509 - Won't change our stand, IIT-Delhi director says - TOI

Won't change our stand, IIT-Delhi director says

Akshaya Mukul, TNN Jul 25, 2013, 07.02AM IST

TOI's Akshaya Mukul spoke to R V Shevgaonkar, director, IIT-Delhi . 

Excerpts:

Did the JEE (Main) and JEE (Advanced) serve the purpose of a single entrance examination?

IITs never agreed to a single entrance test. All along, ours was a different system from AIEEE. We've always maintained that logical reasoning can't be tested through an objective test but through subjective questions. We did not want to mix Class XII results with the JEE (Advanced) score. So, we agreed to give weightage only to the top 20 percentile of each board. Intellect is equally distributed and the Class XII marks reflect board marks only, not intellect.

Seventy-nine students who could've got IIT seats have been turned away because the Boards got the 20 percentile calculations wrong. What went wrong?

There is a mistake in understanding . The Boards did the calculation voluntarily. On top of that, they calculated it on the basis of those who appeared instead of those who passed the Class XII examination . Right from the beginning , the JEE website has been saying 20 percentile has to be on the basis of those who passed the test. So we had to recalculate.

What happens to students who have lost out?

It is unfortunate. But nothing can be done now.

You met with the HRD minister also on this.

Yes. But we'll not change our stand. If we do anything now it'd be seen as being subjective.

Do we see any changes from next year?

We can look into the 20 percentile criterion as well as number of students who can appear for JEE (Advanced).

What about single exam?

Personally, I think it would not work. The example being given is of SAT/GRE. But these tests are about score, not ranking . In an entrance examination , ranking is everything.

508 - IIT (Ab)Normalization: How they got it wrong - TOI

IIT (Ab)Normalization: How they got it wrong

Akshaya Mukul, TNN | Jul 25, 2013, 06.57 AM IST

Since June, it’s been chaos. The single exam dream went awry. Students couldn’t crack the normalization formula till the JEE (Main) scores came.

Kapil Sibal wanted his stint as HRD minister to be memorable. He wanted to leave behind an enduring legacy. He proposed sweeping changes in the education system. 

In the nearly three-and-half years he was at the helm, the most effective change he undertook was confined to examinations: The CBSE Class X board examination was made optional. Then, after lengthy deliberations, a single examination for engineering was mooted.

Students, who spent their summers taking one entrance test after another, lapped up the idea. By putting the emphasis on the Class XII results, the government wanted to restrict the coaching centres' hold on the system. But there were enough detractors too.

States, though supportive, weren't willing to yield ground. Only Gujarat and Nagaland agreed. Haryana and Uttarakhand were already part of the earlier All India Engineering Entrance Examination and went along. The IITs, fearing a drop in quality, weren't keen to be integrated with a larger system. A complicated normalization process was devised to bring all boards on a par. The idea was to factor in Class XII result with JEE (Main) scores for admissions to NITs and central government technical institutes.

The IITs still had their say. Only 1.5 lakh of those who cleared JEE (Main) could take JEE (Advanced) for IIT admissions . Of these, only 1.2 lakh finally appeared. A high JEE (Advanced) score wasn't enough for an IIT seat. The extra factor was the stress on the Class XII result. A student had to be in the top 20 percentile of his/her Board result. Instead of a single examination, a complicated two-tier system was created in a rush.

Since June, it's been chaos. The single exam dream went awry. Students couldn't crack the normalization formula till the JEE (Main) scores came. Those with high JEE (Main) marks and reasonably high Class XII scores - by today's standard 90% isn't a good enough Boards score - found their ranks had slipped. Litigations began.

Go to Original Article to see Graphics and Tables

The 20 percentile factor became contentious because Boards got their calculations wrong. They calculated it on the basis of total students who had taken the state's Class XII exams, whereas it had to be on the basis of the number of students who had passed. Many like Nishant (see interview) suffered . Cut-off percentages jumped, especially in Andhra Pradesh, barring 79 students from a possible IIT seat. IITDelhi director R V Shevgaonkar said the Boards overstepped their brief. "It's unfortunate but nothing can be done."

CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi said the confusion was because it was the first year. Stress on Boards marks had thrown up interesting results, he added. "Preliminary analysis of data reveals this year NITs will have a bigger representation of women and those from rural and semi-rural backgrounds ." The new system should continue . "But genuine concerns should be addressed."

Joshi hopes from next year more states would join in. Joshi's eventual dream: A single examination that can be taken more than once in a year to improve scores.

Shevgaonkar, though not critical of normalization, favours IITs having their own entrance test. But the confusion and tears of students being brushed aside as teething problems could have been avoided with transparency and deliberation.

507 - JEE changes made in a hurry: IITs - Business Standard

Kalpana Pathak & M Saraswathy  |  Mumbai  July 17, 2013 Last Updated at 21:50 IST

JEE changes made in a hurry: IITs

IIT alumni association to protest demanding restoration of the original examination system

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) is yet to decide on reviewing the changes in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) joint entrance examination (JEE), but the IITs have given their verdict - the changes have been brought about in a hurry and have complicated the examination.

"We had been, since the beginning, suggesting this new pattern should be implemented from 2014, but to no avail. Though incorporating board marks for admission to IITs is a good move, the new format was implemented in a hurry, without much thought," said Gautam Barua, director, IIT-Guwahati.

"The new IIT JEE has complicated the entire admission process," said Devang Khakhar, director, IIT-Bombay.

Last year, then MHRD minister Kapil Sibal had cleared the proposal to hold the JEE in two parts-main and advanced. Students applying to the IITs have to appear for JEE-main. Of these students, only the top 1,50,000 are eligible for JEE-advanced. For final admission to the 16 IITs, based on JEE-advanced, a student has to be among the top 20 percentile in his respective standard-XII board.

While the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) conducts JEE-main, JEE-advanced is conducted by IIT-Delhi.

Coaching institutes have said the new process of normalisation has made it difficult for deserving students to qualify. The director of a Kota-based coaching institute said, "If a student from Tripura who secured 58 per cent marks in board exams is selected, while one from Andhra Pradesh with 80 per cent isn't, there could be flaws in the system."

"We need to discuss with Indian Statistical Institute (which had prepared the formula for normalisation) experts how real is the issue and whether it a problem on a larger scale. Only after such an analysis can any change be proposed in the process," said a senior IIT official.

Meanwhile, members of the IIT alumni associations are set to go on an agitation later this month to protest against the new system. Somnath Bharti, ex-president of IIT-Delhi Alumni Association and a Supreme Court lawyer, said the matter was sub judice. "We are looking at engaging directly with ministry officials on this issue. It is very unfortunate that these issues have cropped up," he said.

MHRD officials said the Andhra Pradesh government had taken up the issue in a high court.


'State boards interpreted 20% rule differently'
At a meeting between Human Resource Development Minister Pallam Raju and IIT officials on Wednesday, it was said in the case of the new JEE norms, while the IITs had meant the 20 percentile rule was applicable for students clearing JEE-advanced, state boards had taken it as applicable to 20 per cent of the students appearing for JEE-main.

"The method of calculation of the top 20 percentile had been clearly stated by us from day one. Therefore, we presented this to the minister…we wouldn't make any change to it. However, state boards used a different formula for normalisation and this resulted in the confusion," said a senior IIT official who attended the meeting. It was also decided IITs would draw up a list of students affected by the new rule and hold another meeting to address the issue.

WHAT IS NORMALISATION?

