Updated on: Thursday, July 16, 2015
In an unexpected turn, nearly 600 students interested to opt for engineering did not take an IIT seat though they cleared the JEE (Advanced) examination. As a result, the IIT's are now likely to lower the percentage of marks for admission in order to include people from the weaker strata of the society. The IITs will now be open for admission to students with scores as low as 31 out of 504, or with a percentage of 6.1 so as to fill the vacant seats.
The difficult standard of the JEE (Advanced) 2015 paper and use of negative marking resulted in less students securing the required cut-off. IITs had to therefore lower the bar for qualifying in the general category from 35 percent to 24.5 percent. For the reserved categories, it reduced the percentage to 12.25 percent. A third category is being proposed for students who will be sent for a preparatory course provided they've got at least 6.1 percent. The IITs, following the new formula for admission has apparently already admitted students in the preparatory programme across 18 institutes. Before the students gets admission into the B.Tech programme, they would be required to go through a one year long preparatory course.
While the qualifying marks are being reduced, 31 students who qualified in JEE (Advanced) and were eligible for seats in the IITs have been rejected for admission after they failed to meet the criteria of Class 12 exams. The trend seems to have taken a drastic downfall since last year, when a student had to be in the top 20 percentile of their respective boards to be eligible for an IIT seat. This year, the IITs has relaxed the eligibility criteria by allowing students who had scored at least 75 percent in Class 12 or were in the top 20 percentile of the board. As a result, only 31 students failed to make the cut off this time.