About 14 lakh students appeared for the Joint Entrance Examination (Main) 2014, conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Sunday.

Students who clear the exam will be eligible to take admission in the undergraduate engineering programmes in NITs, IIITs and other centrally funded technical institutes in India.

The exam was held at 150 centres across the country and the result will be declared May 3.

It was paper-based and held offline. The online examination will be held April 9, 11 and 12.

After the exam, Yash Raj Rai who is aspiring for an engineering seat, said: "The paper today was very easy and I am hoping for a 120+ rank."

Another candidate Bobby Singh told IANS he found the Mathematics paper tough but others easy.

Mohit Sharma said: "Chemistry and Physics were easy but Mathematics was difficult."

FIITJEE expert Ramesh Batlish said only top 150,000 students from different categories who clear Paper I of the JEE (Main) will qualify for JEE (Advanced).

"Those who also qualify to be in the top 20 percentile of their respective class XII boards and clear the JEE (Advanced) cut-off will make it to the final merit list of the IITs," he added.