Students ready to take up CET
With the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, Delhi and Kharagpur opposing the HRD ministry’s move to do away with the AIEEE, IIT-JEE and change the exam format to a single common entrance test (CET), students feel that a single CET would help them a lot.
According to N. Aakaash, a final-year electronics and communication engineering student at VIT University, Vellore, he welcomes the ministry’s decision and said it would help eliminate multiplicity of entrance examinations as most of the top, higher education institutions in the country conduct entrance examination.
“On an average, a student spends a minimum of Rs 15,000 on application forms itself. If the student comes from an affluent family, then he may buy all applications but he hails from a poor economic background, will he be able to apply to all institutions? In this case, we are denying him his right,” he said.
N. Venkatakrishnan, an alumnus of the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchy, said board exam marks should also be included for admission to Central institutions, including IITs, as it would make students focus on their school studies.
“In the past, IIT aspirants did not study the school lessons as they knew that if you cleared the eligibility in board exam and scored more marks in the joint entrance examination, then your IIT seat is confirmed. So, they did not concentrate enough on board exams,” he said.
Prof Baskar Ramamurthi, director of IIT Madras, said, “The idea of combining board exam marks is to make sure that one test does not determine the student’s entry into IIT.
You have to be a good student with comprehensive board marks and if you have one-lakh seats in IIT, you don’t need an advance test to select students but that’s not the case in our country.
Earlier, the board was ignored completely, which led to a lot of problems, as students ignored languages. As we need to have a fair way of selecting students, we proposed adding board marks to the CET score.”
Pointing out that Indian school education system had two problems, Prof Ramamurthi said India had no uniform board or single board examination in the school system, besides there being huge shortage of seats.
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