JEE Advanced 2023: Why is Class 12 performance criterion important for IIT admissions this year? Experts explain

Bishnupada Mandal, Organising Chairman, JEE Advanced 2023, IIT Guwahati, has said the 75 per cent eligibility criteria will come into play when aspirants are selected for document verification. “They will be asked to show proof of their Class 12 score at the time of document verification. They also have the other criterion that states that if students scored in the top 20 percentile of their board, they will be eligible,” Mandal told indianexpress.com.

“This criterion was paused only for the Covid years and it has been reinstated now to give importance to Indian board exams,” he said.

When asked why the eligibility criteria cannot be brought down to 50 per cent, Mandal said it is because “(the entrance exams for admissions) in IITs and NITs are considered to be high-level exams and their students are very bright”. He said the 75 per cent criterion will also ensure that the ‘dummy school’ culture decreases. “There are several concepts that the students should know about, and it is important for them to attend school to understand those basic concepts. This will also help decrease the dummy school culture, as students will concentrate more on getting good marks in Class 12 now,” he said.

V Ramgopal Rao, ex-director, IIT Delhi, also spoke in favour of the Class 12 mark, saying it helps students develop their practical and social skills. “Going to school also means appearing for practical classes and exams which are equally important. Class 12 knowledge is practical and subjective in nature, whereas JEE is objective. This criterion will help test the all-around development of students,” Rao said.

He added that IITs admit the “top 1 per cent of students, and, therefore, the requirements for this 1 per cent are expected to be higher compared to the rest.”

Some JEE coaching institute tutors, too, believe the eligibility criteria is “not a bad step” and was needed to filter out the ‘top quality’ students.

Prashant Jain, who is with Unacademy, Kota, believes the 75 per cent criteria is suited and should not be reduced. “There is a hierarchy of engineering colleges in India like we have IITs, then NITs, and then IIITs (for which this criterion makes sense),” Jain said.

He added when the selection process was offline, IITs wanted to limit the number of candidates. “At that time, the admission authority realised that the Class 12 marks of students who were selected in IITs were around 70-75 per cent, which was higher than the then 60 per cent. So, it makes sense to have the eligibility set at 75 per cent now,” he told indianexpress.com and added the National Testing Agency (NTA) should have informed students earlier.

However, Nitin Vijay, Founder-CEO, Motion Education, said the 75 per cent criterion is not needed to assess the intelligence of students. “It is an unfair means of assessment because the authorities compare students from state boards or government school children with those who study in private schools of central boards such as CBSE and CISCE. They justify it by saying that there is also the criterion of the top 20 percentile. However, it is still uneven basis. If some student does not secure well in class 12, that does not mean he/she will not do good in the competitive exam too,” he argued.

He said, “Board exams are mainly subjective in which students are expected to mug up the concepts, but in competitive exams such as JEE we check a student’s IQ, which is an entirely different aspect. This is not required and it is only causing chaos”.