Normalisation, as used in the Indian context, is a process for ensuring students are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by the difficulty of exams they do for the Boards. This process is used in other countries with similar issues as in India

Normalisation process requires one to know the following

Percentile score: Percentile score of a candidate in a Board or JEE (Main) will reflect what percentage of candidates have scored below that candidate in that Board or JEE (Main) Examination

A percentile score is the value of below which a certain per cent of observations fall. For example, the 20th percentile is the value (or score) below which 20 per cent of the observations may be found

Example: Suppose we have 13,711 candidates in a Board, and a candidate who's score is 60% of Board marks has 6,865 candidates below him; his percentile score will be calculated as follows

Percentile score for 60% of Board marks: 6,865/13,711 x 100

506 - Govt accepts discrepancy in IIT admission process

Govt accepts discrepancy in IIT admission process

Many state boards did not calculate the 20 percentile according to the formula prescribed by IIT-Delhi

Prashant K. Nanda 

First Published: Wed, Jul 17 2013. 11 56 PM IST

IIT-Delhi is the organizing IIT for the JEE Advanced, the second part of the two-tier common engineering admission test. 

Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint

The central government said on Wednesday that discrepancies in admissions to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) were due to a miscalculation by various school boards.

Human resource development (HRD)minister M. M. Pallam Raju said after a review meeting with senior officials of the ministry and IITs that many state boards didn’t calculate the 20 percentile according to the formula prescribed by IIT-Delhi, the organizing IIT for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced, the second part of the two-tier common engineering admission test.

It wasn’t immediately clear what would happen to these students, some of whom have filed cases in various courts across the country.

On 12 July, the Supreme Court stayed proceedings in a case related to this in the Andhra Pradesh high court and said it would hear the matter.

While IIT-Delhi had said the percentile should be based on the number of students passing the school-leaving examination, several boards including that of Andhra Pradesh based it on the number of students who appeared for the board examination, Raju told reporters.

Raju said he doesn’t have the exact numbers for the students who missed out due to this.

The IITs said they excluded 79 students who did not make the cut despite holding top ranks in the JEE Advanced. The Madras zone that includes Andhra Pradesh, had 35 affected students, followed by 19 from Kharagpur zone and 14 from Kanpur zone.

“We have gone by the rule. It was clear from last year that the percentile will be calculated on successful candidates of respective boards. The percentile calculation was supposed to be done by the COBSE (Council of Boards of School Education) but several boards calculated it on their own,” said H.C. Gupta, the professor in-charge of the JEE-Advanced.

Gupta said most boards had miscalculated the percentile, indicating that the number of aggrieved students could rise.

He said Andhra Pradesh was the first to issue the percentile cut off.

Out of a total 530 marks in the Class 12 board exam, the top 20 percentile cut off was set at 476 marks for the general category. This should have been 487, he said.

Raju said that a related controversy over the normalization of different school boards for admission to all central government-funded engineering schools except IITs could not be discussed on Wednesday as the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) chairman was travelling to attend a court case.

CBSE was in charge of the normalization process for admission to 30 National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) and other top schools.

Scores of parents and aggrieved students have approached high courts and the Supreme Court to stay the admission process based on the normalization, saying that at least 25,000 students have missed out on admission to top engineering schools.

The Supreme Court said last week that admission to engineering schools would be subject to its eventual ruling on a petition challenging the process, but refused to stay the admissions.

CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi could not be reached despite several calls to his mobile phone but an HRD ministry official said the government is in favour of clubbing all the cases, related to normalization as well as admission to the IITs, to be heard in the Supreme Court.

The official, who did not want to be named, also said that Andhra Pradesh chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy had reached out to Raju on the issue.

505 - AP CM for JEE as sole criteria for admissions - Business Standard

BS Reporter  |  Hyderabad  July 16, 2013 Last Updated at 20:19 IST

AP CM for JEE as sole criteria for admissions

His appeal comes after several AP students who got good ranks in JEE failed to get admissions due to weightage being given to marks secured in Class 12

Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy requested the Ministry of Human Resource Development to make JEE as the sole criteria for admissions into the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

His appeal comes after several AP students who got good ranks in the joint engineering entrance (JEE) failed to secure admissions in these institutes owing to the weightage being given to the marks secured in Class 12 by the candidates, an official statement said here on Tuesday.

