New Delhi, May 28: From 2013, there will be two examinations for IIT aspirants, JEE-Main and JEE-Advanced.
This was decided at a meeting of the Joint Councils of IITs, NITs, IIITs and other central educational institutions here today, presided over by HRD Minister Kapil Sibal.
Following are the major decisions taken at the meeting:
1.The IITs, NITs and other institutions approved the conduct of a common admission examination process giving due weightage to performance in Class XII Board exams.
2. A Joint Entrance Examination for admission to the undergraduate programmes in engineering would be conducted in two parts, JEE-MAIN and JEE-ADVANCED.
3. The Class XII Board/equivalent marks normalized on percentile basis through an appropriate formula plus the marks obtained in the JEE-MAIN examination, with equal weightage, would be used by IITs for purposes of gating/screening. Only a fixed number of candidates (five times the number of the seats for admission in the IIT system or a pre-fixed cut-off) screened on the basis of merit assessed on the basis of cumulative score of normalized School Board marks and performance in JEE-MAIN examination would be eligible to be considered for admission. The ranking for admission to undergraduate programmes in IITs would be based entirely on the performance in the JEE-ADVANCED examination from amongst the candidates screened through this process.
4. For all other Centrally Funded Institutions, there would be 40% weightage for performance in Class XII Board marks normalized on percentile basis through an appropriate formula, 30% weightage for performance in JEE-MAIN and 30% weightage in JEE-ADVANCED and a combined merit decided accordingly.
5. JEE-MAIN tests shall be multiple choice objective type paper whereas the nature and modalities of the JEE-ADVANCED shall be determined by the Joint Admission Board of IITs.
6. The proposed changes will be effective from the year 2013 and both CFTIs and CBSE would work jointly.
7. The Joint Admission Board (JAB) of the IIT system would have complete control on matters such as paper setting, evaluation and preparation of the merit list, etc. over the JEE-ADVANCED and CBSE would provide the administrative support for conduct of the examination. For the conduct of the JEE-MAIN examination an expanded Joint Admission Board shall be constituted including the NIT system, other CFTIs and State Government representatives in an appropriate manner. CBSE will provide the administrative and logistic support for the conduct of JEE-MAIN examination across the country.
8. The process of establishing co-ordination between COBSE & JAB-IITs for implementation of the core curriculum in sciences and maths across the CBSE, ICSE and State Boards shall be put in place immediately.
9. Those students who have appeared in the Class XII Board examinations in 2012 and wish to improve upon their performance can appear again for the Board examinations in 2013. CBSE and State Boards would make appropriate arrangements to facilitate this through a special dispensation.
10. The transparency processes established by the IIT system presently and in AIEEE-2012 shall be adopted for the JEE-MAIN and JEE-ADVANCED too.
11. A meeting of State Education Ministers' is proposed for 5th June where the participation of States in the common national test process would be deliberated upon. States would have the freedom to join in the process and have the autonomy to determine their own relative weightages to normalized Class XII Board marks, performance in JEE-MAIN and JEE-ADVANCED.
Sibal told the meeting that the multiplicity of entrance exams in engineering was a cause of concern imposing burden in terms of time, fees and stress on the students in scheduling and preparing for each exam.
He pointed out towards the neglect of Class XII board exam process while admitting students to engineering institutions. This has led to complete disregard to the secondary school system.
The Joint Councils of IITs, NITs & IIITs considered various views that had emerged during the process of consultations.
A strong body of opinion amongst the members of the Council was that the importance of the schooling system has to be revived in the larger public interest by giving due weightage to the performance of students in the Class XII Board examinations and at the same time maintaining the credibility and integrity of admissions to higher educational institutions.
