With just a week to go, students can do no more than wait and watch even as institutes and coaching classes allay their fears
With the joint entrance examination (JEE) results scheduled to be announced on May 26 this year, IIT aspirants and coaching institutes have mixed opinions on the errors which crept in this year’s question papers.
The Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (popularly known as IIT-JEE or just JEE) is an annual college entrance examination in India. Around 15 colleges use JEE as a sole criterion for admission to their undergraduate programmes.
Around 4.72 lakh candidates appeared in JEE 2010 on April 11.
A spokesperson at IIT Madras, which conducted JEE this year, says: “We have announced a number of corrective measures which should put all worries to rest. We need to ensure that genuine candidates do not suffer.”
However, students are worried over typographical errors and wrong instructions in question papers.
The real issue, according to IIT-aspirants who took JEE this year, is that candidates wasted valuable time due to the mistakes in the question papers. Mukul Dasgupta, an IIT-aspirant who took JEE this year, says: “The biggest error was in Section II of Paper-I and Section-IV of Paper-II. In these sections, any student can easily score around 93 marks by darkening all the circles to answer particular questions as there is no negative marking for wrong answers.”
Students who took the exam in Hindi said they took six questions lightly as these questions were wrongly shown as carrying three marks each when actually they were worth eight marks each. “Though the corrective measures stated they will be evaluated for eight marks, it will be useful for only those who attempted these questions. Several of my friends, and I, ignored them as we felt that it was not worth spending time just to gain three marks. Instead, we focused on questions which carried more marks. So the corrective measures may not do justice,” said Sumit Sanyal, another IIT aspirant.
However, candidates like Mayank Shah, say: “I took the test in Hindi. I was slightly confused in the beginning but I attempted all questions. I am awaiting the results.”
Coaching centres, on the other hand, feel there are no real issues. Raja Mitra, COO, Akash Institute, counters: “A few students who were expecting very high ranking may feel a little worried. But there should not be any general concern because the management knew what to do about the problem and immediately announced the corrective measures.ARKS Srinivas, director, TIME Mumbai, another coaching institute, also believes that JEE results, once declared, would be fair on all candidates.
However, Super 30, a Bihar-based free coaching centre for the poor, had demanded that JEE be conducted again following blunders in the Hindi version. However, the JEE board ruled out any retest because no question paper was leaked.
| CORRECTIVE MEASURES > Error 1 The subject headings Physics and Mathematics in the heading (ORS) were interchanged > Corrective Measure Each ORS (both for Paper 1 and Paper 2) would be evaluated in two ways (sequential question number-wise and subject headings-wise). In each case, the higher score of the two evaluations will be taken as the candidate's score. Should one of the ways of evaluating lead to a mark below the minimum qualifying mark in one of the subjects, the other way will be deemed to be the 'higher' of the two scores. > Error 2 Question 44 in the Mathematics section of Paper 1 in code 4 of the Hindi version was not printed. > Corrective Measure The ORS of the candidates who were given Code 4 of the Hindi version of the Question Paper 1 will be evaluated omitting Question 44 and the overall score for the Mathematics section of Paper 1 of those candidates will be appropriately scaled. > Error 3 The instructions on "Question Paper Format and Marking Scheme" for section IV in the Hindi version of Paper 2 was wrongly printed. Each question in this section was shown to carry 3 marks instead of 8. > Corrective Measure Each question of section IV of Paper 2 will be evaluated for 8 marks. > Error 4 In a few cases the question paper contained two unreadable pages and two partially readable pages in the Physics section of Paper 1. > Corrective Measure Since the registration numbers of these candidates have been taken note of at the time of the examination, their ORS will be evaluated omitting the unreadable questions and their scores for the Physics section of Paper 1 will then be appropriately scaled. |