A 40 per cent weightage is being given to the marks secured by the students in Class 12 for admission to the NITs and 20 per cent for the same when it comes to IIT admissions.

504 - win factors scuttle engineering joint admissions

Twin factors scuttle engineering joint admissions 

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

New Delhi, July 15: Tardy preparations and the fear of courtroom reverses prompted the Indian Institutes of Technology and the National Institutes of Technology to drop their plan to have joint seat allocations from this year.

Joint allocation would have reduced vacancies at either set of institutions, but the IITs backed out and began their own selection process on July 2.

H.C. Gupta, chairman of the exam through which the IITs admit students, cited two reasons.

One, the failure to test software developed for joint seat allocation. Two, the slew of court cases challenging the admission reforms introduced this year for the NITs — if successful, they would have jeopardised IIT admissions too in case of joint selection.

The IIT selections were wrapped up today. Counselling is now on at the NITs after the Supreme Court last week refused to stay admissions while hearing a case against the selection criteria adopted.

Earlier, the Union human resource development ministry had set up a Joint Seat Allotment Committee under an IIT Delhi professor, G.B. Reddy, to handle the common admission process.

Reddy said that under the plan, students who made it to both the IIT and NIT merit lists would have had to choose any one of the two.

This would have stopped students from blocking seats in both sets of tech schools and quitting one at the end of the separate admission processes — a practice that left the IITs with over 300 vacancies last year. The NITs had a similar number of vacancies too.

An IIT teacher said a common admission process would also have saved time. Traditionally, the NITs start their selection process shortly after the IITs do, and many candidates wait for both to finish before deciding where to study.

The human resource development ministry had asked the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing to prepare the new software for the joint seat allocation.

The centre was to open a new website to publish the seat allocations (earlier, the IIT and NIT allocations were posted on different websites). The website hasn’t been opened.

Despite efforts, no comments could be obtained from the centre’s director-general, Rajat Moona.

From this year, the admission processes at the IITs and the NITs have undergone several changes, from the eligibility criteria to the entrance tests.

A two-phase entrance exam, made up of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main and the JEE Advanced, has replaced the IIT-JEE and the All India Engineering Entrance Examination.

The NITs are admitting students on the basis of a 60:40 weightage given to their JEE Main scores and board marks, the latter “normalised” to remove the discrepancies in evaluation between the various higher secondary boards.

For the IITs, the eligibility criterion for candidates is a place among the top 20 percentile rankers from their board. Eligible candidates are admitted solely on the basis of their JEE Advanced score.

Many students have challenged the NIT criteria in various courts, some contesting the policy of giving weightage to board marks and some questioning the normalisation process.

503 - JEE admission norms may be re-examined - Live Mint

JEE admission norms may be re-examined

HRD ministry may look into matter after complaints from students and cases before Supreme Court, other courts

Prashant K. Nanda 

First Published: Tue, Jul 16 2013. 12 24 AM IST

The process for admission to NITs and IITs has been criticized by students, academics and experts. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint

Updated: Tue, Jul 16 2013. 12 25 AM IST

New Delhi: The government may revisit and review the contentious Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) admission process for all central government-funded engineering schools other than the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), following complaints from students and cases before the Supreme Court and other courts.

Two government officials said the human resource development (HRD) ministry may do this because of the cases and also due to the possible politicization of the engineering admission process in Andhra Pradesh, the state the current Union HRD minister M.M. Pallam Raju hails from, and the one that has seen the most complaints.

The Supreme Court ruled last week that admissions to engineering schools would be subject to its eventual ruling on a petition challenging the process, but refused to stay the admissions.

The new format, part of an effort aimed at streamlining admissions and ensuring that students seeking admission to the central government-funded top engineering and technology schools don’t disregard their school-leaving examinations altogether, was conceptualized last year and went into effect this year.

