Entrance Examinations - Admission Tests in India

:: Related Stories ::

JEE Mains results to be declared on May 7

LUCKNOW : The results of the first Joint Entrance Exam (JEE)-Mains conducted by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on April 7 will be announced on May 7.

Prof R N Sengupta vice chairman IIT-JEE Kanpur zone said on April 30 that those qualifying the JEE Mains -- the top 1.5 lakh aspirants -- will get a chance to appear in the JEE Advanced, scheduled to be held on June 2.

The Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) is being conducted in two parts-JEE Main and JEE Advanced. While JEE Main was conducted by CBSE, JEE Advanced will be conducted by Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

About 44,000 students had appeared in JEE Main at 68 centres in Kanpur. A large number of students had gone to Kanpur from Lucknow, Allahabad, Sitapur, Etawah, Barabanki, Unnao and other neighbouring districts.

He said the eligibility of the student to appear in JEE Advanced-2013 will be decided by the candidates' score in the JEE Main-2013, which will be known by May 7.

Those figuring in the merit list, will further be given an opportunity to seek admission in premier IITs in the country. There are a total of 10,000 seats in the IITs.

Sen said that to write JEE Advanced - 2013, all eligible candidates should register online at http://jeeadvonline.iitd.ac.in or jeeadv.iitd.ac.in from May 8 to 13.

After the online registration, candidates must pay the examination fee as applicable through challan (generated during registration process) of all SBI branches having core banking solution (CBS) on or before May 13.

The examination application fee for GE and OBC male candidates is Rs. 1,800. The fee for SC, ST and Physically Disabled male candidates is Rs. 900. It is worth mentioning here that after successful registration and payment of the fee through bank, the candidates can download the admit card for JEE Advanced - 2013 from May 14 to 31.

AICTE to hold GPAT 2013 online
From Sanjiv Dube
NEW DELHI : The all India Graduate Pharmacy Aptitute Test (GPAT) for 2013 will be conducted by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) -- and it would be online, says a notification issued by the AICTE on March 8, 2013.

The test will be held in 57 cities from May 16 to 18 and the scores will be used for admission to the postgraduate pharmacy programmes for year 2013-14.

According to the AICTE notification the registration window opened on March 8 and the registration will continue till April 8. The students are advised to generate Cash Challans by April 8 as the last date of the payment of fee at a SBI counter is April 9, 2013.

The last date for final submission of online Form (through cash payment) is April 4. The printout of the hall ticket can be had from April 29 and while the online test will be held from May 16 to May 18 from 09.30 am to 12.30 pm (1^st Shift) and 02.30 pm to 5.30 pm (2^nd Shift).

The results will be declared on May 31, 2013 and the students can have the printout of their scores cards from May 31 to June 30, that is for a month in a stretch.

The AICTE notification says that the secretaries of the various states dealing with technical education have been asked to inform students in their respective states and to notify the change in the pattern of the exam for academic year 2013-14.

The first GPAT, held in 2010, and the subsequent ones in 2011 and 2012 were conducted in paper-pencil mode by the AICTE in association with M S University of Baroda, Vadodara.

Before 2010 admissions to and fellowships for the Master’s Programme in Pharmacy (M. Pharm) and Engineering were being benchmarked by the Graduate Aptitude Test for Engineering (GATE). Subsequently GPAT, an all India examination was organized by the AICTE from academic year 2011-12 for admission to Master’s Programme in Pharmacy (M. Pharm) and for award of fellowships.

Bolstered by the success of online Common Management Admission Test (CMAT) the AICTE has now decided to organize GPAT online from 2013.

The AICTE notification enumerates the advantages of the online test and says that the test will be held on May 16, 17 and 18 in two shifts in 57 cities.

The complete GPAT process including registration, allotment of centre, printout of admit card, capturing the photograph and biometric, writing the test, announcement of result, display of merit list, downloading score cards is online, which the AICTE feels, offers better transparency and accountability and saves time and money.

Phone support availability: 8^th March, 2013 to 30^th June, 2013 (24X7) Helpline number : 022-66258304, Fax Number: 022-25814283 & E-mail Id: customercare@aicte-gpat.in

Test pattern

GPAT-2013 is a multiple choice test of 3 hours duration with 125 questions. For each correct answer 4 marks are awarded and for each wrong answer 1 mark shall be deducted.

