Competing for 10,000 engineering seats in 15 IITs, Class 12 students are likely to face a fresh set of criteria and eligibility for the entrance examinations.
To strike down on the coaching institutes lobby which offer training for IIT-JEE, the Human Resources Development Ministry had constituted a four-member committee in October, last year, to review the JEE system.
With increasing incidents of students not scoring high marks in Class 12 exams and obtaining extensive training for IIT-JEE from private coaching institutes, Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal had contemplated on the possibility of increasing the Class 12 cutoff marks for aspirants seeking admission into IITs.
The committee will review the curriculum and the IIT- JEE system, and explore the possibilities of changes that could be accommodated.
Changes planned
Increase in the cutoff percentage in Class 12 examination, restriction on the number of applications, higher weightage for Class 12 marks are some of the aspects that are being looked into by the committee.
At present, aspirants with 60 per cent marks in Class 12 are eligible to take the IIT-JEE.
Exam pattern
The JEE examination would be objective type and contain two papers of three hours each.
Paper-1 would be held from 9 am to 12 noon and the Paper-2 would be held from 2 pm to 5 pm. Each paper would have separate sections for Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics and has been designed to test comprehension,reasoning and analytical ability of the candidates.