No weightage for marks: IIT Admission Board

 

Indian Express Report

Anubhuti Vishnoi : New Delhi, Sun Jun 24 2012, 01:43 hrs

Weightage will not be given to Class XII school board scores in admission to IITs. School marks will only serve as a cut-off to ‘screen’ students for eligibility to appear for a separate IIT test, the Joint Admission Board (JAB) of IITs is learnt to have resolved today.
It is proposed that only students in the top 20 percentile category of each school board will be eligible to appear for a seperate IIT test or JEE Advanced which will be entirely designed by IITs alone and scheduled on a separate date from the JEE main or the first part of the common entrance test.
With the JAB resolution largely incorporating most of the demands raised by IIT senates, it is expected that IITs will agree to introduce the new format in 2013 instead of 2014—something the Kapil Sibal-led HRD ministry is very keen on.
The senates of IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur have already decided to boycott the common entrance exam. The JAB resolution will now be put before the IIT Council which is meeting on June 27 to deliberate on the impasse between the ministry and the IIT Senates.
The Council—chaired by Sibal—will also seek the views of the senates on the new JAB proposal. It is said that while the 20 percentile formula is largely acceptable to most IIT Senates, some tweaking may be effected.
A meeting of JAB and the IIT Council have been urgently called by the ministry in an attempt to break the deadlock with IIT senates.
Minister Sibal, who chairs the IIT Council, had announced a new exam format for admission with two components—JEE Main (for screening) and JEE Advanced ( for the final IIT merit list) with 50 per cent weight to Class XII scores at the screening stage