The test will be held at Ahmadabad, Gurgaon, Madurai, Rajkot, Allahabad, Guwahati, Mangalore, Ranchi, Amravati, Gwalior, Meerut, Shimla, Amritsar, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Surat, Aurangabad, Indore, Mysore, Thiruvananthpuram, Bangalore, Jabalpur, Nagpur, Tirupati, Bareilly, Jaipur, Nanded, Udaipur, Bhavnagar, Jammu, Nasik, Vadodara, Bhopal, Kanpur, Nellore, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Kochi, Noida, Vijayawada, Chandigarh, Kolhapur, Panaji, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, Kolkata, Patna, Warangal, Dehradun, Kozhikode, Pune, Delhi, Kurnool, Raipur, Gulbarga, Lucknow and Rajahmundry,

For details see www.aicte-gpat.in

No negative marking in Odisha JEE
BHUBANESWAR : The Odisha Joint Entrance Examination - 2013 to be held on May 12 will not have negative marking system, a senior official said on January 1.

The official said that the decision has been taken by the cabinet committee on technical education that was constituted according to the recommendations of a high-power committee on
November 16 last year. The move is intended to help fill up the large-scale vacancies in engineering colleges.

The new evaluation method will follow the percentile system along with awarding of ranks. It has been decided that from now, candidates who leave their OMR answer sheets blank will be
disqualified from the exam process altogether.

“With the elimination of negative marking system, students who have answered 20 questions right and five questions wrong will now be awarded 20 marks and not 15 as was the practice earlier,” said the official of the Technical Education Department, adding that questions from the previous years would be uploaded on the OJEE website for students to familiarise themselves with the examination pattern.

The OJEE-2013 will cover admissions for engineering, MBA, MCA and pharmacy courses. Medical aspirants will have to appear for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for admissions
this year as the state has already decided to embrace the national-level medical test.

There is also a strong possibility of Odisha becoming a part of the Common National Examination Process for admission into undergraduate engineering courses from 2014 if the Union human Resources Development Ministry fulfils its conditions. The demands include publishing a separate merit list for state candidates and filling up of 15 per cent seats through the state
admission agency.

Welcoming the changes in this year’s OJEE, Odisha Private Engineering Colleges’ Association secretary Binod Dash said that the decision would go a long way in enhancing the confidence
of students.

“Instead of saying that the glass is half empty, we can very well say that the glass is half full. Besides, there is no point in demoralising students. Awarding marks only for the correct
answers will boost their confidence. The quality of students will hardly be affected. It is always better to highlight their achievements rather than failures,” he said.

Changed format for Bengal JEE 2013
CALCUTTA : From 2013, the state joint entrance examination will have objective questions with multiple correct answers to minimise the possibility of examinees scoring by guesswork.

Five of the 20 objective questions of two marks each in Math, Physics and Chemistry will have two or three correct answers. Examinees will be expected to mark all the correct choices for the two marks, said a source in the state joint entrance examination board.

“We had to evolve such a system, on the line of the IITs, because many students were getting through the joint entrance examination simply by randomly marking the correct answers,” said Bhaskar Gupta, the chairman of the examination board. “Multiple correct answers will test a student’s command of the subject and curb the trend of guessing an answer,” he added.

An official explained how the marking system would work in questions with multiple right answers. In a question with two correct answers, an examinee would be given one mark for getting each answer right. In case a question has three correct answers, examinees will be awarded 1.33 for two right answers and 0.66 for just getting one right.

No mark will be awarded, however, to someone who marks an incorrect option along with a correct one. There is also no negative marking in these questions, the official added.

As for other questions, 0.33 will be deducted for every incorrect answer to questions worth one mark and 0.66 for incorrect answers to questions worth two marks.

A board member gave an example of a question with multiple correct answers.

“Suppose in physics there is a question on the property of light. Option A: ‘Light travels in straight line’; Option B: ‘Light is an electromagnetic wave’; Option C: ‘Light is the fastest entity
in the universe’; Option D: ‘Light may change its course in presence of intense sound’. The correct answers are options B, C and D and marks will be awarded according to the new model,
which will be explained in the exam prospectus,” he said.

Gupta said the board will upload model questions for JEE 2013 in end-January to help examinees understand what the new question pattern would be like.

Though the 2013 state JEE has been modelled after the IIT entrance exam, the marking pattern in the state JEE would be “more flexible”, said a board member.

