Thursday, February 6, 2014

Getting into the IITs


The dream to get into the prestigious IITs is one shared by every science enthusiast, including me. As I write this article, a million gear up to write the JEE. After cracking JEE you are no longer an ordinary person, you are perceived as EINSTEIN by rest of the world. I too worked hard, did coaching in VMC and ended up with a decent 4000 rank in JEE. And after all the admission hustle I landed in NSIT, interacted with a lot of people, saw lots of energy to do stuff, to change the world. As I run through my daily NSIT life a question torments my mind while I still regret not making it to the IIT’s. You can understand the question only if you have been through that period which we call the “PREP TIME”. There are two kinds of people, one like me who have a sharp brain, who study pretty hard, who do other stuff and who aspire to be in IIT  like hell. And then there is this second kind who go to KOTA or any such place, spend the whole day studying, doing everything which it takes to crack JEE. Now the question is, who deserves those facilities, that environment, those professors, that campus; ME OR the KOTA people. Can a 6 hour test really judge your passion, your knowledge, and your aptitude for science??? Can that 6 hour test decide whether you are eligible to receive those world class facilities???
You need to be in the top 1000 to get some good branch in IIT-D. So for me, in the best scenario I could have got Bio. Tech in IIT-D but I liked electronics. Now an exam with PCM questions decided that I would make a better Bio. Tech engineer and the Kota guy would make a better electronics engineer. And to top it all, you can only express your frustration by having a debate with your friends about the Indian education system, or by writing a stupid article like me. What is wrong?? Is JEE the only option to this problem which affects thousands of young minds?? Are their no other solutions to this?? Or are we not willing to take some load and change this system??Is reviewing 10K applications a big deal for an institution like IIT if other universities abroad can do this?? I wonder the answers to these questions as I get shot down by the system.
Losing hope in this country is very easy and even if you get into a tier 1 college like NSIT you tend to loose that spark in you because you didn’t make it to the IITs. What I have realized in the first six months of my college life is that accept that there are flaws in the system but instead of criticizing the system you should make that little 10th grade child in you alive once again. That child who lived in his own world. Keep your love for science, read things, learn new things. Its not the end of the road if you don’t get into the IIT’s, its just a little dark and if you keep your spirits high you will see a thousand miles ahead of you.




Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Is NORMALISATION fair..??

Its a much debated question whether the new criterion taken up by the CBSE is fair in deciding the admissions to the prestigious NITs and various state colleges. Every one has a different opinion. I would suggest you to read Dheeraj Sanghis blog if you really want to get an insight on whats going on in the system. He has pretty good views about the whole normalisation procedure.
I am just presenting my views and how it has affected my JEE rank.
I scored 257 marks in JEE Mains and had 91.4 % in CBSE boards. If only my JEE MAINS marks are considered i would have got 2000 ranks but after normalisation my rank fell by 3500 and my final rank was 5500. I have following concerns-
1. I don't think board papers are checked properly and a lot depends on the person checking.
2. You cannot simply compare different boards this way.
3. Boards doesn't put forward the true IQ of a student. In my opinion people scoring low in JEE MAINs are not intelligent and scoring in boards is not that tough. I am in NSIT and this year the crowd is really stupid. Majority crowd has scored below 190 in JEE mains.
4. Also this procedure has written on its wrapper that boards has 40% weightage but when you open this gift you will see that it actually weighs more than 70%.

CBSE should lower the weightage of board marks or rip off this system entirely or maybe come up with a better normalisation procedure.

JEE Main Normalisation Explained


  • First considering the board marks for you in 5 subjects(4 subjects if passed before 2013) a percentile score is calculated.
*Percentile is found as :: All the candidate’s of a Board are ranked from top score to least score (all candidates who passed the Board exam) Now , Percentile score =
                                 
                 total no. of candidate’s ranked below the candidate under consideration *100
                                  total no. of candidate’s who passed the Board exam


Now, every candidate has a board percentile, let this list be called "X"
Let your percentile score in boards be 90
  • Let your JEE main marks be "A". Now your percentile score in JEE mains is calculated using above formula. But this time two percentile scores are formed. One considering all candidates who participated and another considering only the candidates of your particular board.
  • Now, every candidate has another percentile score of JEE main marks. Let this list be "Y" for all candidates and "Z" for candidates of your board.
  •  now, the board percentile score of yours i.e 90 will be searched in JEE main percetile list i.e Y  & the JEE mains score corresponding to that percentile will be noted. This is B1
  • The percentile score of yours i.e 90  will be searched in JEE main percentile list i.e Z & the JEE mains score corresponding to that percentile will be noted. This is B2.
  • The normalized Board score of the candidate of interest will be Bfinal=0.5*(B1+B2)
  • Overall score will be C=0.6*A0+0.4*Bfinal

What has been actually done is for the 40% component you have been given the marks of the candidate who has the same percentile in JEE mains as you have got in the boards. Which pretty unfair according to me.
If you have any doubts regarding the formula and the explaination feel free to comment or mail me. I am very active on this blog and will respond ASAP.