Although the number of students scoring high marks in Mathematics has come down this year, this might not result in a big change in the counselling process for engineering and medical admissions.
Using official data, A. Jayaprakash Gandhi, education consultant, said he expected only a small difference of “0.25 to 1.25” in the cut-off marks during counselling for different seats for both engineering and medical admissions.
In the cut-off calculation for engineering, 31 students have scored the maximum of 200 as compared to 44 last year.
A total of 609 students have scored over 199, while 751 students scored over 199 last year.
Similarly, the corresponding numbers of students scoring over 195 and 190 this year and last year are, respectively: 5,651 and 6,155; and 13,149 and 14,140, Mr. Gandhi said.
With Mathematics being seen as a “difficult” paper this year, the number of students scoring over 195 has come down to 9,903 from 18,178 last year; those scoring over 190 has fallen to 17,624 from 30,331 last year, and for scores over 185, the number of students has fallen to 25,129 from 42,245 last year.
However, Mr. Gandhi said, this had not resulted in a big change in the cut-off marks for engineering because of an increase in the number of students scoring well in Physics and Chemistry.
Incidentally, the pass percentage this year is the highest in a decade with 85.2 per cent of the students managing to secure at least a pass mark.
With the government considering lowering eligibility marks for engineering entrance, this might have an impact on the number of students managing to obtain admissions.
