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Journalism of Courage
Some of the IITs have decided to discontinue the option of branch change that was provided to students after the first year. The branch change option is an opportunity given to first year students by the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to change their core branch after the first year. However, out of 23 IITs, nine have now discontinued this option.
The reason behind discontinuing this option, IITs claim, is putting pressure on an already stressed student.
Experts told indianexpress.com that while nearly 50 per cent of incoming students desire to opt for a branch change, only 10 per cent of students are able to exercise this option. Usually, a student is eligible to apply for change of branch at the end of the first year only if their CGPA is higher than 7.50 (general category). The candidate also needs to earn more than 32 credits at the end of the first academic session. Also, change of the branch is permitted strictly in the order of merit as determined by CGPA at the end of the first year.
Unfortunately, to match the requirements, some students usually spend a majority of their days of the first year holed in their rooms or libraries with their books.
| Allowed | Not allowed |
| IIT Kanpur | IIT Jammu |
| IIT Goa | IIT Hyderabad |
| IIT Delhi | IIT Bombay |
| IIT Roorkee | IIT Madras |
| IIT Gandhinagar | IIT Kharagpur |
| IIT Indore | IIT Dhanbad |
| IIT Ropar | IIT Dharwad |
| IIT Guwahati | IIT Mandi |
| IIT Patna | IIT Bhubaneswar |
| IIT Palakkad | |
| IIT Tirupati | |
| IIT Bhilai | |
| IIT Roorkee | |
| IIT Jodhpur |
The limited number of seats and high CGPA requirement make the competition tougher for students, as a result of which students tend to miss out on participating in freshers’ activities, becoming members of clubs/ groups, participating in extra-curricular activities, participating in college fest, spending time with new-found friends etc. This, experts believe, can have a negative impact on students, especially since majority of engineering students spend their (at least) last two years of schooling already worrying about cracking JEE Main and JEE Advanced.
Additionally, even after all these efforts, preparations and sacrifices, if students are unable to get their choice of branch, they often feel disappointed and carry that feeling of not being satisfied for the remaining years of their BTech degree.
