ISEET replaces JEE - Is it a welcome change?

by - Ankur Anal

Aryan was all excited today, he had scored 93% marks in his X Board examinations.

I too, felt happy for the chap owing to the amount of hard work, he had put in.

But, somewhere deep down, I felt a bit sad too. Because, knowingly or unknowingly he had already put himself in the cobwebs of IIT-JEE. His parents would have already started

dreaming of their son as an IITian. And he would finally end up spending the two most important years of his life, at an IIT-Coaching institute somewhere in Kota, Delhi etc.

And the biggest agony is that all this would happen immaterial of the fact whether he wants to be an engineer or not?

This is not only about Aryan, but almost every other chap.

Every year lakhs of students go to various coaching centres all across the country, to fulfil their dreams of making it to an IIT. And just because they were good at Science subjects in class X, it is pre-assumed that they would be equally comfortable with them in Class XI/XII too. But believe me, it needn’t be true.

Coaching centres prepare students at a level which may be as high as twice of the level

which IIT expects. This, in turn, creates a lot of pressure on the students. And, the reason

given is “You never know, how tough a question in JEE, can be”. And yet, the level of

students joining an IIT had come down, as stated by the former Infosys Chairman, Mr.

Narayan Murthy.

This is in fact true, to an extent. Especially the problems in Mathematics which have always been a nightmare for students. Truly, there was a need to change the pattern.

But the question is whether ISEET is a correct replacement or not??

Recently, the committee of Dr. Ramaswamy, proposed changes in the pattern of IIT-JEE, which included giving 40%(can even go upto 100%) weightage to Board exams, 30% to Aptitude test and another 30% to advanced problems in Science subjects, which after a lot protests, was able to get the green signal. The new format has been named Indian Science Engineering Eligibility Test (ISEET). It is proposed to be a replacement for all the Engineering entrance exams in India.

Now there would be a fixed syllabus for students to prepare for, unlike the ocean sized syllabus earlier. Generally, it is seen that quite a good number of students from coaching institutes end up failing in their Board examinations, forget about IITs. So, this too won’t happen now.

Coaching institutes, who earlier used to laugh at Board problems, would now be seen spending most of their time in solving them. The introduction of Aptitude test is an excellent step taken up. If one looks at SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), it too has an aptitude part attached to it. Infact an Aptitude test is an ideal way to check one’s skills.

Yeah true that it won’t be able to shut down the coaching centres, but would surely lower

their business.

At last, I would like to summarise a few advantages of ISEET over the earlier JEE.

•      It would greatly bring down, the pressure on students.
•          Students can concentrate more on their Basics.
•          The need to spell out excess money on coaching institutes would come down.
•          Students can build better profiles, by improving their Board percentages.
•      As there would be one single exam, students can save on financial, mental and physical terms.
•          Students will read their NCERT. (I luv those books)
•          Aptitude Test won’t be a shocker at the time of Placement in college.

However, there can be a few negatives too and it largely depends on how students take it as we’ve heard that in some CBSE schools, the CCE pattern has been a nightmare for teachers and students are least bothered, that’s mainly because of bad implementation.

But it is highly expected that the new ISEET pattern would prove to be a boon for our system. Perhaps, India is changing.

Let’s hope for the best now..!