In the JEE questions, the section comprising two-mark questions will have a set of instructions mentioning that five questions have multiple correct options. This model, said an official, will
also help the board introduce a “smarter” way of ranking candidates in case of tied scores.

“From this year, more positive marks and less negative marks for the same questions in math, physics and chemistry in the two-mark questions will be factored in to break ties. Candidates performing better in questions with multiple correct answers will hold the edge,” said a state JEE board member.

This method is part of a set of 11 rules that the board has devised to resolve ties. After applying these rules, if there are still ties, the older candidate will be given preference, said an
official.

The examination is due on April 21, 2013.
(Courtesy : The Telegraph)

CAT-2013 from Oct 16 to Nov 11

BANGALORE : The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have announced the dates for the Common Admission Test 2013 (CAT 2013) for admissions to top management institutes in the country. The test will be conducted over 20 days from October 16 to November 11.

According to a release issued by the IIM here on May 1, CAT vouchers will be available at select Axis Bank branches from July 29 to September 24 and the registration window will be open from July 29 to September 26. IIM Indore is conducting the test.

Four new testing locations have been added this year — Surat, Udaipur, Thiruvananthapuram and Vijayawada, increasing the total number of locations to 40.

During CAT 2012, 2.14 lakh vouchers were sold and the number of registrations was 9,000 more than the previous year.

Online entrance test for IITs, others by 2014?

By Charu Sudan Kasturi
NEW DELHI: Students seeking admission to IITs and all other central engineering schools may soon have to switch from pens and pencils to a computer mouse under a move to completely computerise key Centrally conducted entrance tests.

The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) are scouting for a firm to audit their preparedness for the switch, top government officials confirmed to HT.

The move is backed by HRD minister MM Pallam Raju.

If the audit concludes that the board and government are ready, the 100% computerised avatar could be rolled out as early as 2014.

But a computerised test for the about 15,00,000 students who seek admission to the IITs, National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and other central engineering schools each year is unlikely to be easy.

The JEE (Main) — earlier called the All India Engineering Entrance Examination — which picks students to the NITs and other central schools and shortlists 150,000 top students for a second round test to select students for the IITs — is currently conducted mostly in the pencil-paper format. But in 2012, the CBSE started offering a computerised version for a few students at select centres, spread over a few days.

“Now we want to check whether we are ready to take the big leap towards dumping the pencil-paper format completely,” a senior CBSE official said.

The audit will check 300 identified centres across 28 Indian cities and Singapore, Kathmandu and Colombo, where computerised tests are planned. At these centres, auditors will check the infrastructure — CCTV surveillance, power backup, 20% additional desktops, standby servers, air-conditioning and access control measures.

Auditors will evaluate software security and whether rigorous security arrangements to prevent question paper leaks are in place. The plan is to upload question papers on a central server and then issue passwords for access to the server to officials in charge of centres through a text message in the morning of the examination.
(Courtesy : The Hindustan Times)

GATE to go the JEE way, have 2-tier exam

NEW DELHI : The National Co-ordination Board (NCB) of the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) has proposed a two-tier test for admission to the M.Tech programme run by the Indian Institutes of Technology and the IISc, Bangalore. The test will, like the new JEE, have a screening test followed by the main admission test.

According to a newspaper report the new pattern is being adopted to cope up with the massive increase in the number of aspirants in the past five years — from 1.8 lakh in 2008 to more than 10 lakh this year.

The National Co-ordination Board (NCB), which conducts the test each year, comprises the directors of the seven older IITs and the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

The screening exam, planned to be entrusted to a private agency, will be more like an aptitude test. The final test, to be conducted by the IITs and IISc, will assess the domain (subject) knowledge of the students, said The Telegraph report quoting an IIT director.

“The NCB has written to all IITs to get the views of the faculty on the two-tier GATE proposal and outsource the screening test to a private firm,” the director added.

Each of the seven IITs last week issued circulars to the heads of departments asking them to give their views after speaking to the faculty members.

The move assumes significance against the backdrop of recent changes brought to the IIT-JEE examination. For admission to BTech courses in the IITs from next year, aspirants will have to appear in the JEE-Main, to be conducted by the CBSE. If they clear this, they will have to take the JEE-Advanced, to be held by the IITs.

But a faculty member from IIT Kharagpur said he and his colleagues would oppose the plan to enlist a private firm for GATE, said the newspaper report.

“Private companies have no stake in promoting merit in admission in the IITs except monetary gains. We will oppose this proposal to take away a part of the exam from the IITs.”

