The Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced), the online entrance test to IITs and Centrally-funded institutions held on Sunday, brought with it some surprises for the students.
They had to work out problems and were allowed to round up answers up to two decimal points. N.C. Sathvik, who took the paper in the city said, “In a way you can’t guess the answer and you have very low chances of getting the right answers by guessing them. It was unexpected and caught me off guard.” The paper, unlike JEE (Main) was not lengthy, he felt. “We could calculate answers as there are fewer questions.”
Balaji Sampath, director, Aha Guru Math and Science, said with the paper going online, the IIT was expected to change the format slightly. “IIT has been unhappy with single choice questions as students can guess the answers. To avoid it they made a different format like integer type, multiple correct options, match the following,” he said.
Earlier, students had to spend a lot of time after they have solved a problem in checking which option was correct as the question setters made the options confusing. “Now they have to just solve and enter the answer. I think this is a lot better for students and tests learning more than exam skill,” he said.
FIIT-JEE expert Ramesh Batlish said the students found the overall level of paper moderate. Mathematics section was difficult compared to physics and chemistry. Compared to Paper-1, students reported Paper-2 to be relatively tough. Also, students felt this year’s paper was tougher compared to that of 2017.
In the paper, equal weightage was given to Class XI and XII. The total marks of each paper reduced from 183 to 180. According to T.I.M.E institute, the section 2 of the paper with eight questions in the ‘Integer Type’ awarded no negative marks for wrong answers.
The scores from JEE (Advanced) will be used for admission to the IITs besides the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, the IISERs, the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, the Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy and the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology.
The results of JEE (Advanced) are expected on June 10.
