JOIN USThe tuition fee waiver scheme, however, will be applicable in case of students with high ranking in the all India test who take admission in any of the NIT’s 30 centres. The announcement regarding the scheme came at a meeting of the NIT Council, presided over by Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal, here.
“The Council accorded in-principle approval for introduction of revised NIT Merit Award, with tuition fee waiver on graded basis, to all those students who are ranked in the top bracket of the AIEEE and take admission,” an HRD Ministry official said. However, what would be the “top bracket” of AIEEE ranking is yet to be finalised. “There is need to finalise the modalities of the proposed scheme as most of the top ranking students choose to take admission in IITs after successfully getting through entrance examination,” the minister said.
The tuition fee waiver has been proposed to be given to eligible candidates through award of scholarships. However, NITs are yet to decide whether the waiver should be full or partial. The Council, which is the top decision making body of the NITs, also proposed to introduce “exclusive scholarships” for meritorious students belonging to scheduled caste, scheduled tribes and other backward class. “It is expected that the revised Merit Award system would be put in place from the academic year 2012-12,” the official said.
During the meeting, the Council also endorsed the T Ramasamy committee’s recommendation for a single entrance test for all engineering colleges including IITs, NITs and private institutions throughout the country.
“There was a consensus in the Council that this proposal envisages a judicious mix of school and national level test performance and it will usher in an alternative admission system wherein multiplicity of tests and dependency on coaching would get reduced in a great measure, aligning the testing process to class XII syllabus,” the ministry official said.