From 2013, 50:50 weightage to be given to Class XII exams and test results
A single entrance examination will be held from 2013 for admission to centrally funded engineering institutes, including Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), International Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs). Equal weightage (50 per cent to each) will be given to marks obtained in Class XII Board examinations and the performance in the entrance tests.
According to the decision taken by the three councils of the above institutes after a meeting held in New Delhi, the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admissions to undergraduate programmes in engineering would be conducted in two parts: JEE Main Test and a JEE Advanced Test. The two tests would be held on the same day and are compulsory for all candidates. This decision, taken after deliberations spanning over two years, was approved in the meeting presided by Union Minister for HRD, Communications & IT, Kapil Sibal.
The Class XII Board marks (that are normalised on percentile basis through an appropriate formula) plus the marks obtained in the JEE-Main examination would be used by IITs for gating/screening the aspirants. Both these scores would then be totalled, giving equal weightage to both. Only a fixed number of candidates, who have scored above a certain pre-fixed cut-off, would be eligible to have their papers evaluated for the JEE-Advanced Test. The ranking for admission to undergraduate programmes in IITs would be based on the performance in JEE-Advanced examination from among the candidates screened through this process.
“The Joint Councils of IITs, NITs & IIITs considered various views that had emerged during the process of consultations. A strong body of opinion among 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 Class XII Board examinations and at the same time maintain the credibility and integrity of admissions to higher educational institutions,” said the statement.
For the other institutes except IITs, there would be 40 per cent weightage for performance in Class XII Board marks (normalized on percentile basis through an appropriate formula), 30 per cent weightage for performance in JEE-Main and 30 per cent weightage in JEE-Advanced and a combined merit decided accordingly. The JEE-Main tests shall be multiple choice objective type paper whereas the nature and modalities of JEE-Advanced will be determined by the Joint Admission Board of IITs.
A meeting of the state education ministers is proposed for June 5, when the participation of states in the common national test process would be deliberated upon. States would have the freedom to join the process and have the autonomy to determine their own relative weightages to the normalised Class XII Board marks, performance in JEE-Main and JEE-Advanced.
