Senate recommends two options for ranking candidates
The Indian Institute of Technology – Madras is ready to go with the Centre's Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) from the next academic year for admission to its undergraduate engineering courses, Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT-M, said on Saturday.
After the original request came from the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, the IIT-M's Senate had a fairly thorough discussion in its 254 meeting on May 3 and recommended two options for ranking candidates for admission to IITs.
Deliberating on the proposal for the new JEE based on a single examination, the Senate favoured a single-day entrance examination consisting of a main test with multiple choice questions in mathematics, physics and chemistry and an advanced quantitative test based on the same subjects.
The latter test would have problems with numerical answers, possibly in multiple parts.
Option one was the introduction of the concept of gating. All candidates with weighted marks above a pre-announced Minimum Qualifying Mark (MQM) would be considered for ranking using the marks obtained in the advanced quantitative paper.
Stating that this was its preferred option, IIT-M's Senate suggested using weighted mark obtained from Board percentile rank (0.4) + main test marks (0.6) to be used for gating purpose alone. The Centre's proposal has given it a 50-50 weightage. Otherwise, the proposal is pretty much the same as recommended by the IIT-M Senate, says Mr. Ramamurthi.
It also strongly recommended that advanced quantitative marks alone be used for ranking the candidates for IIT admission. Only those candidates with the weighted mark higher than the pre-announced MQM will be ranked using the advanced quantitative paper marks. This recommendation is also in sync with the Centre's proposal.
(The weights recommended by the Senate for the three components, namely, Board percentile rank, JEE-Main marks and JEE-Advanced marks are given in brackets).
As the Council of IITs was eager to include the weightage of Board marks for screening, option two suggested a formula of weighted mark obtained from Board percentile rank (0.2) + main test marks (0.4) + advanced quantitative test marks (0.4) to be used for ranking candidates for IIT admission.
In this option, the IIT-M Senate basically suggested reduction in weightage given to Board marks. “We came up with the second option since we need not go back and forth,” said Mr. Ramamurthi emphasising that the institute was ready to admit students as per the new JEE from 2013 itself.
Keywords: IIT-Madras, Joint Entrance Examination, JEE
It's reall baffling to common man why esteemed IIT's have different views on selecting students for engineering students no matter what they want to teach them in 4 years for the award of Bachelors degree!
In any democracy, it is fair to have an individual opinion on any selection procedure, but it is illogical that each IIT senate opts to have its own entrance despite their ultimate objective is one and same.
Unfortunatel, neither Mr Sibal nor his kith and kin would not have studied at any IIT, else he would not have decided admission criteria unilaterally without taking IITs into confidence!
The IIT's can disagree with the new system, but cannot have one entrance exam for each IIT. Also, it's high time that Indian Govt plan one IIT, IIIT, NIT, IIM for each state in the next three years and have common entrance exam each of them.
Govt should focus on developing infrastructure at these institutes and making them contribute to nation building.
Its a very bad decision. The reason why IIT's stand apart is due to the difficulty in getting a admission there. In fact JEE is considered one of the toughest examinations in the world. Its one of the prestigious examinations in the country. For getting marks in board examination, one needs a good memory than problem solving capability (one may tell that it can be developed with good coaching, but still all that go for coaching does not crack JEE). Board exam marks must not be included in rank calculation, however it can put like this, a person with high rank must have atleast 80% marks in board exam to get an admission.
Eventually, a common test is the solution for a large country like India, as is now in U.S.A and in China, for example. In the U.S., students write a common SAT test all around the country, and apply for colleges based on SAT scores, and their high school marks, extra curricular activities etc. This sorts out students going for prestigious institutions like Harvard, Stanford and also to a range of other institutions.
Having different exams for different institutions, different disciplines just creates a huge complicated structure, difficult for students, parents and institutions alike.
..said Mr. Ramamurthi emphasising that the institute was ready to admit
students as per the new JEE from 2013 itself.
Institute is ready, but what about test-takers, the students? IIT
entrance preparation is a two year process and students deserve an
appropriate notice before hand. As an academician, Mr Ramamurthi is
expected to think beyond politician's lines and to have a sense of what
is good for the lakhs of test-takers.
Please Email the Editor