Thursday, May 03, 2012

IITs set to improve transparency in JEE

IITs will post the evaluated answer sheets of JEE candidates online, TOI reports:
  
If a candidate finds any discrepancy, he or she can lodge a complaint online. These evaluated answer sheets will be available online from May 5 to May 10. The facility to submit requests for revision will close at 5pm on May 10 after which representatives of all IITs will meet to consider the requests. If found correct, the responses will be updated by May 14. According to IITD director, R Shevgaonkar, it may happen that the scanner does not pick up correct responses if a candidate has not filled the response bubble completely.
 
Naturally, the answer sheet will have to be provided for candidates to be able to compare. This is a huge step forward in improving transparency in the JEE and it will reinforce public confidence in the exam, which has stood the test of time. One wonders why such a simple step was not taken earlier- and why others in the business (such as IIMs) have not done likewise.

The big reform in the JEE, which is assigning a suitable weight to the 12th standard exam, has been stymied by concerns amongst IIT faculty about being able to normalise across various boards. This is a legitimate concern but it's worth mentioning that the IIMs have already gone ahead with giving a 30% weight to earlier exams. The underlying principle is unexceptionable: one cannot judge a candidate's merit on the basis of a single test where the difference in scores between one candidate and another is   miniscule.
 

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the board exams have to be given a weight, it should be a negative one. I'm willing to bet that the spread between the JEE score and the board score will be a very good measure. Another way of getting to this (in an unbiased manner) is to just regress future performance against JEE score and board exams, and I'm pretty sure you will get a -ve coefficient for the board exam with high statistical significance.

The world is moving more towards one-on-one coaching, and doing away with traditional classrooms and here we are, turning back the clock to giving more weight to a pathetic system.

Ok, one test may not be enough, why not then consider the student's resume and do an interview like is done for IIM and for admissions in US universities? Just because one test is not enough, it does not mean that a meaningless test has to be added on. Flawed thinking all around.

Anonymous said...

And, by the way, who's fault is it that there is only one good test in India? Who's fault is it that the other institutes suck. Why not fix the other institutes so that there isn't a mad rush to IITs, instead of worrying about how to make the JEE better. Reduce the significance of the JEE by drastically increasing seats and quality elsewhere. Surely, that's the commonsense solution to prevent reliance on one test?

Anonymous said...

Yes. A good step in the right direction. I am member of ICAI. Even ICAI has started sharing answer sheets with the students at a particular cost and at request of student. And unlike JEE, ICAI provides the Suggested Answers, as well.

A laudable step by these institutes.

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