The new process involves a JEE Main examination for admission to the 30 National Institutes of Technology (NITs), the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), and other central government-funded engineering schools. Students will be selected to these schools on the basis of their performance in this exam (which has a 60% weightage) and their performance in the school-leaving examination (40% weightage). Since various boards around the country mark their students variously —some are generous, others not so—the process requires that the performance of a student in the school-leaving examination be “normalized”. The complaints as well as the case have to do with this normalization.

Neeraj Mehrotra, father of a student from Hyderabad, said that the normalization process is faulty and unscientific, and that he and other parents and students have filed a case in the Andhra Pradesh high court to intervene in the matter.

Separately, the top 150,000 students in the JEE Main examination are eligible to appear for a second test for admission to the IITs and the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad—known as the JEE Advanced—provided they are also among the top 20 percentile of students in their school-leaving examination.

The process for admission to NITs and IITs has been criticized by students, academics and experts, although the HRD ministry believes it will put an end to the practice of students entirely ignoring their board examinations and focusing exclusively on the IIT entrance examination. Indeed, in some parts of the country, most notably Kota in Rajasthan, entire IIT ecosystems have emerged, where students enrol in residential prep courses that help them clear the examination even as understanding local schools enrol them in Class XII and allow them to appear for school-leaving examinations, often without attending any classes.

It isn’t clear whether the HRD ministry is considering reviewing this also, although it stands to reason that any change in the first level of the new two-tier examination process will affect the second level. The arguments behind normalization to ensure the removal of a board advantage stand for the use of the top-20 percentile criteria also.

“Some politicians and scores of students from Andhra (Pradesh) have tried to reach out to the HRD minister in the last few days over the issue of JEE. Since the minister is from Andhra, which goes to polls in 2014, it will be difficult to brush aside their concerns,” said one of the two HRD ministry officials cited above.

The general election is scheduled for next year, as are polls to the Andhra Pradesh assembly.

“Normalization is a headache; we are likely to revisit it once the minister is back,” the official said.

Some say the process is throwing up anomalies that are playing havoc with the prospects of students.

“Based on the (JEE-Main and board exam) performance of my son, we were expecting a rank within 10,000 but my son has got a ranking in excess of 33,500. Where will we get a chance to enrol in a good college now?” asked Mehrotra, the parent based in Hyderabad. The 30 NITs admit around 25,000 students every year.

Mehrotra added that some parents and students had met Andhra Pradesh intermediate education minister Parthasarathi K., who had assured them he would raise the issue with Union HRD minister Raju. The Andhra Pradesh minister confirmed that he had tried to reach Raju, who was travelling last week.

Raju was back in his office on Monday, but unavailable for comment despite several attempts.

The two government officials said the ministry was coming round to the view that the new process had been implemented in “haste”, said the first official, who referred to an Australian consultant contacted by the ministry also raising the issue of the fairness of the normalization process.

In a 10 July post on his blog, IIT-Kanpur professor Dheeraj Sanghi said: “The admission process in 2013 was expected to lead to many litigations, confusions, frustration and all that, and it is turning out to be exactly how it was predicted.” He added in his post that students were the casualty of an untested new system that hadn’t been thought through and which was being “imposed from the top”.

The plan had been conceived and implemented by former HRD minister Kapil Sibal, now the minister for telecommunication and information technology, and law.

Pramod Maheshwari, managing director of listed test prep chain Career Point Ltd, said the new system had failed to achieve its goal. “It has instead created enough confusion and stress among students,” he added.

The 20 percentile norm has particularly come in for criticism, Maheswari said. Several students missed out an IIT seat despite securing good ranks due to this, he said. The issue has also led to protests in Andhra Pradesh.

Vineet Joshi, chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which is in charge of the normalization process, didn’t respond to calls seeking comment.

Meanwhile, the Andhra Pradesh high court has asked CBSE to reply to its notice and send its officials to explain the normalization process on 17 July, when it next hears the case.

The students and their parents had moved the court on 26 June, following which there have been two rounds of hearings. “The admission process will get over by 18 July and we hope there is some intervention before that. Else, it will be too late,” Mehrotra said.

