TNN,
Mumbai Edition, 03rd Aug 2008
CHANGING COURSE
Mumbai/Chennai: Electrical and civil engineering
are making a comeback as the courses of choice at the IITs.
While computer science still pulled a large chunk of the
JEE toppers, this year, the stream seems to have a competitor.
Of the top 100 Joint Entrance Exam-2008 rankers, about 15%
have opted for electrical engineering, when they could have
got a computer science seat. This stream opened at rank
11 in IIT-Madras and at rank 36 in Bombay. IITMadras director
M S Ananth had reasoned this to: “Telecommunication
is on the top, at least neck-to-neck with computer science.
Electrical engineering is as much a rage as computer science,
at least in the IITs. After that we have most students opt
for mechanical engineering.’’
Statistics on the opening and closing ranks of candidates
admitted to the IITs this year on the basis of their scores
in the JEE also reveal that in the mechanical engineering
course offered at IIT Kanpur, the opening rank in the general
category is 860 against last year’s 804. While in
2007, admission to the course was closed at a rank of 1,044,
this year a candidate who was ranked 1,139 in the general
category has also been taken into the stream.
However, in the seats reserved for candidates belonging
to Scheduled Castes, the race was tougher this time. Last
year, candidates ranked between 218 and 222 made it to Mechanical
Engineering, while now the admission opened at 151st rank
but ended with the 360th rank.
Civil engineering seems to have scaled up. The stream opened
at a rank almost 500 slots up at the Powai campus, as also
over 400 ranks up on the Chennai campus. Admissions to the
chemical engineering course that is offered at the IITs
in Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Guwahati and
Roorkee also opened at a lower rank in the general category.
However, the closing ranks were higher except in Kharagpur,
Guwahati and Roorkee.
“Last year, the first candidate to be admitted to
IITBombay in chemical engineering was ranked 222, while
this time, a candidate who was ranked 496 was the first
to enter the institution in this stream,’’ a
professor said. The trend for the subject was slightly different
at the Institution of Technology Banaras Hindu University
(ITBHU) in Varanasi.
