IIT-JEE changes

by indophile Wed May 23, 2012 1:43 pm

They have been at it since 2004 or 2005. After reservations etc., the next phase were attempts to do an end run around tutorial colleges. Now the proposal is to reduce the weight given to the exam down to 60% and give 40% weight to high school marks from 2014. And also offer the exam two times a year. I wonder what is it that is broken that they are trying to fix. Why this fiddling year after year?

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed May 23, 2012 1:51 pm

one of the hallmarks of the exam was ignoring high school grades. in a diverse country like india where the syllabus and standards of education varied greatly from one education board to another, the exam served as an excellent normalization scheme. going to a system where high school grades count is in my opinion a significant backward step.

by Idéfix Wed May 23, 2012 1:54 pm

I agree. It is not clear what problem they are trying to solve, so there is clear pattern to the changes over the years. If the problem is the proliferation of entrance examinations, considering high school scores doesn't do anything to address that problem.

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed May 23, 2012 2:11 pm

panini press wrote:I agree. It is not clear what problem they are trying to solve, so there is clear pattern to the changes over the years. If the problem is the proliferation of entrance examinations, considering high school scores doesn't do anything to address that problem.

i have a second cousin who is a faculty member in one of the five original institutes. he told me one of the problems is the number of students taking the exam. they have always awarded partial points for partially solved problems. with the increasing number of exam takers, this is becoming well nigh impossible. this is why they introduced the two stage exam which i thought was a good idea. however, i don't understand how taking grade 12 exam scores into consideration solves this problem. perhaps they'll throw out the entrance exams of those who don't make a certain cutoff in the grade 12 exams?

by indophile Wed May 23, 2012 2:11 pm

The iron rule for entrance should be 100% objectivity, reservations aside. Any changes proposed towards that goal should be welcome. But it appears that they are attempting to water down the selection process. Of course, the govt should not increase the present caste/religion-based reservations, or introduce special reservations for Pakistanis/Bangladeshis as part of CBMs.

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed May 30, 2012 2:58 pm

update:

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kapil-sibal-forced-to-revise-iit-test-plan/1/198038.html

by Kayalvizhi Wed May 30, 2012 3:13 pm

Is it fair to have entrance exam question papers in Hindi and English only. There are non-Hindians who do not have good knowledge of English. Are they not discriminated. IIT are funded not by Hindians only.

Either hold in all languages or English only.

by indophile Wed May 30, 2012 3:17 pm

Relenting to the major demands made by the IITs, Sibal announced on Monday that the 15 premier engineering institutes will use the Class XII Board exam marks and the performance in the JEE-main test only for filtering the best candidates.

The IITs will then check the JEE-advance papers of the top 50,000 aspirants who qualify on the basis of the screening process. The final all-India-rank (AIR) list will then be based only on the marks scored in the JEE-advance test.

The HRD minister has also allowed the IITs to have a complete academic control of the advance test, which means the questions of the advance paper will be set by the joint admission board of the IITs.

SO the IIT-main test and Class 12 marks are to be used only for filtering and deciding on the eligibility to take the IIT-Advanced test. The IIT-Advanced test results are to be used for actual selection.

While this process retains the rigor for IIT-entrance, it renders lot of students ineligible for taking the IIT-Advanced (Selection) test. In contrast, today, most Class 12 graduates can take the test for selection.

What the education minister did was what we call in Telugu "panileni mangali pani." It means - like a bored barber (barber with no customers) who holds a cat by the scruff and cuts his hair.

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed May 30, 2012 3:24 pm

this scheme would not have worked for me. i had no interest in securing very high marks in my class 12 exam. in fact the physics curriculum in school used to thoroughly depress me. there were outright incorrect things in the textbook (not typos). when i pointed out the mistakes, my teacher used to tell me to ignore the mistakes and reproduce the verbatim text in the exam in the interest of getting a high score.

my math and chemistry teachers were much better even though in the interest of the exam they used to encourage repeating things from the textbook too.

by Idéfix Wed May 30, 2012 4:55 pm

I think this whole controversy is overblown. If they are planning to use class 12 marks only as a filter, then the bar that sets can't be very high. Practically every IITian does moderately well in class 12 exams. This is a far cry from making class 12 scores have 50% weight in the admissions process.

