According to present facts and figures, the average number of students competing for a seat has gone up from 55 to as high as 77. The competition to get a seat into the prestigious IITs has just got tougher this year.

About one lakh more students have applied for this year's Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), up from the 2.43 lakh who appeared for the test last year.

Interestingly, the height of competition to enter into the IIT is tougher than the other well known global universities like Harvard and the Masachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where the average number of students' competing for a seat is only eight.

"There has been a uniform increase of 25%-30% across all zones, which has led to the overall increase in applicants," said N M Bhandari, organizing JEE chairman.

N Venkataramani chairman of JEE 2008 at IIT said, the number in the western zone have increased from 46,000 plus in 2007 to 62,000.

This year, though the trend has changed as compared to last decade. While in 2007, the introduction of stringent eligibility rules had resulted in the applications falling from 2.9 lakh to 2.4 lakh.

Earlier, the JEE was not a single level exam. The IITs used to conduct a screening test to shortlist candidates. The students who have been short listed then appeared for the main subjective type examination. This year, the exam pattern has been revamped. This year there will be two papers. Each paper will be of three hours, and will contain a mix set of question from mathematics, chemistry and physics and students will get individuals marks for the three subjects.