With some tweaking in the proposed format, National Institute of Technology (NITs) on Wednesday adopted the common entrance for admission to undergraduate programme from 2013 giving 40 per cent weight age to board results and 60 per cent weight age to the main exam for preparing merit list.

Students seeking admission to these institutes would not have to appear for the advance test as had been proposed earlier.

"The formula worked out is very simple...40 per cent weightage to board results and 60 per cent to the mains," chairman of the standing committee of NITs, R A Mashelkar, told PTI here after a meeting chaired by HRD minister Kapil Sibal.

He said the 40 per cent weight age to the board results will be given after the process of normalization of marks of the state board. A committee comprising NIT directors would be set up to look into the issue of normalisation.

Officials said the committee would basically look into validation of the formula already proposed for normalization of marks with the respective board results.

The meeting comes in wake of the IITs arriving at a compromising formula last week for admission to undergraduate programmes, taking the top 20 percentile of successful candidates of their Boards for preparing merit list and their performance in the advance test.

The government had on May 28 announced the common entrance test for IITs and other centrally funded institutes.

Under the new system, for admission to all the centrally funded institutes like the NITs there would be 40 percentage weightage for performance in Class XII (after normalisation of marks), 30 per cent weightage to performance in main and 30 per cent in the advanced test.

Source: TOI

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The HRD ministry's call to carry an all-inclusive common engineering check seems to own split the Indian Institutes of Technology vertically. Indications are that IIT Delhi and Bombay may back IIT Kanpur in holding their own entrance check whereas Madras, Roorkee, Kharagpur and Guwahati can stand by the Centre's call.

If the present wave of resentment among college, that gathered momentum on Saturday, daily when IITK's call, is backed by their respective senates, it might augment the raft of entrance tests students take when their boards. IITK's senate referred to as the HRD ministry's call on admissions "academically and methodically unsound". college members in Delhi and Bombay conjointly expressed resentment that the issues raised by them, together with the 2014 roll-out, weren't addressed by the HRD ministry.

All India IIT college Federation secretary Prof A K Mittal said, "The IIT Kanpur's call shouldn't be seen in isolation. we have a tendency to are talking to all or any IITs and there's resentment among them on the very fact that the IITs won't conduct their own exam which the introduction has been scheduled for 2013 despite our reservations on the preparedness."

But IIT Guwahati director Gautam Barua criticised IITK senate's call. "I am unhappy that they need to require this extreme step for such atiny low matter. Right now, we have a tendency to aren't talking regarding one common entrance check. we have a tendency to are essentially talking regarding... having a typical exam for NITs, IITs and IIITs. whether or not this ends up in a typical exam for everyone, solely time can tell," he said. His IIT Kharagpur counterpart Damodar Acharya said the establishment failed to have any objection to the Centre's move.

Source: TOI

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From 2013, aspiring candidates for IITs and other central institutes like NITs and IIITs will have to sit under new a format of entrance test which will also take plus two board results into consideration.

The announcement was made today by HRD minister Kapil Sibal after chairing a meeting of the joint councils of IITs, NITs and IIITs.

Emphasising that there was no "dissent" among the councils about the move, he acknowledged there "was a lot of resistance during the consultation process from the IIT system". IIT senates especially the faculty federation had been opposing the new format.

But Sibal said the selection of the candidates for the IITs and other central institutes would be different even as all the aspirants will have to go through all the steps under new format. This system will replace the IIT-JEE and AIEEE.

Students will sit for a main test and an advance test conducted on the same day.

For admission to all the centrally funded institutes, there would be 40 percentage weightage for performance in class XII (after normalisation of marks), 30 per cent weightage to performance in main and 30 per cent in the advanced test.

In case of IITs, there would be a filtering process involved. The board results and the main test will be given 50 per cent weightage each. Only the top 50,000 students will be selected for the advance test after taking into account their performance in the board results and the main result.

"The merit only in advanced examination will be considered for admission" to the IITs, Sibal said.

At the same time, he added, the IIT council has agreed to move to the other system by 2015.

Explaining the selection of candidates under the new format for the IITs, one of the IIT directors said results of advance test of only those students who have crossed the "barrier" of the 50 per cent weightage to board marks and mains will be counted while preparing the merit list.

Even as the process of selection to the IITs would be different then other institutes, he said the counselling to IITs and other institutes will be done jointly and allotment of seats will be done together.

"I as a student will get a rank in IIT and also get a rank for NIT and IIIT. I will give my choice in both and depending on which is my first choice in either, I will get a seat," he explained.

While the main test shall be multiple type paper, he nature and modalities of the advanced shall be determined by the joint admission board (JAB) of the IITs.

Sibal made it clear that JAB of the IIT system would have complete control on matters such as paper setting, evaluation and preparation of merit list over the advanced test while CBSE will provide administrative support for conduct of the examination.