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed May 30, 2012 10:03 pm

panini press wrote:I think this whole controversy is overblown.

i don't think so. in my own case if it wasn't for the JEE i probably wouldn't have ended up doing engineering. my class 12 scores were not good enough to get admission in any of the premier engineering colleges in TN given my forward caste category. i just wasn't up to the task of the rote learning that was required to get a high score in my public exams. i did alright but not nearly well enough to get into guindy engineering college, REC thiruchirapalli, or PSG college of technology.

the other issue is one of a matter of principle. why should the IITs let an idiotic politician/bureaucrat dictate the terms of their admission policies? why is he allowed to interfere and meddle?

by Guest Wed May 30, 2012 10:19 pm

question, will entire 12th board score be counted, or only phy-chem-math? I know in maharashtra, etc, it's just PCM or PCB that's factored in.

by Idéfix Wed May 30, 2012 11:23 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:i did alright but not nearly well enough to get into guindy engineering college, REC thiruchirapalli, or PSG college of technology.

My expectation is that the bar for class 12 marks won't be set as high as the bar for admission to those colleges; it would be set at a reasonable level which most serious IIT aspirants would clear anyway. My reading of this situation is that there was been unrelenting pressure on the IITs from Sibal and they have found a diplomatic solution by which they strictly control admission to the institutes while going along with an "in name only" class 12 criterion.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:the other issue is one of a matter of principle. why should the IITs let an idiotic politician/bureaucrat dictate the terms of their admission policies? why is he allowed to interfere and meddle?

Unfortunately for the institutes, he controls the purse strings, so no matter who stupid he is he gets to interfere.

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed May 30, 2012 11:47 pm

panini press wrote:Unfortunately for the institutes, he controls the purse strings, so no matter who stupid he is he gets to interfere.

politicians controlling the purse strings has always been a fact of life, but the institutes have managed to fend off political pressure and maintain autonomy for decades because of courageous administrative leaders who spoke their minds and put the pols in their place. why this sudden reversal to the jelly fish stage of their collective ontogeny?

by Idéfix Wed May 30, 2012 11:53 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:
panini press wrote:Unfortunately for the institutes, he controls the purse strings, so no matter who stupid he is he gets to interfere.

politicians controlling the purse strings has always been a fact of life, but the institutes have managed to fend off political pressure and maintain autonomy for decades because of courageous administrative leaders who spoke their minds and put the pols in their place. why this sudden reversal to the jelly fish stage of their collective ontogeny?

I think the institutes enjoyed their autonomy for as long as they did because senior politicians believed in the Nehruvian system and didn't want to mess with it too much. With time -- and the proliferation of IITs across the land -- there is less reverence at the highest levels for the institutes and what they stand for. And this Sibal seems particularly intent on randomly changing things for the sake of change.

by Jeremiah Mburuburu Thu May 31, 2012 12:26 am

once caste-based reservations were introduced, one could have predicted other debilitating changes in the iits. no doubt, the pristine jee is the best because it is clean and uncomplicated.

one change i would have liked: testing to determine an aspirant's apptitude for engineering and applied science. that would filter out students who were primarily interested in the sciences or mathematics, who should enroll in suitable departments in other colleges that would serve them better, and similarly, those whose prime interest is in information technology.

by Guest Thu May 31, 2012 2:06 am

panini press wrote:I think this whole controversy is overblown. If they are planning to use class 12 marks only as a filter, then the bar that sets can't be very high. Practically every IITian does moderately well in class 12 exams. This is a far cry from making class 12 scores have 50% weight in the admissions process.

absolutely correct. it is overblown insofar as the iits are concerned. stastically, most iitians anyway do well in their boards! even for other colleges, this 40% weightage on boards is a tightening of a rule that is already in place that many posters in this thread, esp. max, are unaware of. currently, even if you top aieee, you cannot get admission unless you have secured a minimum of 60% in PCM in your boards!

the problem is the different standards and qualities of various boards. the next step is to consolidate all boards i'd think. board exams test students in areas that "multiple choice" aieee can't, viz expression, showing your derivation, partial marking and practicals (only for PCB, not math). i personally think it is a welcome move.

Natalia Romanova wrote:question, will entire 12th board score be counted, or only phy-chem-math? I know in maharashtra, etc, it's just PCM or PCB that's factored in.

PCM (for aieee).

by Idéfix Thu May 31, 2012 2:43 am

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:stastically, most iitians anyway do well in their boards!

I have to say, I am enjoying the game you are playing. Excarbetated, stastically, LOL.

by Guest Thu May 31, 2012 2:45 am

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