Saturday, September 20, 2014

75% marks in class 12th board exams may be the new eligibility criteria for the IITs.

The controversial ‘percentile system’ that decides students' eligibility for admissions into the IITs is set to change with the Joint Admission Board (JAB) of the premier technical institutions recommending ‘top 20 percentile or 75% marks in the state board examinations, whichever is lower,’ for a seat in the IITs.
The recommendations came in a meeting of Standing Committee of IIT Council, a sub committee of the IIT council on Saturday, sources in the government said.
The final decision will be taken in the meeting of IIT council, later this month.
The top 20 percentile system introduced during the UPA regime and under former HRD minister Kapil Sibal in 2013, required successful candidates to be among the top-20 percentile scorers in Class 12 exams of their respective boards.
This rule had created a controversy as there was huge variation in the cut off marks of different boards and had resulted in 80 students mostly from Andhra Pradesh missing a seat in IITs despite qualifying the entrance examination, as they had failed to figure in the top 20 percentile.
The cut-off (to figure in top-20 percentile list) for Andhra students had shot up to 91.8 per cent, the highest in the country, Tamil Nadu, at 90.9% and Kerala 85.2%.
The modified rule, when accepted by the IIT council, will benefit students who score 75% marks in the board examination as they will qualify the eligibility criteria of the IIT irrespective of the variations in the percentile cut off.
The new system was introduced in 2013 to make students give more focus on their class 12 board examinations, which was widely ignored by IIT aspirants who, according to the earlier rule just had to score 60%.  
The 20 percentile system, after it was introduced saw rise in cut off from 81.6% in 2013 to 83.2%. For Andhra Board this increased from 91.8% to 93.03%, for Karnataka board from 86% to 93%, for ISC from 83.2% to 85%, Tamil Nadu board from 90.9% to 91.7%.

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