Saturday 29 December 2012

Record number of candidates for JEE 2013

The Joint Engineering Entrance (JEE) - main, formerly known as the All India Engineering Entrance Examination, had registered a record 14 lakh candidates for the 2013 exams. This is the highest ever registration for the test conducted by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). What's interesting is that while year on year increase in number of aspirants since 2008 has been in between 20,000 to 30,000, this year it increased by nearly 2.8 lakh. The exams will be conducted in April 2013.

JEE (main) is conducted for candidates aspiring for admissions to BE, BTech and architecture courses at National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), Delhi Technological University, and other centrally funded technical institutes (CFTIs). According to CBSE officials, this year has not only seen all time high, but also the increase in terms of numbers has been the highest. "Around 14 lakh aspirants have registered, which is nearly 2.8 lakh more. Last year aound 11.2 lakh candidates registered for the exam," said chairman of CBSE, Vineet Joshi.

While AIEEE and IIT-JEE were separate exams till 2012, based on direction from the ministry of human resource development and following consultation it was decided that from now on admissions to engineering and architecture courses will be based on JEE (main) and (advanced). JEE (advanced) will replace IIT-JEE and will be conducted by the IITs and only the top 1.5 candidates of JEE (main) merit list will be eligible to sit for the JEE (advanced).

According to CBSE officials, one of the reasons for the significant increase in the number of candidates could be the new scheme of things. According to the JEE Apex Board decision the merit list for admission to NITs, IIITs, DTU, Delhi and other CFTIs will be prepared by giving 40% weightage (suitably normalised) to class XII (or equivalent examination) or other qualifying examination marks and 60% to the performance in JEE (main) examination. "For the first time weightage will be given to class XII results as well while preparing the merit list, which was not the case earlier. So while earlier many students used to concentrate on coaching for the entrance exam and prepare for the class XII boards in a way that they score just minimum eligibility marks. Giving weightage to Board results must have encouraged many students who are not exposed to intensive coaching, as they too now stand a good chance to be on the merit list if they perform well in the Boards," said Joshi.

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