IIT-JEE: Govt may remove 20 percentile rule

The government has decided to rework the admission norms for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), acknowledging flaws in the process, although the change is likely to effectively dilute the criterion for appearing in the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced).
The current eligibility norm is that a student be in the top 20th percentile of students in terms of performance in the school-leaving (or so-called board) examination and this will likely be tweaked, two government officials with direct knowledge of the development said, asking not to be identified.
The 20th percentile criterion has attracted several legal challenges.
The officials said that the government is proposing an alternative criterion of minimum 75% marks in the school-leaving examination.
The change will benefit students from Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and those affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) because these boards are believed to be generous with their marking.
According to one of the two officials, the human resource development ministry reviewed the system on 14 August in the presence of officials from the IITs and CBSE. It has now asked the IITs to take up the matter in the Joint Admission Board, the apex admissions body of the IITs.
The 75% suggestion isn’t iron-clad, said the second official, adding that the Joint Admission Board can decide the cut-off will be 80%.
Interestingly, before the government came up with its changes in 2012, the cut-off was 60%.
“Percentile is a black box. Students need to know what’s the minimum mark they need to score, while preparing for the board exam. A 75% or 80% score will do away with the existing confusion,” said Pramod Maheswari, managing director of test prep company Career Point Ltd.
“If they return to the minimum percentage score, it would be a correct move from the students’ point of view,” he said.
The officials said that while low scoring school boards such as those of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh can continue to adhere to the top 20th percentile, others can adopt either 75% or 80% marks. For example, this year, students scoring 91% from Andhra Pradesh were not eligible for IIT-JEE (Advanced) as they did not fall within the top 20th percentile.
Last year, the government announced a two-tier common engineering admission test for entry into all central government-funded engineering schools. The first part, called JEE-Main, is for selecting students to all the central government-funded engineering schools except IITs. The JEE-Main ranking gives 40% weightage to the school-leaving examination and 60% to the entrance examination.
The top 150,000 rank holders of JEE-Main are eligible to write JEE-Advanced, the second part of the two-tier common exam. JEE Advanced is the gateway to 15 IITs and Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, but for getting a final IIT ranking these 150,000 students need to be in the top 20th percentile of their respective school boards.
After the results for the JEE-Main and Advanced were announced in May and June this year, many students found that though they qualified the JEE-Advanced, they were not within the top 20th percentile and hence not eligible to compete for a seat.
Consequently, students in Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Kerala challenged the results in several high courts as well as the Supreme Court. Though the apex court did not stop the admission process, it said that the final admission would be subject to its verdict. The cases are pending before the court.
CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi said he would not comment on the controversy as the matter is sub judice, but added that any process could be improved. “After you have conducted an entrance, you at times feel that there is scope for improvement,” he said.
The second government official said that all stakeholders involved agree that school-leaving examinations need to get their due. “The underlining argument is that school boards must get enough weight in the IIT selection procedure. You have to be good at all levels than just tailor-made for an entrance,” this official said.
In the 14 August review meeting, all stakeholders also decided to stick to the current multiple choice format of IIT-JEE, introduced in 2005-06.

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