New Delhi: Students aspiring for entry into the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) were put on notice on Monday that it would be as important for them to perform well in their class XII boards as in the test that will qualify them for admission to the country’s premier engineering schools.
The IITs, which are seeking to improve the quality of their student intake, will soon work out a way to give more weightage to an applicant’s class XII marks in the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE), the entrance test conducted for admission to the 15 IITs, the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, and the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad.
The aim is to make students study equally hard for their class XII boards as they do for the IIT-JEE and to discourage the mushrooming growth of expensive coaching centres that prepare aspirants for entry into the country’s premier engineering institutes, diverting their attention from the school-leaving exams. It’s a part of a broad effort to revamp the elite institutions that claim to attract the best and the brightest of Indian students.
“Several teaching shops have mushroomed all over the country, which basically persuade students to get into the IITs,” human resource development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal said on Monday. “This makes students neglect their class XII exams. We want the money minting business of the coaching institutes to stop.”
Seeking stronger schooling: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. Officials at the IITs argue that the quality of students who gain admission has been declining rapidly since 2005. Harikrishna Katragadda / Mint
So far, students appearing for IIT-JEE have needed a score of 60% and above in their XII boards to take the exam. Students belonging to the scheduled caste or scheduled tribe categories require at least 55% to qualify for taking the test.
While the minister said he would ideally like the eligibility criteria of a minimum of 60% marks in class XII boards to be raised to 80-85%, officials at the IITs said the institutes were considering two ways of enhancing the weightage.
“One way is that the minimum eligibility criteria of 60% to write the IIT-JEE exams is raised to a higher percentage, say 70-80%. The other way is to work out a marking system where, while assessing a student for admission into the IITs, 70% of weightage is given to his score at IIT-JEE and 30% to his marks in plus two,” said IIT Guwahati director Gautam Barua.
The announcement follows a series of reforms introduced in IIT-JEE in 2006, when the HRD ministry first approved the factoring in of school results in the admission process for the elite schools. Only those students who secure a first class or equivalent in the class XII examinations and pass JEE were made eligible for admission to the IITs.