The
entrance exam to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has never
had so many candidates who cracked the gruelling exam on the first
attempt: 88% candidates qualified in the first shot this year.
Last year, 69.6% of aspirants qualified after taking the IIT-JEE
(advanced) for the first time. Another 27.2% had to take the test again
before they could walk past the gates of the IITs. This year, merely 12%
students qualified after taking the exam for the second time. Since the
last two years, the IITs have only allowed candidates two attempts.
"We are realizing that by restricting the number of attempts, the IITs
are getting students who are very well-trained. I am not sure if it is
putting more pressure on students, but students are a lot better
prepared," says an IIT director. Slicing the statistics further shows
that of the 9,795 students currently sitting in the first-year
classrooms across IITs, the count of those who cracked the JEE
(advanced) in the first attempt stands at 6,725 (68.65%).
Data till
2007 shows about 10% of the total aspirants were taking the JEE for the
third time (or more). But with more students taking the test seriously,
JEE-2006 saw the share fall as 43.5% candidates qualified in their first
try, as compared to JEE-2005 in which only 28.49% got through the first
time around.
In fact, a dean from IIT-Madras believes these
statistics are a result of the changing profile of those who are making
it to the IITs. "Students who are now walking into the IITs are mostly
from cities and from middle-class households who can afford to pay for
tuitions," he says.
Most of those who qualified—20,636 or
76%—are from urban centres, 3,862 (14.22%) are from towns, and 2,654
(9.77%) are from villages. Again, making for a sharp economic divide on
campus, two large cohorts of students in the current batch in the IITs
are from the upper-middle classes and from the lower-income groups.
This year, 3,586 or 13.2% who qualified disclosed that the annual
family income is over Rs 8 lakh. Three years ago, data released by the
colleges revealed that about 9.3% of the qualified candidates had an
annual family income of over Rs 10 lakh.
Equally stunning is
the jump of students with family income of less than Rs 1 lakh: from
just 1.5% three years ago to 18.6% this time. But IITs are a melting pot
where differences vanish in class, said another IIT director. "What has
also happened is that the Sixth Pay Commission has had a bearing on
many government employees' salaries and, hence, we have many more
students in the higher pay bracket," explains an IIT-Madras dean.
Like last year, most students came from homes where parents were in
government service, followed by those from a business background. Yet,
most candidates who qualified declared that they did not attend a
coaching class to get a leg-up in their performance. Information
collected by the tech colleges reveals that close to half of those who
make their mark in the entrance test prepare for the exam on their own.
The IITs ask every student who takes the JEE whether he/she prepared
for the test "on his own or via other methods", and add that their
selection would be based on the marks they have scored, irrespective of
their preparation method.
Data provided by candidates shows
that about 53% students said they studied on their own. Their share has
altered over the years. Data analyzed by the JEE cell reveals that while
60% of the students who made it to the seven old IITs in 2007 opted for
some form of coaching, in 2008, this figure dropped to 45%.Source: TOI