Not everyone seemed to back the view, though. Former IIT Kanpur director S.G. Dhande justified the move, saying changes were required to ensure better quality in the test.

“Is the existing GATE really assessing the eligibility of a student for research? The present objective-type test is focussed on subject knowledge. We need to test the orientation and aptitude of students for research,” Dhande said.

The screening test may have questions on reasoning, basic science and language to gauge the general competence of students, while the final exam could test domain knowledge.

Dhande suggested the screening test be held online and several times a year.

But IIT Faculty Federation president K. Narasimhan indicated the last word was not out on the proposed change and that it would be discussed at several forums before being given final shape.

“The federation has not taken any view on the proposal yet. Let us see what the faculty members from each institute are saying,” the IIT Bombay teacher said.

Dheeraj Sanghi, of IIT Kanpur, appeared to favour the new system saying GATE was gradually becoming a burden on the IITs because of the increase in the number of aspirants.

“I think it is a good move. A private firm (Prometric) has been conducting the Common Admission Test (CAT) for IIMs the past few years. The GATE examination similarly can be handled by a private firm,” he said.

IIT advance test on June 2, 2013

NEW DELHI : The Advance Joint Entrance Examination 2013 for admission to the undergraduate programme in IITs under the new format will be held on June 2 after the Mains on April 7.

The Joint Admission Board (JAB) of the IITs, the apex body comprising IIT heads, is understood to have approved the dates at a meeting on August H C Gupta 27, officials said.

The exam next year would be conducted by IIT-Delhi and H.C. Gupta would be the chairman of the organising committee.

The JAB had, on August 5, approved the common entrance test for admission to the undergraduate programme for 2013 based on percentile ranking.

The new format adopted by the IIT council comprises a two-tier system — a Mains and an Advance test.

Students clearing the Advance test after being screened in the Mains would be considered for admission provided they are among the top 20 percentile in their boards.

The question pattern for Advance Joint Entrance Examination 2013 will be the same as this year’s exams.

On August 25, it was decided that the JEE Main, the first-round test to be conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education, would follow the pattern of objective-type questions as this year’s All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE).

The government and the IIT Council have decided that the IIT-JEE and AIEEE would be replaced by the two-round JEE from next year. The IITs have decided to change the eligibility criterion for admission, too.

To be eligible for an IIT seat earlier, general category and Other Backward Classes students had to score 60 per cent in their Class XII board exams, and Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates had to score 55 per cent. Now, students will have to figure in the top 20 percentile from their board and category.

Under the new system, candidates seeking admission to the IITs will have to sit for both the JEE Main and JEE Advanced. Those seeking seats in any other centrally funded technical institution — such as the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) — will have to appear only in the JEE Main.

Only the top 1.5 lakh candidates from the JEE Main will be allowed to take the JEE Advanced. These 1.5 lakh students will be awarded an all-India rank depending on their performance in the JEE Advanced alone, provided they satisfy the eligibility criterion.

Whether they get into the IITs will depend on their all-India rank.

“The directors today decided to stick to the same question pattern for the entrance test,” said IIT Delhi director R.K. Shevgaonkar.

The Joint Admission Board overruled a suggestion from the IIT Bombay senate to make the JEE Advanced a subjective-type test.

CBSE schedule

According to the schedule released by the CBSE, the JEE (Main) (hitherto known as AIEEE Paper I) for admissions to B.E./B.Tech courses at NITs, IIITs, DTU, Delhi and other CFTIs will be held in April 2013.

The JEE (Main) (Paper I of earlier AIEEE) for B.E./B.Tech will be held in two modes, that is offline and online (CBT).

The offline examination for JEE (Main) will be held on April 7, 2013 and the online examinations will be held after that in April 2013.

The examination (Paper II of earlier AIEEE) for admissions to B.Arch/ B.Planning courses at NITs, IIITs, DTU, Delhi and other CFTIs will be held on April 7, 2013 in offline mode only .

The JEE (Main)-2013 (Paper I of earlier AIEEE) will have one objective type question paper. The paper will consist of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. The duration of the paper will be three hours.

The Paper II for admissions to B.Arch/B.Planning courses at NITs, IIITs, DTU, Delhi and other CFTIs will have one question paper consisting of Mathematics, Aptitude Test and Drawing Test as per past practice of AIEEE. The duration of the paper will be three hours.