Despite parents and academics expressing their resentment over the new IIT admission procedure, students from Andhra Pradesh have eclipsed those from all other State Boards in the number of admissions to the prestigious institutes.
After the first round of counselling, nearly 1,800 students from the Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) have made it to different courses in the IITs. The Punjab board is a distant second with around 750 candidates.
CBSE takes honours
However, the CBSE, with its pan-India presence, pips all others with 5,500 students. Thirty different boa-rds in the country offer plus two-level education but only a few students have qualified from the remaining 27 boards while the CBSE, BIE and Punjab Board grabbed the major share.
Another interesting aspect is that despite the CSBE’s continued dominance, the performance of students of different boards has been on the rise.
Numbers fall
Numbers from Andhra Pradesh have fallen, partly owing to the 20 percentile factor, and also due to the three-layer entrance system from this year.
“The two-layer testing certainly affected preparations. Earlier, students concentrated only on the IIT-JEE and those interested in NITs used to prepare separately for the AIEEE exam,” says Srikanth, Director of Delta IIT Academy.
“The long gap of 50 days between JEE Main and JEE Advanced also had an effect [on the performance of the students].”
Several aspirants confident of clearing the JEE (Main) had their own doubts about being in the top 1.5 lakh candidates, and decided to concentrate on other entrance tests like BITS Pilani instead of the JEE (Adv).
Serious preparation began only after the Main results were out. While top students made it anyway, those on the fringes suffe-red due to the said aspects, agreed another trainer.
Many students also couldn’t adjust to the JEE (Adv) exam in such short time. Government Junior Lecturers Association (GJLA) president, P. Madhusudhan Reddy, also claims the “20 percentile norm” did them in.
