BANGALORE | NEW DELHI: Ayan Agrawal has just made it to the
biotech stream at IITDelhi this year. His rank in JEE
2012 was 3,532 and his XIIth standard CBSE percentage 77.2%. Had the new IIT
admission norms announced on Wednesday come into force last year, he would have
missed making it to the top 20 percentile of students in his board by a whisker.
That would also have cost him his IIT seat, never mind his JEE rank.
Even as the stressful reality of the new admission formula for IITs and a few other institutes sinks in, about half-a-million students who will fight it out for about 9,600 IIT seats next year are beginning to brace themselves for a harder grind.
"What the IIT Council has done is raise the bar further. Mr Sibal's (HRD Minister Kapil Sibal) dream of 'one nation, one exam' has resulted in three exams," says CV Kalyan Kumar, director, FIITJEE, a coaching institute. "Besides, there is the huge pressure of two tests - JEE Main and JEE Advanced," he adds. The IIT Council hammered out a new compromise formula on Wednesday, ending a month-long standoff between some IITs and the government.
Earlier, anyone with the skill and stamina for the unrelenting, 8-10 hours-a-day preparations for the IIT-JEE entrance exams that place great emphasis on practical problem-solving skills could take a shot at the IITs. The cutoff for IIT-JEE was only 60% marks in the mostly theoretical twelfth standard board exams.
But now, only students in the top 20 percentile of school boards will make it past the new two tier JEE exams. This year, for example, students scoring less than 78% in central boards such as the CBSE and 65-68% in state boards such as UP would not have made the cut.
Many fear this figure will gradually inch up as competition for elusive IIT seats grows, adding to more stress on students. This means students will have to add more hours for their school board exams.
Students will have to put in more hours for school board exam preparations even as they put in long hours for IIT-JEE.
"It's very unfair. This is worse than giving board results 50% weightage (another formula considered earlier)," says Abhishek Barthwal, 17, an IIT aspirant for 2013. "Earlier, you had the chance to appear. Now only toppers will appear. There will be immense pressure first to perform well in boards, then in the two exams," he says.
Barthwal is voicing the concern of a large number of students who are taking the exam in 2013. The new rules have dealt a blow to students who began preparation for the exams a couple of years ago. Coaching centres placing emphasis on rote learning of school syllabus will now mushroom.
But students from poor or rural backgrounds, who do not have access to private tuitions for their school syllabus or cannot pay for them, will lose out. "This is one decision that will go against the poor, who don't have the opportunity to study in elite schools," said Anand Kumar, founder of Super 30, a coaching institute that trains only the economically underprivileged. The decision should have been implemented 2014 onwards so that students who have already begun preparations are not affected, Kumar says. Those sitting for the exam in 2014 are equally concerned though not as impacted as the current class-XII batch.
Padmanabha Prasanna Simha,16, scored 96.48% in his class X examinations and will sit for his joint entrance test in 2014. "I will now have to change my study pattern and prepare for long answer formats and theories rather than concentrate only on the IIT entrance tests," says the Bangalore-based Simha, who studies in VVS Sardar Patel Pre-University College. "That one seat in IIT is worth pursuing all these challenges."
"The whole thing has resulted in too much pressure on students," says Ashok Pandey, principal, Ahlcon International School, a Delhi school. "It is good for schools," says Lata Vaidyanathan, principal, Modern School, Barakhamba. "For a long time students did not think much about board exams, but only about competitive exams. This will lead them to pay more attention to school exams."
Even as the stressful reality of the new admission formula for IITs and a few other institutes sinks in, about half-a-million students who will fight it out for about 9,600 IIT seats next year are beginning to brace themselves for a harder grind.
"What the IIT Council has done is raise the bar further. Mr Sibal's (HRD Minister Kapil Sibal) dream of 'one nation, one exam' has resulted in three exams," says CV Kalyan Kumar, director, FIITJEE, a coaching institute. "Besides, there is the huge pressure of two tests - JEE Main and JEE Advanced," he adds. The IIT Council hammered out a new compromise formula on Wednesday, ending a month-long standoff between some IITs and the government.
Earlier, anyone with the skill and stamina for the unrelenting, 8-10 hours-a-day preparations for the IIT-JEE entrance exams that place great emphasis on practical problem-solving skills could take a shot at the IITs. The cutoff for IIT-JEE was only 60% marks in the mostly theoretical twelfth standard board exams.
But now, only students in the top 20 percentile of school boards will make it past the new two tier JEE exams. This year, for example, students scoring less than 78% in central boards such as the CBSE and 65-68% in state boards such as UP would not have made the cut.
Many fear this figure will gradually inch up as competition for elusive IIT seats grows, adding to more stress on students. This means students will have to add more hours for their school board exams.
Students will have to put in more hours for school board exam preparations even as they put in long hours for IIT-JEE.
"It's very unfair. This is worse than giving board results 50% weightage (another formula considered earlier)," says Abhishek Barthwal, 17, an IIT aspirant for 2013. "Earlier, you had the chance to appear. Now only toppers will appear. There will be immense pressure first to perform well in boards, then in the two exams," he says.
Barthwal is voicing the concern of a large number of students who are taking the exam in 2013. The new rules have dealt a blow to students who began preparation for the exams a couple of years ago. Coaching centres placing emphasis on rote learning of school syllabus will now mushroom.
But students from poor or rural backgrounds, who do not have access to private tuitions for their school syllabus or cannot pay for them, will lose out. "This is one decision that will go against the poor, who don't have the opportunity to study in elite schools," said Anand Kumar, founder of Super 30, a coaching institute that trains only the economically underprivileged. The decision should have been implemented 2014 onwards so that students who have already begun preparations are not affected, Kumar says. Those sitting for the exam in 2014 are equally concerned though not as impacted as the current class-XII batch.
Padmanabha Prasanna Simha,16, scored 96.48% in his class X examinations and will sit for his joint entrance test in 2014. "I will now have to change my study pattern and prepare for long answer formats and theories rather than concentrate only on the IIT entrance tests," says the Bangalore-based Simha, who studies in VVS Sardar Patel Pre-University College. "That one seat in IIT is worth pursuing all these challenges."
"The whole thing has resulted in too much pressure on students," says Ashok Pandey, principal, Ahlcon International School, a Delhi school. "It is good for schools," says Lata Vaidyanathan, principal, Modern School, Barakhamba. "For a long time students did not think much about board exams, but only about competitive exams. This will lead them to pay more attention to school exams."
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