The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Students, parents want admission policy defined more clearly

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 11, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Students, parents want admission policy defined more clearly

Staff Reporter

"The provision for drawing of lots leaves room for misinterpretation" "The provision for deciding ranks based on date of birth or by drawing of lots is ambiguous"

CHENNAI: The new admission policy for professional courses set out by the Tamil Nadu Government on Friday evoked mixed reactions from educationalists, parents and students. Many felt the ranking system should be made clearer and that the provision for drawing of lots left room for misinterpretation.

"Improvement examination candidates and CBSE students have been left out of the race. Also, nothing is stated about which of the two — the vocational subject or mathematics — will be considered for ranking the vocational engineering stream students," said Jayaprakash A. Gandhi, career and education consultant. In case of the fourth optional subject for engineering admissions, computer science should be given preference over biology. "The provision of deciding by drawing lots is unscientific. A drastic change in examination system needs to be brought about where the Board exams and the entrance exams should be clubbed together to favour the bright students," Mr. Gandhi added.

"The provision for considering the chemistry marks if the mathematics and physics marks fail to break the tie for engineering admissions is redundant, as total marks in all three subjects would have already been considered for arriving at the aggregate even before the tie," pointed out Navaneethakrishnan, former Director of Entrance Examinations, Anna University.

"The provision for deciding ranks based on date of birth or by drawing of lots is ambiguous. A separate quota should be provided for improvement candidates this year, if the system is to be dispensed with altogether," he added.

"Unfair" on CBSE students

Not allowing any provision for standardisation of marks for CBSE students was "grossly unfair" said G. Neelakantan, principal, Sir Sivaswami Kalalaya Senior Secondary School, Mylapore, Chennai. "This denies equal opportunity to CBSE students, who already face a tougher evaluation system.''

Citing the procedure followed by SASTRA deemed university for normalisation of marks for students from different Boards for B.Tech admissions, R. Sethuraman, the university's vice-chancellor said: "A first rank student of each board is considered to have obtained 100 percent marks and aggregate marks of all other students of that board is normalized with reference to that of the first ranker. If the first rank was 97 percent and the applicant's aggregate was 90 percent, then his/her normalised marks would be 92.78 per cent (90/97 x 100). A merit list is then drawn based on the normalised percentages. Aggregate marks, rather than the marks scored in maths, physics, chemistry and biology should be considered as there will be a number of students with the same rank, defeating the very purpose of normalisation."

Scrapping of CET, sore point

For parents and students, the scrapping of the CET still continues to be a sore point. "For one whole year, I had been gearing up to face the entrance examinations and all that effort has now come to nought.

As per the new G.O., it is possible that even with 95 per cent and above marks in individual subjects, I might still be denied admission to the medical college of my choice," said D. Pavithra, a student of an Anna Nagar-based school in the City.

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