Mumbai: Over 5 Lakh students who aspire to get admission in 15 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will appear for IIT-JEE (Joint Entrance Exam), to be conducted this year i.e. 2012. IIT-JEE 2012 is scheduled to be held on April 8, 2012 at various test centres across the country. The entrance test will be held in two sessions i.e. Paper 1: 09.00 - 12.00 hrs and Paper 2: 14.00 - 17.00 hrs. As per sources, it will probably be the last JEE.
Sources said that the total number of candidates has increased by 16,000 from the previous year 2011, when only 4.86 lakh class XII students took the exam, whereas in 2010, the count of test takers was 4.56 lakh. Officers in all JEE offices, spread across the seven old IITs, said that applications are still being scrutinized and the final tally of test takers is expected to be anywhere between 4.75 lakh and 5.02 lakh.
However, JEE 2012 has seen the lowest increase in applications in any two corresponding years. Explaining about the less increase, R V Shevgaonkar, IIT-Delhi Director, said that the number of aspirants applying to sit for the JEE has stabilized over the years, though there was an unexpected hike in the applications when the eight new IITs started.
Discussing the sudden decrease of students applying for IIT-JEE exam, Sanjay Dhande, IIT-Kanpur Director, said that different from the old days when students applied from the metro-centric areas and from the upper middle class, a new trend is being formed due to the proliferation of secondary schooling. In addition, there is a big upsurge in the demand for quality education from students of middle or tier two cities.
Furthermore, officials at JEE offices said that there has been a slight increase in the number of female candidates this year, as from last year, the application fee for girls has been called off. There has not been any huge rise or fall in the number of reserved category students. Moreover, there will be no change in this year's paper pattern, added a JEE chairman.
It is also notified that for next year, JEE will go by in the recommendations of a committee. The committee will be headed by secretary of science and technology department T Ramaswamy, which emphasises the fact that Class XII scores must be factored in the overall JEE scores. IIT-JEE is a national level entrance test, conducted in order to select eligible candidates for admission into various undergraduate engineering courses at all IITs.
