For all to-be IITians

IIT (Indian Institute of technology) have been called the modern temples of new India and they have well lived upto their fame. Even the best of foreign universities like MIT, Stanford and Princeton respect IITs and offer admission to hundreds of IIT graduates every year. So, in a country of over a billion population, every teenager wishes to be in IIT to secure his future and may be a Green Card some years later. So, the IITs offer admission through JEE, reputedly one of the toughest examinations in India for admission in undergraduate courses. Now, the scramble to clear JEE leads to unseen competiion among the brilliant students all over the country. With increasingly ambitious students (and their parents too), everyone wants to grab the hot seat. And to ensure success, they are ready to do every thing. Students are ready to dig their eyes in books for two years, the parents lose sleep too. So, this led to increasing number of tuitions. Now, these tuition teachers also started working hard, and jard work brought success. And, these tuition houses grew into Big Coaching institutes, so big and famous that even admission in few of coaching institutes needed coaching, really I am not joking. Now, these coaching institutes earn Crores of money from the pocket of poor parents, train their children for the big battle called JEE (mind t the word is train and not teach) and years of preparation culminates in their success in the 9-hr exam (3-hr screening + 6hr mains).

Now, IITs want to end the monopoly of coaching institutes and have introduced following changes in JEE:

No IIT student can appear for JEE This move is very much welcome since it saves one precious IIT seat from being wasted.

N student can appear for JEE more than twice This too appears legtimate to me, it discourages students from wasting their years reading the same stuff, if they really want to enter engineering, there are hundreds of other colleges, do ur B.Tech there and come to IIT for Masters (GATE is another entrance exam).

The minimum percentage of marks in Std. XII: This move is to encourage students to pay attention to their school curricullum. But, we all know much of the content in the curriculla is just data and facts which need to be memorised and not understood. So, if their is a student from some poor college of Bihar (Bihar board is famous for its erratic and unpredictable marking), who gets 42 in english and 45 in Hindi, but arnd 70 in Physics, chemistry and maths... his percentage comes below 60; now you are seriously hurting the future of a bright student because he is poor and his dad could not afford big private schools with their monthly tuition fee in the range of 3k-5k and above. So, I feel this criteria should take into account only marks obtained in Physics, Chemistry and Maths. Also, this should be negotiable by 1-2% in case of exceptional performance in JEE. I, myself had ill luck with board percentage in Std. X.

Changing the exam pattern This really is something I think is unreasonable. The pattern of screening and mains really tested the problem solving skill of students and their ability to apply concepts in real-life situations, checked their ability to be future engineers. Reducing this to an aptitude test including absurd things like comprehension transforms JEE into something like CAT and SAT, a good engineer may not have very good reading speed and comprehension, he is a technical man who knows laws and how to apply them. Our directors and professors are sure to give it a rethought but may be only after it has caused irreparable damage to many students, specially those for whom this JEE 2006 is their last (second) attempt. Wishing all JEE aspirants best of luck.

The author is a student of IIT Kharagpur and did not take any coaching for IIT JEE.