The National Institutes of Technology (NITs) on Wednesday adopted the new Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) system for admission to undergraduate engineering programmes from 2013. It has decided to give 40 per cent weightage to board results and 60 per cent weightage to the main exam for preparing the merit list.
However, the JEE was adopted with a small change as the students seeking admission to these institutes would not have to appear for the advance test as had been proposed earlier.
The 40 per cent weightage to the Class XII board results will be given after the process of normalisation of state boards’ marks which would be looked at by a committee comprising NIT directors. The committee will look into validation of the formulae already proposed for normalisation of marks with the respective board results.
The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) had last week approved a formula for admission to undergraduate engineering programmes in centrally funded institutions which advocated the preparation of merit lists on the basis of the performance of the 20 percentile of successful board-exam candidates in the proposed advance test.
The government’s proposal of a common entrance test for the IITs and other centrally funded institutes was rejected by IIT Kanpur and IIT Delhi, both of whose senates had announced separate entrance tests for their institutes.
Under the new system, for admission to all the centrally funded institutes like the NITs there would be 40 percentage weightage for performance in Class XII (after normalisation of marks), 30 per cent weightage for the main test and 30 per cent in the advanced test. However, for admission to IITs, the final merit list will include scores of the advanced test and the aspirant will have to be among the top 20 percentile in the State Board.
Maharashtra, Gujarat and Haryana have already announced their decision to adopt the government’s proposal for their State-run engineering colleges. States and private engineering colleges can also adopt the common entrance test but will have to give minimum 40 per cent weightage to Board results. Several deemed-to-be-universities have expressed their willingness to adopt the common national test.
