Opinion divided on counting class XII marks in IITs

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New Delhi: The opinion over making Class XII results count for IIT entrances has been divided. While career counselors say it will increase stress on students, IITs insist the move will rejuvenate the schooling system.

Speaking to CNN-IBN Career counselor Zubin Malhotra said, "I am of the opinion that it is wrong on just about every objective that this new format seeks to address. Let's try and understand what those are. We want to reduce pressure on students whereas what this is proposing to do is to make it a one-shot hit or miss exam every year. In my mind that increases the pressure on the students."
"Narayan Murthy says he is bemoaning the quality of the students who are entering IIT's and IIT professors have gone on record saying so, I don't think this will change it at all. If you want to improve that, fix the school education system," he added.
However, IIT Kanpur Director Professor Sanjay Dhande differs. "Now the most important motivation is that the school system in this country needs to be given a certain importance in terms of the admission process, either directly or indirectly. Therefore, in the case of the IITs, senates of the IITs has indicated some preferences. They had made very clear that the ranking and selection of the IITs will be based on the advance test."
Starting 2013, students appearing for the country's most prestigious engineering institutes will face a whole new system – class 12 board exam results will be taken into account along with a two-tier joint entrance examination.
Under the new structure decided by Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal and the IIT council, the IIT entrance exam will be split into two parts – main and advanced. Also, class 12 board exam marks will be given 50 per cent weightage.
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, adding that the IIT council has agreed to move to the other system by 2015.
(With additional information from PTI)