IIT Fraternity discerned with new Entrance Test Pattern

IIT Alumni, Professor and Alumni are not able to digest the changing pattern of the Entrance Test. They fear that the new pattern would erode the autonomy of the elite institutions.

“As far as holding the test is concerned, the new format will erode the autonomous status enjoyed by IITs,” said President of Faculty Federation of IIT Delhi, Sanjeev Sanghi, adding they have written a letter to Prime Minister Manmonhan Singh today in this regard.

Sanghi also regretted the decision to hold the test under the new format from 2013, saying their plea to hold it from 2014 has been rejected. “This will create a big problem because the IITs will be left with no time to conduct a dry run to assess the new format,” he said.

The HRD Ministry had recently announced a new format for the IIT entrance under which the plus two Board results of the candidates will also be taken into consideration. Under the prescribed format, for admission to all centrally-funded institutes, there would be 40 percentage weightage for performance in Class XII (after normalisation of marks), 30 per cent weightage to performance in main and 30 per cent in the advanced test. In case of IITs, there would be a filtering process involved. The Board results and the main test will be given 50 per cent weightage each. Only the top 50,000 students will be selected for the advance test after taking into account their performance in the board results and the main result.

President of IIT Delhi Alumni Association (IITDAA) Somnath Bharti said the step diluted the vision of the country’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru about the IITs, and added that the association may go to court to get a stay on the government decision “if required”.

“This is dilution of the IIT envisioned by Pt. Nehru,” said Bharti.

“We will have a meeting soon and, if required, we will approach the court,” Bharti, who is also a Supreme Court advocate and a former member of IIT Delhi senate, told.

A senior professor from IIT Delhi, who did not wish to be named, echoed Bharti’s views saying that the procedure has several loop holes.

“This pattern cannot stop coaching institutions, because the problem is lack of proper training in school. Students will keep going to coaching centres till the government does something about quality of education in schools,” he said.

The professor also expressed apprehensions about the step being more political than beneficial to students.