IIT entrance exam may be conducted twice a year

Updated on: Thursday, April 12, 2012

Students will have a second shot at the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) in the same year if the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) has its way. The ministry has proposed conducting the test, replacing the IIT-JEE and the AIEEE for admission to IITs, NITs, IIITs and other centrally funded technical institutions, once in April and a second time in November or December the same year. It will release the details of the test on April 16.

"It is proposed that the JEE test will be conducted at least twice a year so that students who wish to attempt more than once can be allowed to do so in a year," said a note from the MHRD, giving details of the admission procedure from 2013.Experts suggested this could mean that the institutions may consider admissions twice a year, but IIT faculty were non-committal on the matter.

"Several reasons are being given for the proposal. Nothing has been finalized yet. The authorities expect the test to slowly be part of the admission process for all technical institutions in the country, some of which may consider admissions twice a year," said IIT-Madras director Bhaskar Ramamurthi. He said the MHRD reasons that if a candidate does badly in the first test in April, he/she could try again the same year. Another reason is that it could probably bring down the load of candidates taking the test in a year, making it easier to conduct the test.

The MHRD also suggested that from 2013, students aspiring for a seat in technical institutions cannot go easy on their language exam. The percentile rank of students in the board exams will also be specified in the JEE result and will be calculated based on the scores obtained in the boards in physics, chemistry, mathematics, one language subject, and the best subject among the electives taken by the student. "Often class 12 students taking the maths - physics - chemistry - computer science group slack off on the last subject because only the first three are considered for admission to a technical institute. With such a component, they will have to accord equal importance to computer science or an equivalent subject as well," said a Chennai school correspondent.

The test will have two papers - main and advance - lasting three hours each. Taking the views of the IIT Faculty Federation into consideration, the ministry has said the exam will not only test the foundational understanding of the candidate in physics, chemistry and mathematics learned throughout school, but also the psychometric and problem-solving abilities of students, as well as their problem formulation and incisive thinking capabilities. "IIT-JEE only has problems based on concepts in physics, chemistry and mathematics that students will have to provide solutions for," said professor Arindhama Singh, IIT-JEE chairman for the Madras zone.

In addition to the marks in the three components, a Centrally Funded Technical Institutes (CFTI) rank will also be given to each candidate. The rank will be determined according to the following weightage - board marks - 40%, main test - 30%, advance test - 30%. The ministry has said that the syllabus for the main and advance tests will be the same, and will be prescribed by the academic group of JEE each year.

Admission to IITs, NITs and IIITs will be through a single window online counselling system based on the CFTI rank. The ministry wants to create several committees - including a JEE Apex Board (JAB), a JEE Academic Group (JAG), a JEE Delivery Group (JDG) and a JEE Interface Group (JIG) - to conduct the exam efficiently. The JEE Apex Body will be constituted by IIT-NIT Council and will include representative directors of IIT, NIT and IIITs, a representative of the ministry and the chairman of CBSE and AICTE.

IIT entrance exam may be conducted twice a year

More Education news