502 - Why have some students rejected IIT? - Rediff

Rediff.com  » Business » Why have some students rejected IIT?

Why have some students rejected IIT?

July 12, 2013 10:29 IST

Dinesh Mohan 

The inference that the IIT brand name has been devalued is unfair; this could as well reflect a wider market for student choices, feels Dinesh Mohan.

The results of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)-Advanced were declared last week. The successful applicants are eligible for admission to the seven older Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), eight IITs established recently, IIT (BHU) Varanasi and ISM-Dhanbad.

A newspaper report says: "A total of 769 students did the unthinkable this year: they refused to study in an IIT after getting in. It's a rare situation where even general category seats in various IITs across the country have remained vacant after the first round of admission."

This report and anecdotal information gives the impression that the "brand name" of IITs may be somewhat devalued.

This is not entirely fair, as having the same name does not necessarily mean that all campuses will have the same quality of education. For example, the University of California has 10 different campuses but all of them do not have the same reputation as the one located at Berkeley.

In our case, you really cannot expect the eight new IITs to have the same reputation, in a few years, as the older ones that have been around for more than five decades.

The fact is we neglected the establishment of quality public education institutions, both at the school and university level for over three decades.

This is reflected by the fact that out of approximately 300,000 seats available in the engineering stream in the country, about 10,000 are in the IITs. Another 15,458 seats are available in National Institutes of Technology (NITs).

Which means that less than 10 per cent of those aspiring to be engineers can do so at reasonable costs and get a decent education. Among the private institutions less than 10 per cent seem to be providing somewhat quality education.

Then why have some of the eligible students decided not to study at the IITs? There could be many reasons.

Students have become acutely aware that all disciplines do not offer challenging or rewarding jobs after graduation (such as civil, production, textile, and many others). Therefore, some of them may prefer to go to an NIT closer to home that gives them an opportunity in a discipline of their choice.

Studying at an IIT for undergraduate students can cost about Rs 20,000 a month, not a small amount for a middle-class family. Some of those declining may have opted to spend less by studying at a local NIT instead of a new IIT and save on hostel expenses.

A significant proportion of the students entering IITs know from day one that they are not interested in an engineering career, but do so under parental and societal pressure or a lack of choices for obtaining decent education.

If there was a good supply of excellent liberal arts and science colleges with hostel facilities, applications to IITs may drop by a third.

It is possible that some of those declining an admission to IIT have gained admission to good law schools, design schools or science colleges that have made a name for themselves in recent years.

Lastly, there would be a group of young men and women who would prefer to spend much more money and go to an institution in the US, Australia, Singapore or the UK, even a second-rate one, than take admission in a discipline and IIT location they don't like.

Therefore, the fact that many applicants have opted out of the IIT system may be a good sign, showing that we have more choices and the system is maturing. It certainly does not reflect on the standing of IITs as academic institutions in India.

Some newspaper reports have suggested that the applicants may not want to enter the new IITs because they may be inferior to the old ones.

Such comments are not entirely true. Admission data show that many students with high ranks in the JEE are selecting newer IITs over the older ones. The reasons are not entirely clear, but it seems that discipline and location may be playing an important role.

The insinuation that the IITs may have deteriorated in academic excellence is absolutely unfounded.

As far as research output is concerned, the academic quality of faculty members at all the IITs has improved considerably over the past two decades.

Now, the older IITs get significantly more research and consultancy contracts than they did a decade ago and postgraduate students comprise about 60 per cent of our production.

Some of the newer IITs are also making brave efforts to modernise curricula and break out of older ways of academic functioning.

I am not really worried about some students opting out of the IIT system. Given the anti-intellectual character of the Indian decision-makers (politicians, bureaucrats and business people) over the past few decades, the IIT system has survived reasonably well and brought us where we are.

The future is going to be more challenging. The IIT system itself will have to shed its silo mentality and embrace new disciplines, encourage lateral entry at senior levels, and become much more interdisciplinary in nature.

