MHRD has big plans for JEE 2013

By Ruchi Shrimali

From next year, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) is planning to have the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) twice a year - once in April and again in November or December. The final dates for the new common entrance test next year that will replace IIT JEE and AIEEE will be released on April 16. It will allow a second chance to the students to get an engineering seat and make it easier for the organisers to conduct the test as the number of students taking the test at a single go will reduce.

However, IIT faculty has not acquiesced to the proposal yet. MHRD has also suggested that the percentile rank of students in their board exams should be calculated on the basis of their scores in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, best subjective among the electives chosen by the student, and one language subject. Making language an important part of JEE result will encourage students to treat it at par with their science subjects.

The new test pattern proposed for JEE 2013 will have two papers - Main and Advance. Both the papers will have duration of three hours and have same syllabus which will be prescribed by JEE each year. The exam will assess the basic understanding of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics in students as well as their psychometric, problem formulation, problem solving, and incisive thinking abilities.

Students will be awarded a Centrally Funded Technical Institutes (CFTI) rank, which will give 40% weightage to board marks, 30% to the marks in the Main test, and 30% to marks in Advance test.

A single window online counseling system will be used for admission to all the IITs, NITs, and IITs, which will be based on the CFTI rank. To make sure that the exam is conducted efficiently, MHRD is planning to set up a JEE Apex Board (JAB), which will comprise directors of IIT, NIT and IIITs, a ministry representative, and the chairmen of CBSE and AICTE; a JEE Academic Group (JAG), a JEE Delivery Group (JDG) and a JEE Interface Group (JIG). Read more about the big plans for JEE 2013