For an engineering aspirant, March and April is the time when stress levels hit the roof. Apart from the difficult-to-crack Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for the prestigious Indian Institute for Technology (IIT), there is the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) for admissions into the National Institutes of Technology (NIT), as well as scores of State examinations and separate entrance tests for deemed universities.
It was in this background that the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry recently proposed a single national-level entrance examination, called the Indian Science Engineering Eligibility Test (ISEET), to replace IIT-JEE and AIEEE from 2013 onwards. Depending on the success of ISEET, other universities and colleges would come under its ambit.
The proposed national-level test for engineering follows a similar one for medical aspirants. The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medical courses is set to debut in 2013. However, some States including Karnataka have asked for time before this can be conducted.
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As per the proposal, details of which are still being chalked out, ISEET will have two sections — one to test the aptitude of the aspirant, and the other testing Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics at a Class XI and XII level. Though the papers will be set by the IITs, the exam will be conducted by the CBSE.
However, what sets apart ISEET from IIT-JEE and AIEEE is that a certain weightage (with some reports saying 40 per cent) would be given to board examination results.
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While the proposal has come under scrutiny from various State Governments, with many requesting time to process the possibility of integrating State-level tests with ISEET, the examination, especially the proposal to include IITs under ISEET, has received mixed reactions from coaching institutes.
Sharad Awasthi, Head of Academics, of the education services company Career Launcher Educate, said that a solitary examination would benefit engineering aspirants. “Students will be relieved of the torture of taking many entrance examinations in April-May, just after their XII board examination,” he said.
On the contrary, Director of FIITJEE R.L. Trikha believed that having only one examination had a flip side to it. “With only one examination, the stress of the child would be at the highest for the crucial examination. There is a variation in mood of the child on a day-to-day basis – that is, the candidate may or may not click on that particular day. Also, what would happen if a bright child fell ill on that day itself?” he said.
Mr. Trikha was also vehement in his belief that IITs should be kept out of the examination. “IIT-JEE is a brand in itself. It focuses on application of concepts rather than learning of concepts. ISEET would either lower the level of JEE to the AIEEE examination, or bring up the AIEEE levels, which would affect intake into institutions,” he said.
However, calling this logic a fallacy, Mr. Awasthi said: “If we compare the rank list of IIT-JEE and AIEEE for the last three years, we find that a very large percentage of candidates are the same in both the rank lists.”
Bone of contention
The points of disagreement also extended to the weightage given to board examination marks.
According to Mr. Awasthi, this would bring in greater emphasis on XI and XII studies. “It would also reduce the tendency to rush to outstation coaching hubs that have perpetuated the practice of ‘dummy schools',” he said.
While contending that school was essential to a child's all-round growth, Mr. Trikha said that since board examination marks vary from State to State, it does not provide an even competitive platform.
“In some States, 80 per cent is a good score, while in others, 90 per cent is not good enough. Even normalisation or percentiles do not work in the long-run,” he said. He thinks coaching centres will remain because they fill a void in the teaching quality in schools.
Both heads of coaching centres agreed that the inclusion of aptitude test would lead to an improved method of testing the candidates – where analytical, logical and reasoning skills would be evaluated.