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Relief for IIT aspirants?

R. Ravikanth Reddy

EducationPlus There are two papers instead of three in IIT entrance test now

ON TRACK: Students feel changes in the IIT entrance examination are for better

A year after some radical changes were brought in the entrance examination of the famed Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), the IIT Board made a few more changes for the 2007 examination. This time, however, none raised hue and cry over the changes and a vast section of teachers and aspirants feel the changes are for the better. A few don't see any positive impact of the changes.

Applicants will now need to crack two papers instead of three in the Joint Entrance Examination. Instead of three separate papers for Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics, candidates would have to take only two tests that will have mixed bag of questions on all the subjects.

The decision on the new type of examination for JEE-2007 was jointly taken by the directors of all the seven IITs at a meeting held recently.

According to Prof. Ashok Misra, Chairman, Joint Admission Board (JAB), it would be of a single stage objective type examination consisting of two papers of three hours duration each, to test the comprehension and analytical ability of the candidates. Both the papers will have three separate sections on physics, chemistry and mathematics.

Grilling will continue

It doesn't mean that the journey is made easy. There is no let up in the grilling, as they have to take the test for six hours. But students still feel the stress would be reduced with one paper less. "More than the tough questions the very thought of one test less gives some relief to us," says Arun, a student of Narayana institutions.

His friend Nagesh too admits that after part-I, they can gauge where they have missed and how they can plug that gap.

Earlier, the concentration was more on preparing even in the time gap between the tests.

But a section of students feel that facing questions from different subjects in the same paper will also be challenging. Earlier, the concentration was only on one subject and that made it easy to solve questions. "But it won't make much of a difference given the quality of candidates who take JEE", says a lecturer of a Corporate College. Teachers are also not much bothered about the changes since the question pattern and the syllabi remains the same.

But experts feel that stress is an integral part of the IIT-JEE and students would have to live with it despite the changes. Last year nearly 3 lakh students competed for the 6,000-odd seats offered by the IITs and this number will only grow bigger. They feel until the numbers of students who compete for the limited seats of IITs come down, changing the test pattern will not reduce stress.

The JAB, which reviewed JEE-2006 in detail and found that a total of 2,87,564 candidates appeared for the examination, including 25,465 students belonging to Scheduled Caste (SC) and 6209 Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates. The total number of candidates who qualified in JEE-2006 was 6,343 that included 699 SC and 156 ST candidates.

The officials felt that the single type examination introduced in 2006 was accepted by students. And the number of aspirants would be on the rise every year. The JEE 2007 is scheduled on April 8, 2007.

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