IIT JEE pattern change is a real shame.

Disclosure: My JEE rank would have gone down a bit if Class 12th marks had been taken into account.

It has been a long time since I have written on this space but the foolhardy committed by IIT council is just too much for me. The 'wise' men have decided that Class 12th marks in combination with entrance exam would prove to be a better indicator of quality of students these premier institutes would be getting.

First of all I would like to bring to your notice the farce that is our 12th exam. An example for those of you familiar with Physics: This is a question I found on the interent. It is from Class 12th paper of Physics in 2009 and worth 5 marks out of 100.

"Draw a schematic sketch of a cyclotron. Explain briefly how it works and how it is used to accelerate te charged particles.

(i) show that time period of ions in a cyclotron. Explain briefly how it works and how it is used to accelerate the speed and radius of circular path.

(ii) What is response condition ? How is it used to accelerate the charged particles?"

There are other questions too, very similar to this. This is a perfect example of a question where one-trick-ponies would lick 5 marks clean. Their trick being rote learning. And this is supposed to enhance the quality of IITs.

  

Now one argument is that the emphasis on class 12th marks would lead to demise of coaching institutes. But at what cost? If you look at the results of CBSE toppers for past few years, you would notice the place occupied by DPS chain of schools. They seem to have a stranglehold over results. These behemoths would have the same kind of monopoly as the coaching institutes have presently. Only thing different would be the dilution of quality. So I only know Force= mass * acceleration. This is a question where my eyes filter out 60N 6kg and I promptly answer 10 ms-2 to bag 1-2 marks. Wow! Life moves to the tune of my trick. I love being a one-trick-pony. 

But the problem does not stop here. These behemoths don't have branches in small towns (by small I mean towns with low income) so the populace there has no chance of getting admission there. In case of coaching institutes, at least they could go after 12th and then study there for one year and try and get admission in some good college if not IITs. Now it would be necessary to spend at least 2 years in the school where most of the money would be taken for ridiculous functions and useless cultural events (of course with fancy dresses) which would be of no help to someone interested in a career in science and technology and low on lucre. This also means leaving the hometown after 10th (and yes being lucky enough to get admission). 

Now the sanctity of our boards. Well they seem to be as good as the BCCI in this regard. Unqualified teachers grading answer sheets. Mass copying. Impersonation in exam halls. Rigged lab exams. All sorts of nuisance which is unthinkable in JEE. Open some newspaper of Uttar Pradesh in March-April and you would laugh/sigh at the state of affairs of our largest board. Good grief.

Only Mr. Ignoramus in IIT council would not be knowing about the tie-up of much loathed coaching institutes with the schools. What difference will it make to them apart from increasing the pressure on students in school who could have avoided the pain of preparing for these exams by not joining a coaching institute.

Finally, do we need this change? If we assume that these premier institutes have right way of grading the students then it is very clear the exam in its current format suffices. I don't have exact data but I believe that the average CGPA of first 100 JEE rankers is greater than second 100 rankers and so on. So either the grading system is flawed (Jairam Ramesh was right after all?) or the exam is alright. I hope the latter is true. 

It seems the Council can't see the woods for the trees. This country spends billions of dollars on purchasing weapons/technology from abroad but even the research scholars in the premier institutes are paid peanuts. These men and women as human resource could have changed the face and output of sloths like HAL and DRDO. But may be that's life. As our talent serves developed world, we remain rooted to our fancy notions and keep taxing our people (yes the most poor ones too) needlessly.

IIT JEE theatrics

Kapil Sibbal minced no words when he made his intentions clear for JEE eligibility. Mr. Sibbal has made it clear that the reason for this change is mushrooming of coaching centres throughout the country. His logic is simple. Coaching institutes train students and hence they (students) don't pay attention to class 12th exams. This in my opinion is a flawed assumption.

Most students in IITs (at least IIT Kanpur) have more than 80% marks in class 12th. Many of those who don't score more than 80% are from state boards who will go above 80 once the marks are normalized( I hope sanity will prevail). And add to it the fact that most of them have come from coaching institutes. Last time they changed the rules, apparently targeting coaching centres from a particular city, the results were not encouraging. Those institutes have grown from strength to strength in last 3 years. It appears those rules only helped them. I am sure these rules too will have no effect. What can you do if these institutes are able to attract cream of the country? The students they have in their premier batches are quite capable of scoring over 80% without much effort. Giving more weightage to class 12th will only dilute the quality inside campus.

IIT Bombay : Choice or Craze

I recently read an article on the choices of this year's JEE qualified candidates. And the break-up of top 100 was startling. 69 of top 100 rankers have opted for IIT Bombay. This is a highly skewed distribution of top 100, considering the fact that there are at least 4 other IITs which are comparable to IIT Bombay. I thought of some plausible explanation for this phenomenon.

One factor is the number of selections from Kota. One of my friends told me that the coaching classes there paint a rosy picture of IITB and IITD at the expense of IITK and IITKGP. This time however, even Delhi has witnessed decline. May be that has something to do with placement performance of IITD in last two years.

Other factor of course is location. Candidates prefer cities like Mumbai and New Delhi to Kanpur. IITM takes a beating here because it is in South India. Most of selections from South India are from Andhra and students from that state are in considerable number even in IITK, so I suppose the number would be even more in IITB.

The third factor is the placement record. Clearly the placements are best in IITB.

That is what I could think of right now as reasons for this skewed distribution. However, JEE chairman of IITB offered the reason to be introduction of "minors". Minors were already in existence in Kgp and IITM and still Kgp could not get a single student in top 100. In my opinion this trend is very bad for other IITs. Each IIT has its own fort. Like CS department of IITK is best and same is the perception about Chemical of IITB. Civil is best in Roorkee. So anyone must consider his interest before deciding on any IIT and not the craze which these coaching wallahs create without having any experience of either industry or research.

P.S. : These are my own views expressed on the basis of perception and information from some of my fellow students. If you feel these are not correct feel free to drop a comment.