Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) becomes the first IIT in the country to introduce Fine Arts and Culture Excellence (FACE) admission to the undergraduate programmes from the academic year 2025 – 26. The FACE admission aims to reward and promote students that have achieved excellence in fine arts and culture.

The opportunity not only promotes fine arts and culture but assures equal opportunity for all streams. Under this scheme, two seats per programme will be allotted across all BTech and BS programmes, of the two seats in each programme, one seat will be female-only, and the other will be gender-neutral.  

IIT Madras will be offering seats in each of its undergraduate programme through FACE admissions. By the creation of two supernumerary seats per programme for Indian Nationals and Overseas Citizens Of India / Persons of Indian Origin (OCI/PIO) candidates, who have chosen to be treated at par with Indian nationals at the time of JEE (Advanced) 2025 registration, will be eligible for FACE admission.  

Prof V Kamakoti, director, IIT Madras said, “IIT Madras is embarking on a new journey to admit students to her much-coveted undergraduate programmes in recognition of their excellence in fine arts and culture.”  
  

Eligibility criteria  

To be considered for the FACE admission, the candidates should satisfy all the following criteria to be eligible to apply for FACE admission to IIT Madras: 

• The candidate should be an Indian National by birth or naturalisation or OCI/PIO candidate, who has chosen to be treated at par with Indian Nationals at the time of JEE (Advanced) 2025 registration
    
• The candidate should have qualified in JEE (Advanced) 2025 and have obtained a rank in the Common Rank List (CRL) or category-wise rank list in JEE (Advanced) 2025. The position in the rank list may be in any of the categories for which rank lists are prepared, thereby ensuring that the benefits of reservations are not lost and the requisite academic requirement is not diluted
• The candidate should have obtained the minimum required marks in Class XII as per the eligibility criteria for IITs (Clause 26 of the Information Brochure (IB), JEE (Advanced) 2025)
• Candidates should have received recognition in at least one of the select categories in recognition of their excellence in fine arts and cultural activities

Application, ranking and seat allotment process 

A score will be assigned to each candidate based on their fine arts and culture excellence as per the category mentioned in Table. A separate FACE Rank List (FRL) will be prepared based on the total score obtained by the candidates based on their performance in various fine arts and culture events/awards/scholarships. 

The list of eligible awards/scholarships/recognitions mentioned in Appendix – A will only be considered for the preparation of FRL. The seat allotment will be, done in multiple rounds, based only on the FACE Rank List (FRL). Mere presence in the FRL does not guarantee admission. 

After a seat is allotted to a candidate in any round, the candidate is given the option to ‘Accept’ or ‘Reject’ the allotted seat and pay the seat acceptances fee, before a specified deadline for the the same. If the candidate rejects the seat, (s)he will be removed from the FACE seat allotment process permanently.