NUMBER OF JEE ASPIRANTS SHRINKS BY OVER 1 LAKH!!

SOURCE: TIMES OF INDIA
The number of engineering aspirants registering for JEE (Main) has declined for the second year in a row. The numbers have fallen by almost a lakh this year compared to the 50,000 dip recorded last year. CBSE, which conducts the national-level joint entrance examination, received applications from 12.07 lakh aspirants last week. In 2015, 13.04 lakh students had registered for the test.

The fall was even steeper for Maharashtra, where the registrations have dropped by a third over last year. Maharashtra, however, has the highest number of applicants (1.63 lakh) in the country followed by Uttar Pradesh (1.50 lakh).

JEE (Main) is the qualifying exam for admissions to centrally-funded technical institutions such as NITs, IIITs and institutions in the participating states. Of the total numbers of students taking JEE (Main), the top 1.5 lakh are eligible to appear for JEE (Advanced) for admissions to the premier IITs. This year, the IIT Council has decided to shortlist 2 lakh candidates.



Experts attribute the fall to the waning interest in engineering and also to the variety of choices available to students in other professions in the last few years. Vijay Singh, former national coordinator for science Olympiads and a Raja Ramanna Fellow, said, "For the last few years, the impression that an engineering degree does not guarantee you a job has percolated down %to students.

JEE MAIN 2016 DATES ANNOUNCED

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•                                                   JEE Main-2016 entrance exam important dates

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• Applications will be accepted from 01 December, 2015
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• Last date for receiving applications is  31 December, 2015
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• Offline exam will be conducted on 03 April, 2016
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• Online exam will be conducted on 09 and 10 April, 2016

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JEE Advanced-2016 important dates

• Registration begins from 29 April 2016 to 4 May, 2016
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• Date of Examination: 22 May 2016

Display of ORS: 1 June to 4 June 2016

For official notice visit this link.

For assistance in filling different engineering entrance forms and subsequent counseling and college selection, feel free to contact us. For availing our services mail in your request to siddharth@yourssid.com or SMS HELP to 0-9887932499

NO CHANGE IN JEE 2016 FORMAT

SOURCE: HINDUSTAN TIMES

Students preparing for IIT and NIT entrance exams should prepare well for their Class 12 exams as the HRD ministry has decided that there will be no change in the pattern of joint entrance examination (JEE) 2016.

Putting an end to the confusion over a change in the pattern of JEE 2016, the human resource development (HRD) ministry has decided to continue the same pattern of JEE 2015 under which 40% weight is given to board marks and 60% to the JEE-Main score.

“We have received the report of the committee and it will be studied in detail. However, as only a few months are left for the entrance exams we want to give ample time to students to prepare and hence have decided not to make any changes to the format right now,” said a senior HRD official requesting anonymity.

A sub-committee of the National Institutes of Technology (NIT) council had recommended that Class 12 board marks should not be taken into account for admissions in NITs. However, HRD minister Smriti Irani had formed another committee to examine the issue. The ministry has received the report and its recommendations, if accepted, will be applicable only in 2017.

PANEL SUGGESTS SINGLE IIT-NIT ENTRANCE EXAM WITH AN APTITUDE TEST

SOURCE: INDIAN EXPRESS

Three years after the UPA-2 government made sweeping changes to the admission process at top engineering institutes of the country, an expert panel appointed by its successor government has recommended another set of changes, including a single entrance examination for both IITs and NITs, no weightage to school board marks, and a compulsory aptitude test. The committee, headed by academic Ashok Mishra, has suggested that JEE (Main) and JEE (Advanced) should be merged into a single entrance exam, conducted by the IITs and intended to test a candidate’s knowledge of physics, chemistry and mathematics. Currently, JEE (Main), meant for admission to the NITs, is conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), and JEE (Advanced) by the IITs.
The recommendations were made public on Saturday for further consultation with stakeholders. The HRD Ministry has not announced a timeframe to decide on the matter, but has clarified that JEE 2016 will be conducted in the same way as now, and that the 40 per cent weightage for Class 12 marks for admission to NITs would continue. The only change would be that the top 2 lakh candidates, instead of 1.5 lakh, in JEE (Main) will qualify to sit for JEE (Advanced). The process of admissions to IITs and NITs was overhauled completely in 2013 after then HRD Minister Kapil Sibal persuaded engineering institutes to give weightage to a candidate’s school performance. This was done to help students focus on their school education, and to wean them away from coaching classes. A review by the institutions three years on has shown that this decision has made little difference to the tuition industry, whose hold on aspirants has, in fact, increased. The IITs and NITs are in favour of scrapping the weightage to board marks. The Ashok Mishra committee was set up to study this proposal, and examine the feasibility of a single entrance test for IITs and NITs. The aptitude test suggested by the committee is intended to test candidates’ inclination for science and innovative thinking. Passing the test will be a prerequisite for appearing for JEE, the report states. The aptitude test, designed to weaken the coaching culture, could be offered two or more times in a year, and a National Testing Service should be set up next year to conduct it, the panel has suggested. Based on their performance in the aptitude test, about 400,000 candidates shall be shortlisted to take the JEE, which will be on the lines of the current JEE (Advanced). Ranks will be issued to 40,000+ students who can seek admission based on a common counseling, it said. It also suggested that IITs be requested to develop mock JEE exams to help students prepare, and to wean them away from the coaching industry.

