Mr.Kapil Sibbal declared that IIT JEE entrance system is being rejigged and class 12 marks of various boards will form part of the ranking system for admission in IITs.He also informed that normalization of class 12 marks of various board will be undertaken Merit list prepared on the basis of normalized board marks and an aptitude test will be used for admission.A section of the media lauded this announcement and claimed that this would be the death nail for the coaching industry .
When I was a faculty with BITS Pilan (1992-94) , which used the board examination marks then to arrive at merit list of students who applied for admission in the institution; I observed that the number of students from Tamil Nadu and othe southern states far outnumbered their counterpart from northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar etc..I often called it Birla Institute for Tamilians and other South Indians (BITS ) !It seems some states have developed a magical formula to ensure that a large number of students score upwards of 90 percent. Therefore there is bunching at the top end of the marks distribution in states of Tamil Nadu , Andhra Pradesh and Keala.How do we normalize the marks obtained in different boards then is a big issue . Already statistical experts from ISI Kolkata through analysis of Class 12 marks of various boards have concluded that the marks scored across the boards can not be compared as there was hardly any correlation among the marks scored by the candidates from the various boards.
Coacing business brings in lot of pressure, no doubt; but how do you ensure that they will not devise systems to adapt to this new aptiude based test ? It is not advisable to put the young talent of the country to such experimention. Unfortunately our ministers seem to be short of the talent to figure out these dynamics.There was another announcement with respect to IIT fee but more about that later.
