IIT (the Indian Institute of Technology) is probably the toughest university in the world to enter. The competition is so brutal that children whose parents can afford it, apply to America’s Ivy league as a backup.
The 17-year olds have to clear three hurdles. Each of India’s
28 states has its own education board. The student must be in the top 20
percentile in the state’s grade 12 exam. This is a necessary but not sufficient
condition. A million students then appear for the Joint Entrance Exam (Main), a
national exam for all engineering students. The top 250,000 students qualify
for the Joint Entrance Exam (Advanced). In the end, 16,000 of the brightest
Indians triumph.
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Several states reduced the state board syllabus by 30%
to recognize the pandemic impact on studies. Ramgopal Rao, the IIT Delhi director,
was asked if IIT would do the same. Mr Rao was surprised at the question. JEE Advanced
is a deliberately tough exam, he said. Its job is to pick up 16,000 students
from among a million. It is an “elimination exam”, not a selection or a
certifying exam. Certainly, no question of making the exam easier.
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JEE (Mains) is conducted every January and April. The
January exam happened as scheduled, but the April exam was postponed. There is
another national exam called NEET (national eligibility cum entrance test) for
admissions into medical colleges. The competition here is just as cruel as for
engineering.
Students start preparing for IIT and medical entrance
exams years in advance. In the two years prior to exams, as a rule, students
attend specialized coaching classes. Some classes are pre-dawn to enable
students attend their regular classes in time. In March, three million
engineering and medical aspirants were thrown into an abyss of uncertainty.
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First there was a case in India’s Supreme Court trying
to stop the IIT and medical entrance exams in coronavirus times. The Supreme
Court is made of human beings. They understand the possible chaos if India has
a backlog of three million students. They dismissed the case, saying students’
careers can’t be risked. Then ministers of six states filed a review petition.
That was duly dismissed as well.
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Despite the pandemic, the IIT Advanced took place in September.
160,000 candidates appeared in 222 cities. Students were given different
reporting times to avoid crowding. They wore masks and hand gloves, and were
required to carry a personal 50 ml sanitizer bottle and a simple ballpoint pen.
Chirag Falor, who topped, complained later he felt suffocated. The mask
obstructs flow of oxygen to the brain, and slows you down, he said. Unrelated
to the complaint, he opted not to join IIT, and flew to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology where he had gained admission as an alternative.
*****
For undergraduates, IIT is now conducting online
exams. The students are required to sit in front of the cameras in full view.
IIT plans to introduce AI (artificial intelligence) to proctor the online
exams. AI algorithms will detect any cheating attempts. IIT has asked for
recorded videos of students giving exams. These will be used for machine
learning, to educate the AI. Last month, 70 IIT Bombay students were found
cheating. At the time of the exam, they were using a WhatsApp group. Now that exam
is cancelled, and a reexam ordered. Surely, IIT can develop a top caliber AI to
avoid these situations in future.
*****
Microsoft offers $200,000 as a starting package to top
fresh IIT graduates. Goldman Sachs, Facebook, Qualcomm, Salesforce, Amazon
queue up to pick the talent. Google’s Sundar Pichai is just one example of IIT graduates’
prominence in the software industry. IIT was criticized for India’s brain drain
with 80% of the graduates settling in the USA. Now the percent has come down to
30%. Narendra Modi’s government has 22 top civil service secretaries who graduated
from the IIT.
No matter how severe the pandemic, it is not possible
to halt the IIT inflow and outflow processes.
Ravi
IIT ला पर्याय नाही
ReplyDeleteWow amazing situation
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