For conduct of the main examination, an expanded joint admission board will be constituted including the NIT, other centrally funded institutes and state government representatives.

Noting that state boards would have the flexibility to adopt the new format the determine their own relative weightages, the minister said Maharashtra, Gujarat and Haryana have evinced interest adopting the new format.

Source: TOI

Ahead of the crucial joint council meeting of IITs and NITs tomorrow on the new format of entrance test, Super-30 founder Anand Kumar, well known for getting over 300 students from marginalised sections into the IITs, has suggested making the test more "transparent" and conducting it twice a year.

In a letter to HRD minister Kapil Sibal, Anand, from whose coaching institute 27 out of 30 students cracked the IIT-JEE this year, has also suggested that students from rural areas be given three chances instead of two at present to qualify for the examination.

He said the proposed format for entrance test would lead to over-dependence on coaching as students would have to take coaching for doing well in aptitude test, for subject test as well as for doing well in class XII, whose marks will also be taken into account for preparing the merit list.

Citing CBSE class X results this year where students scored high grades, he said such high marks are never given in the state board exams and that can put lakhs of students from state boards at a disadvantage in weightage to class XII marks.

According to Anand, to reduce dependency on private coaching institutes, the proposed single entrance test papers be set jointly by team of professors of CBSE and IIT, so as to provide a level-playing field to all students, including those from the state boards.

He also urged Sibal to announce the timings, structure and the format of the proposed single test at the earliest so that the students could start preparations accordingly.

He also suggested that all papers under the new format should be based on 'multiple choice questions'.

Source: TOI

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With a fortnight left for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) that determines admissions to Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), a sense of anxiety is prevalent among the hundreds of IIT aspirants in the city, who may be the last batch to take the the test in its current pattern.

As per current JEE rules, a student can attempt the examination twice, once when he is in class XII and again, a year later. But with the recent proposal of the Ministry of Human Resource Development to have a common entrance examination for all IITs, National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and Indian Institute of Science, this might change. The IIT council has proposed that a weightage of 40 per cent be given to class XII marks, and has recommended that students be evaluated with questions on aptitude, comprehension and critical thinking and advanced examination, besides testing them on physics, mathematics and chemistry.

With talks of several such changes doing the rounds, students, understandably, have their share of anxieties. A class XII student of Vidya Mandir, who aspires to get into IIT- Madras, is worried about what will happen if he does not get a good rank this year and the new pattern is implemented. “My school marks will not be that great because my entire focus is on JEE. If I have to take the exam again next year, I stand to lose, with inadequate school grades,” he said. “This year, to get into IIT- Madras, I have to get into the first 100 ranks, but getting in is made even more difficult because most students from Andhra Pradesh, especially all the high-scoring ones usually opt for it . I would ideally want to wait and take the exam again, but considering the confusion over the proposed changes, I will take any IIT admission that comes my way,” he said.

Nearly five lakh students are expected to take the exam on April 8, as compared to the 4.86 lakh in 2011, of which nearly 8,583 students are in Tamil Nadu. The largest pool of applications this year has come from Kanpur, followed by Andhra Pradesh from the Madras zone that comprises the four southern states and Pondicherry.

Even as the buzz around a likely change in the JEE pattern is growing by the day, it looks like the proposed common test will not be free of hiccups. .

Some states are worried that the new pattern will exclude students from rural areas. Officials from the Higher Education Department of Tamil Nadu have asked for time to analyse the pattern of the test and decide if it will suit students of the State. Even the IITs in Kanpur and Delhi have disapproved of the way the Ministry has been pushing for the changes. Recently, the All-India IIT Faculty Federation that has teachers from all IITs as members strongly opposed the proposed changes on grounds that the reforms would prevent students with high aptitudes and knowledge from getting in.

Shobana Mohan, a physics teacher at a city school said since there was very little clarity on the rules, aspirants were in the dark as to what should they focus on if they were not able to get a good rank this year. Similarly, others who are starting their preparations now are also unsure. “Will their marks in both class XI and class XII be considered and how difficult will the technical questions get, or should they start focusing on aptitude and comprehension now?” she asked.

Over the years, the JEE pattern has become simpler so that it can be more accessible to students, say trainers, especially with negative marking being removed from sections such as reasoning and matrices as seen last year. But the unpredictability still remains, particularly on how many of the topics come from class XI and class XII.

“I would ask them to focus on this year's test alone. Expect surprises, think logically and don't try to conquer the question paper like you do in the board exam. If the paper is easy, it will become more difficult to qualify,” says K. Ravi, a trainer. “The attempt should be to get into the best 10,000s, because next year, the pattern might change, and the ones wanting to attempt the examination again, might have to prepare for a new pattern all over again,” he added.

Source: The Hindu

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