As SC students shine, IITs skirt prep course

Updated on: Friday, May 27, 2011

In 1993-94, the IITs wrote to the government for permission to run a year-long preparatory course, a bridge programme to help quota students lagging behind in the JEE race. Now, things have come a full circle and for the second consecutive year, the tech schools have declared there would be no preparatory course for scheduled caste candidates, as more students have qualified than the number of seats available.

Popularly termed ‘prepies’ on campus, such students did not make the mark forcing the IITs to generously reduce cut-offs and make them attend special coaching. But over the years, enough SC students have done well and qualified for the IITs. Information provided by IIT-Kanpur, which organised JEE-2011, states that across India, 1, 950 scheduled caste students made the cut, as against 1, 442 seats reserved for them. Last year too, the scenario was the same when 1, 773 SC candidates qualified for the JEE to go on and occupy 1, 426 seats.

“SC students are definitely doing better than before. Plus the number of seats has also gone up,” said IIT-Madras director M S Ananth. Clearly, SC students have come a long way. In 2009, merely 967 SC students managed to qualify, compelling the IITs to put 473 candidates through the preparatory programme in order to fill the remaining seats. Stating that parents are getting more conscious of social factors and importance of education, a former IIT-Madras JEE chairman observed that the students are now being sent for intensive coaching.

This is how the IITs select a quota student: Let’s assume the last general category student is admitted with an overall score of 100 (out of 480). Then the aggregate cut-off for an SC/ ST student would be 50 (after a 50% relaxation). To select students for the preparatory course, the IITs will further lower the qualifying score by another 50 per cent (25 marks). Sceptics, however, have an answer to why the preparatory programme is being done away with this year. The total number of seats across the IITs has gone up because of the OBC quota; the number of IITs too has risen.

“It is possible that the IITs had to pull down the cut-off for filling up all the (general category) seats. And with the relaxation formula a lot of SC students made it. This may have eventually resulted in abysmally low scores for quota candidates after the scores were relaxed by 50%,” said a former JEE chairman.

However, one trend remains – this year too there weren’t enough scheduled tribe and physically challenged candidates who qualified to fill up the reserved seats on offer. So, the IITs will hold the year-long preparatory course for 112 ST and 294 physically challenged candidates.

As SC students shine, IITs skirt prep course

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