No major centre of learning has maintained its standing without doing this.

The IIT system will also need an enabling environment that makes it possible for them to thrive academically. Potential teachers need to get a free education right through primary school to PhD.

Products of IITs need to find jobs that require the use of their technical education and challenge their brains. This will need some doing.

Dinesh Mohan is Volvo Chair Professor Emeritus, Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi

501 - Not so 'sought after' anymore? IIT seats go vacant as 769 reject admission - India Today

Not so 'sought after' anymore? IIT seats go vacant as 769 reject admission

Spending four years at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is a dream millions of aspiring engineers seek to achieve. But in an unprecedented statistic, as many as 769 students who were given admission in the IITs this year have rejected to avail the opportunity, according to a newspaper report. 

What is more startling is that even the general category seats in various IITs have remained vacant after the first round of admission, a rare situation that has led to a second round of allotments beginning July 10.

According to the report, JEE (Advanced) chairman, H.C. Gupta said that hundreds of seats are available for the students of all categories. He also said that the most vacant seats are at ISM-Dhanbad while IT-BHU (now an IIT), which used to have many unfilled seats, does not have as many vacancies this year. 

A descent in the value of brand IIT and a piercing dip in the interest for pursuing engineering might be blamed for this ignominious situation. Since eight new IITs announced by the government in 2011have mushroomed across the country with no credible track record, students are inclining towards NITs and other top colleges more than IITs. 

Top recruiters to visit engineering colleges include IT companies like TCS and Infosys are of the opinion that it is improbable to choose candidates right after graduation and put them on live projects.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/iit-engineering-engineering-colleges-jee-iit-admissions-nit-ism-dhanbad-it-bhu/1/290564.html

500 - Denied IIT seats, dozens of rankers return home - New Indian Epress

Denied IIT seats, dozens of rankers return home

By Express News service - HYDERABAD

08th July 2013 10:24 AM

Dozens of JEE (Advanced) rankers from the state, whose IIT seat allotments have been cancelled as they did not figure in the top 20 percentile of Intermediate  marks, returned home from Chennai on Sunday. 

After the online counselling, candidates those who were allotted seats had to go to IIT-Madras, the southern vice-chairman of JEE Advanced examination office, for registration but dozens of candidates from Andhra Pradesh were sent home on Sunday, denying them seats saying that they did not figure in top percentile.

Speaking to Express, I Sandeep, who has got 3,695th rank and seat was allotted in IIT-H, said that he was denied seat as he got only 481 marks in Intermediate second year against the top 20 percentile mark from state 487/530. But they have already drawn a demand draft for Rs 60,000 and reached IIT-Madras along with their parents to take admission where he was denied admission saying that he did not figure in the list of top 20 percentile of Intermediate Board marks.

The revised top 20 percentile marks of JEE Advanced put on July 3 late night, but the seat allotment had been made earlier on the basis of the Advanced rank. After seeing the seat allotment on the website all these candidates went to IIT-Madras but were sent back home cancelling the seat allotment.

Another candidate IMC Verma who too got seat in IIT-H has said that while the cut off percentile in other states particularly in northern states is too low the IIT Advanced Board had fixed  the top 20 percentile higher than any other in the country for AP students costing a seat for dozens of Telugu candidates like him in the prestigious institutions.

“It has been a painful journey back home from Chennai to all of us on Sunday evening,’’ he said. K Vishesh, who got a seat at ISM-Dhanbad with 5000th rank, said his family members at home were waiting to celebrate his admission to the prestigious institute but this news  disappointed them.

Saying the fixing of top 20 percentile high, particularly for AP Students and considering only second-year marks, was irrational and illogical, he said that a dozen candidates like him had decided to move to court with the seat rejection letters though there were already some cases in the AP High Court on the issue.

Like these candidates dozens of students from Andhra Pradesh visited IIT-Madras were denied seats during the counselling for BC-category seats held in past two days.