Printing error confuses students in JEE

New Delhi: Lengthy and tricky questions on mathematics gave a tough time to nearly 4.72 lakh students on Sunday in the IIT-Joint Entrance Exam for admission into about 10,000 seats in the prestigious institutes.

The exam papers also carried a printing error as subject-heads of mathematics and physics were interchanged. The candidates were immediately told about it and were assured that the error would not affect the evaluation.

"Mathematics was really tough. The questions were tricky and lengthy. It consumed a lot of my time," Gaurav Goel, a class-XII passout from Laxman Public School, said after the test.

The entrance comprised two papers with each paper having questions on physics, chemistry and mathematics. The first paper started at 9 am while the second paper was held between 2 pm and 5pm.

"The physics and chemistry questions were average. There was no difficulty in answering them," said Pritha Banerjee, a student of DPS Noida. She said the standards of the mathematics paper was much above than what is taught to them in CBSE syllabus.

Snehashis Mitra, a student of Mount St Mary's said the second paper was tougher than the first one.

IIT Delhi Director Prof Surendra Prasad said that the exam passed off smoothly. Of the 7.72 lakh candidates, there were nearly 90,000 candidates in northern region where IIT-Delhi was coordinating the exam.

The students qualifying the test will be eligible for admission into the B.Tech programmes at 15 IITs, ISM Dhanbad and IT-BHU. The results will be announced on May 26.

The number of candidates this year has gone up to 4.72 lakh against four lakh candidates last year. With an overall increase in the number of seats in IITs due to implementation of OBC quota and opening of the new IITs, the number of

aspirants for the prestigious institutes went up by nearly 70,000 this year.

The 15 IITs include two new IITs -- IIT Mandi and IIT Indore which will start offering courses from this year.

The IITs have decided to conduct on-line counselling for general category students this year. This will give relief to students who earlier used to go to different counselling centres for securing a seat for themselves.

However, the OBC candidates will have to go to the exam centres for counselling where their certificates will be examined. PTI BKM

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