In response to a report, ‘Academics oppose IISERs' admission method,' ( The Hindu May 18), the Joint Admissions Committee convener for the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER), Swapan Kumar Datta, has clarified that under the ‘Direct Admissions' category, the eligibility for a student from any examination board approved by the Ministry of Human Resource Development is to have aggregate marks above a cut-off indicated in a table given on the IISER admissions web site. ( >www.iiser-admissions.in/marks ).
The table was taken from a Department of Science and Technology web site (www.inspire-dst.gov.in/Inspire-Advertisement.pdf), where the criterion for setting the cut-off was the marks scored by the top one per cent students who appeared for the board examination and was based on the 2007 Class X and the 2009 Class XII results.
Prof. Datta says the IISER Joint Admissions Committee has never stated that it will only accept students who scored in the top one per cent of a given board for a given year, and the reason for using cut-offs is that lakhs of students are successful in the board examinations each year.
