	2,14,067	43,239
NIT Agartala	14	14	5.74	81,209	24,527
NIT Sikkim	6	6	5.25	1,18,264	31,060
NIT Meghalaya	5	5	4.26	1,27,321	28,662
NIT Puducherry	5	5	3.73	65,630	19,869
NIT Arunachal Pradesh	6	6	3.52	1,02,529	31,966
NIT Goa	5	5	2.19	26,898	16,638
NIT Hamirpur	11	11	2.15	25,076	13,866
NIT Silchar	6	6	1.95	32,817	13,993
NIT Raipur	11	11	1.91	24,183	16,439
NIT Delhi	8	8	1.50	10,936	8,669
NIT Rourkela	23	23	1.49	9,635	4,266
NIT Warangal	17	17	1.46	4,034	2,581
NIT Tiruchirappalli	9	9	1.46	4,015	1,373
NIT Uttarakhand	5	5	1.43	34,387	22,140
NIT Jalandhar	15	15	1.40	15,803	13,411
NIT Surathkal	11	11	1.34	3,331	1,954
NIT Kurukshetra	19	19	1.31	9,766	8,701
NIT Jamshedpur	8	8	1.21	11,833	9,574
NIT Calicut	12	12	1.21	8,814	5,769
NIT Patna	17	17	1.19	18,862	17,282
VNIT Nagpur	13	12	1.14	8,632	7,419
MANIT Bhopal	11	11	1.13	11,922	10,512
SVNIT Surat	15	14	1.13	9,327	9,517
NIT Durgapur	12	9	1.11	17,358	12,281
MNNIT Allahabad	10	7	1.10	6,770	5,375
MNIT Jaipur	10	8	1.07	6,143	5,868
IIEST Shibpur	13	9	1.04	22,299	18,799
NIT Andhra Pradesh	8	5	1.02	22,031	22,225

The NIT Goa CSE figure rests on a single HS seat.

Where the gap is widest

The seven institutes with the widest gaps are in the North East and Puducherry. At NIT Mizoram, Manipur, Sikkim, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, HS CSE seats closed after rank 1,00,000, while OS CSE seats at the same institutes closed between 28,662 and 43,239. So at these institutes the HS seats reached much further down the merit list.

Among the older, larger NITs the gap is smaller but still clear. At NIT Tiruchirappalli, HS CSE closed at 4,015 against 1,373 for OS, almost three times later. At NIT Rourkela it was 9,635 against 4,266.

Where the two quotas are close

At the other end, the typical gap was under 10% at four institutes: NIT Andhra Pradesh (2%), IIEST Shibpur (4%), MNIT Jaipur (7%) and MNNIT Allahabad (9.7%). These are also where most of the exceptions are. HS closed earlier than OS in only 17 of the 322 programs, and 15 of those were at MNNIT Allahabad, MNIT Jaipur, IIEST Shibpur, NIT Durgapur and NIT Andhra Pradesh.

In Computer Science, only two institutes had an HS seat closing earlier: SVNIT Surat (9,327 HS, 9,517 OS) and NIT Andhra Pradesh (22,031 HS, 22,225 OS).

The pattern over three years

The gap has been steady. Using the same method, the median HS/OS gap across all paired programs was 43% in 2024, 37% in 2025 and 36% in 2026. By branch group in 2026, it ranged from 14% in Metallurgy and Materials to 67% in the science programs, with Computer Science at 43% and Electronics at 44%.

For Other State closing ranks at every NIT, see our NIT CSE ladder. To check any program under your own quota, use the cutoff explorer.

Computer Science and related programs at NITs, Home State quota, that closed earliest in 2026 (OPEN, gender-neutral):

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