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Latest News |
| 03rd
July 2010 / Times of India / Mumbai Edition |
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Some JEE rankers give IIT a miss
Mumbai: It is not uncommon for students who lie at the
bottom of heap in the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) to drop
the Indian Institutes of Technology and opt for colleges
that offer them a seat in an attractive stream. But this
year, the tech schools have seen some topranking students
give the engineering colleges a go-by to take up pure
sciences.
For instance, of the top 100 JEE rankers, two candidates
— all India rank 18 and all India rank 97 —
have decided to look the other way. Mumbai girl Aakansha
Sarda filled up the admission form during the first round,
but will be vacating her seat, thus allowing another candidate
to slide up the list and take up computer science. Just
after the result, the girl topper reasoned that she was
not sure of the branch she wanted to take up “and
I am interested in a whole lot of subjects. MIT gives
me the flexibility of declaring my major after two years.
Something that IIT does not offer.’’
On the other hand, K Hari Ram, all India rank 97, was
spoilt for choice; he could have secured a seat in computer
science and landed a plush job at the end of four years.
But he did not even fill up the IIT admission form. He
wants to pursue an intensive course in maths and hence
has dropped the IITs for Indian Statistical Institute,
Bangalore, or the Indian Institute of Science Education
and Research, Pune.
JEE officials in IIT-Bombay, say students do dump IIT
for other colleges if they don’t get a course of
their choice. But several former JEE chairmen said they
haven’t seen a single case of any top 100 students
ditch the premier tech schools for anything “less’’.
Said an official from IIT-Bombay, “However, we will
see more such cases soon; the IISERs are already attracting
some top brains. But foreign universities are now attracting
aspiring engineers at the undergraduate level.’’
Each year, the IITs release names of students (in an extended
merit list) who do not make the cut in the JEE, but could
be selected by several other institutes including the
five IISERs. But this year, the tech colleges did not
draw up the extended merit list, but shared the names
of all the students who qualified in the JEE with other
institutes that accept candidates on the basis of their
JEE performance.
Heads of many of these institutes where admissions are
still on, said they are noticing a renewed interest in
pure sciences. K Sriram stood 196th in IIT-JEE. “But
he is interested in pursuing physics and is likely to
join IISER, Pune,’’ his father Natrajan Krishna.
Yet, the IITs remain the best place for an engineering
education in the country. Most others, 68, will join IIT-Bombay.
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