The All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) came as a respite for a majority of students after two major competitive exams, including the IIT-JEE that got over recently.
Around 13,000 students took the examination across 21 centres in the city on Sunday. It was conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education.
A majority of students said that Maths, Physics and Chemistry were moderately fine and the most important aspect was that one did not run out of time.
Faculty members of private coaching centres said that it is a significant improvement in the AIEEE, as in the previous years, students complained of insufficient time.
“None of our students complained on shortage of time. Questions were well framed keeping all streams in mind,” said Gita Prabhu, Director, AIMS Education, an institute which trains students for the examination.
Two major surprises the paper threw were jumbling up the eight mark and four mark questions and bringing in numerical problems in Chemistry. “In Chemistry, we get the subjective kind of problems only in the Boards, which require some tedious writing. We hadn't expected problems from Physical Chemistry for AIEEE,” said G. Bhuvana (name changed), a student of Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan Senior Secondary School.
Chemistry faculty with Aspire Learning Centre G. Iyyappan also agreed that around five questions in Physical Chemistry were based on the IIT-JEE format, which were unexpected but overall the paper was easier than last year's.
With negative marking in place, jumbling of the format meant that students read the instructions carefully.
Quite a good number of students also appeared for the Architecture Entrance Exam paper in the afternoon, which is slowly gaining in importance. “I hadn't heard about an architecture paper in AIEEE until I got the prospectus. It was comparatively easier as 70 marks were based on drawings, 200 on aptitude and 144 on maths,” said Gulzar Ahamed, who found the morning's Physics paper tough.
According to the AIEEE website, results would be declared on or before June 7.
