• IIT director, dean question JEE format •

TNN, Pune Edition, 31st July 2008

Chennai: Is one of the country’s toughest tests, the Joint Entrance Exam for IITs, failing to sift the brightest minds for admission into India’s premier engineering institutes? Now, voices from inside the IITs are beginning to question the JEE format.The director and the dean of IIT-Madras have called for radical changes in the JEE,saying that the coaching institutes were enabling many among the less-than-best students to crack the test and keeping girls from qualifying.

“I am looking for students with raw intelligence and not those with a mind prepared by coaching class tutors. The coaching classes only help students in mastering (question paper) pattern recognizing skills. With this, you cannot get students with raw intelligence,” said IIT-Madras director, M.S. Ananth.

Virtually opening what could be a heated debate on the current JEE format, Ananth wanted the system to lay more stress on students’ performance in school.