New engineering entrance to attract students

By Madiha Jawed

The new entrance exam format to get through to the top engineering colleges in the country is looking to attract brighter and better students. The new system will replace the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) as speculated, and will give weightage to school board marks.

Through this novel format, school board exam marks (Class 12th) will be given more weightage. Earlier the coaching systems dominated and emphasised more on coaching for the JEE, thus ignoring board exams.

This exam will be held in two parts, mains and advanced. Students would have to take the aptitude test in the first part. The second part will check the student's "depth of knowledge". The paper will be set by the IIT faculty and the exams will be called JEE.

The new arrangement would decide the fate of aspirants who want to join the famed Indian Institutes of Technology as well as other reputed technical institutes in India.

This new format introduced by the HRD ministry aims to scrap the purpose of multiple exams held by various science and engineering institutions in the country with a common aptitude test thus reducing the pressure on lakhs of students who prepare for these tests every year.

According to a senior professor from the IIT, the new pattern may be introduced from 2013. (Read more)

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