Panels for IIT Test Merger, Fee Hike

AS published in The Telegraph

The IIT Council today set up a panel to examine whether the existing two-tier tests for taking in BTech students could be merged as the top body for the premier institutes set its sights on a faster and more streamlined admission process.

The council also formed two more panels to decide if tuition fees could be increased to recover running costs and explore ways to reduce dependence on private coaching.

The moves to set up the committees came at a meeting that the council, headed by HRD minister Smriti Irani, held at IIT Bombay.

Students hoping to enter the IITs now have to crack two tests - the JEE-Main and the JEE-Advanced. Nearly 13 lakh students appear for the JEE-Main and only the top 1.5 lakh make it to the next level for a shot at entering the IITs.

The National Institutes of Technology (NITs), on the other hand, admit students based on a system of 60:40 weightage - 60 per cent for their JEE-Main score and 40 per cent for their Class XII board marks.

The Joint Admission Board, which decides the JEE-Advanced pattern, had recently proposed merging the two tests, saying admissions were getting delayed.

Since the NITs announce their merit lists after all the school boards have published their results, the IITs have no choice but to wait as the institutes have started common counselling from this year.

"The current system of admission through a two-stage entrance was reviewed by the (IIT) Council. It was decided that the system would be examined in depth by a group of eminent persons to determine whether it needed modification," a statement by the Press Information Bureau said.

The committee has been asked to submit its recommendations by the first week of November. Sources said the NITs were also thinking of admitting students through the JEE-Advanced.

The IIT Council also decided to set up a panel of directors to examine a proposal to recover operational costs from tuition fees so that the tech schools would have to depend less on the government for funds. The NIT Council has already approved a similar proposal for the NITs.

The IITs now charge Rs 90,000 as yearly tuition fees from BTech students. If the proposal is cleared, the tuition fees could go up to around Rs 2 lakh a year. Sources said the committee of directors would examine ways to increase loan amounts for needy students if the fees are hiked.

The council set up another panel, headed by IIT Roorkee chairperson Ashok Mishra, to suggest changes in the pattern of entrance exams to reduce the impact of private tuitions.

A committee headed by IIT Bombay director Devang Khakhar had recently suggested that the NITs scrap the weightage for board marks, as the objective - reducing dependence on private coaching - had been defeated. The committee found that more students had started taking extra tuitions for their Class XII board exams.

IIT directors also proposed that assistant professors should be appointed for five years and confirmed only on the basis of their performance. The IITs now appoint assistant professors on a one-year probation.

JEE Nationalisation is Key to Admission Transformation

SOURCE:New Indian Express

Two advertisements for admissions on the same day caught my attention. One was for admission to IIMs for the year 2016 and the other was a desperate call by an institution to fill its seats for the current academic year 2015-16. The state of admissions to engineering colleges is no different. On one hand, plans for JEE 2016 have started and on the other, some private colleges are still pushing their ‘agents’ one last time or deploying all sorts of ‘marketing techniques’ to complete the admission process for 2015-16. That admission process cannot go beyond August 15 is law of the land laid down by the Supreme Court in December 2012 in Parshavanath Charitable Trust vs AICTE and no authority has the power to change the admissions schedule finalised by the court. It is also hard to blame the institutions as they are confronted with an equally culpable students and parents community who are trivialising professional college admission to that of hotel or travel booking. With multiple admission offers in students’ hands and decision-making stretched till the last minute, colleges are also in a state of suspended animation in this emerging saga of democratic choice, and in some worse cases, students treat denial of admission to waiting genuine students as their fundamental right. Reward for multiple success! Can the system get better as we move forward? Yes. It can.

Kudos to the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) for successfully completing the Joint Counselling for admission to IITs and NITs as directed by the Delhi High Court for the admission year 2015-16. Though there were initial hiccups and some vacant seats, the overall objective of the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) to ensure that the 34,074 seats across 610 degree programmes in 87 institutions was achieved with reasonable success. The number of students who appeared for JEE Main 2015 was more than 13 lakh, and those who got admitted through the JoSAA forms a diminutive 0.25 per cent. While states like Maharashtra, Odisha, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, etc have adopted JEE Main for their state admission counselling, the contribution margin of JEE to India’s professional college admission system still needs to be increased. Can a system that examines the aptitude of over 13 lakh students every year afford to be under-utilised in the guise of individual entrance exams or admission procedure by individual institutions or states? Definitely not.

The way forward: There is a growing sentiment among parents and students on the torturous task of facing multiple entrance exams for admission to professional courses. Every exam seeks to test a student’s general mental ability and fundamental knowledge in Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. It is difficult to substantiate that a particular university’s or institution’s entrance exam is unique. The law of thermodynamics or trigonometry or periodic table or human anatomy remains unchanged, whether it is tested for JEE or for any entrance exam. This being so, why allow institutions to conduct own entrance exams and allow it to be an instrument for record application sales? The recent success of JoSAA needs to be sustained and expanded. 

The time has come for a national test facility, and the MHRD-appointed committee to review AICTE is right in its recommendation for a single admission test for engineering and MBA. Students will be eternally thankful to the MHRD if JEE is nationalised beginning with deemed universities in 2016 mandated to use JEE scores, and this will in no way affect their admission rights. Moving forward, if other states are covered, the admission scene in the country will undergo a transformational change. Let the dialogue begin.  vaidhya@sastra.edu

The writer is Dean, Planning & Development, SASTRA University