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Tag: entrance

  • State wants medical entrance test paper in Telugu too.

    The state government has asked the Medical Council of India (MCI) to set the question paper for National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) in Telugu, apart from English and Hindi. D L Ravindra Reddy, minister for health on Thursday announced that while the state government has in principle agreed to participate in NEET from 2012, chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy has to clear the file for the same. About 40,000 students from Telugu medium appear for Eamcet (Medical) every year.

    On Thursday, managements of junior colleges and students across the city demanded the state government not to agree to participate in the all-India medical entrance test at least from the coming year. The colleges said that it is not the just the language of the question paper that would create a problem for students. “Intermediate syllabus of the state is quite different from the CBSE syllabus which will form the base for the national level test. The students from the state would get just about three months to prepare for the test. The government should re-examine its decision as it seems to be taken in haste,” said P Madhusudan Reddy, general secretary, AP Government Intermediate College Lecturers’ Association.

    Private colleges said that the government should have asked for an extension from MCI before it decided to participate in the test. “The state should have agreed to participate in the test from 2013 or 2014,” said a senior professor of Narayana Junior College. They explained that the CBSE syllabus has several portions that conflict with what is being taught in intermediate classrooms. In fact, the students will also have to learn new portions in Biology (Zoology and Botany), lecturers said, adding that they had petitioned the MCI demanding that NEET should be conducted from 2013 instead of 2012.

    JNTU authorities, who have been conducting the Eamcet medical stream test, however, said that NEET would reduce the stress levels of students. “The students will not have to prepare for different tests all at the same time. On an average, students from the state write at least four medical entrance tests every year. Neet would allow students to write just one entrance test but the state should participate in it when the student community is ready to do so. Right now there are many concerns like the number of test centres in which the test will be held. Eamcet is conducted in every nook and corner of the state for the benefit of students from remote areas. But MCI might restrict the test to a few test centres for smooth management,” said M V Ramana Rao, faculty JNTU and former Eamcet convener.

    Students are worried that their preparation, which is focused on Eamcet, will not be enough to get through the national level test. “Most students from AP aim at getting a seat in medical colleges within the state and bank mostly on Eamcet. Since the MCI has not specified the syllabus for NEET so far, we are worried that students who have been writing the national level entrance tests will score more than those of us who have studied for two years for Eamcet,” said S Anuradha, a second year student. Officials of Sri Chaitanya Group of colleges, who held a press meet in the city on Thursday, said that they will oppose the government’s unilateral decision on the matter. “We oppose the move, since parents, teachers and students were not consulted before announcing this decision,” they said.

    Source : The Times of India

  • Common entrance exam for engineering stream: State unlikely to agree.

    The IIT Joint Council’s decision to hold a joint entrance exam for IITs and NITs is unlikely to affect the fortunes of engineering aspirants in Tamil Nadu. And, the State is unlikely to agree to a common entrance exam for all engineering colleges anytime in the immediate future.

    “The mindset of majority of the students and parents is rooted to studying in prestigious colleges in the State. One of the prime reasons is that the students are not taught in schools to take national competitive exams seriously. The school curriculum is more focussed on rote based and exam oriented learning than on analytical or logical reasoning,” says a former commissioner of technical education.

    “Besides, the parents also are not interested in sending their children to far away places but prefer to pay capitation to enrol them in any of the deemed universities or under management quota in self-financing engineering colleges so that their children could live with them,” he says.

    Over the years, the number of students aspiring to IITs and NITs by taking the JEE or AIEEE has not increased much. In the meantime, the State Government had scrapped the entrance exam to professional courses from the academic year 2005-06 to enable more students from rural background join engineering education which has taken away the competitive edge from the students.

    This year, 71,229 students out of the 1.04 lakh students admitted through single window to over 500 engineering colleges were rural candidates and as many as 62,749 were first generation graduates and 48,153 were from Tamil medium background in higher secondary education. Academics feel the government was wise to take away entrance exam as the number of seats available in engineering is more than that of the takers and this year, 50,000 seats fell vacant.

    “The Chief Minister has already opposed the common entrance text for all engineering colleges as it would affect students from rural areas in the State,” says P. Palaniappan, Higher Education Minister.

    “Even if the State agrees in future with 50 per cent as home quota, the Centre will have to conduct the all India exam in Tamil also. AIEEE is conducted only in English and Hindi. No one is raising the issue of the need for national exams in regional languages as well. Otherwise, over three lakh students in the State clearing Plus 2 in science stream in Tamil medium will not have access to all India exams,” says D. Nedunchezhian, a social entrepreneur.

    Weightage to Plus 2 marks

    The Centre’s decision to give weightage to Class XII marks for the common entrance test for IITs and NITs is seen as a reform among academics, especially in IIT Madras.

    Says Prof. V.G. Idichandy, Director (Officiating), IIT-M, “many professors for long have been arguing for giving Plus 2 marks due consideration in admissions to IITs. The good students were not in schools and they were not learning other subjects than maths, physics and chemistry. Humanities and languages were totally neglected.”

    Academics say that the students missed school education to stay in places like Hyderabad and Kota for two to three years for coaching which had to be stopped as otherwise school education would become irrelevant. The weightage to Plus 2 marks is a reform definitely happening, they add.

    On the proposed fee hike, the IIT-M faculty say that only 25 per cent of the students pay the fee and the tuition fee of others are subsidised. Besides, they say there are many options like bank loans and as per the new proposal ‘pay back’ after employment.

    “The students have taken notice of the fee hike. There is a discussion on it around the campus. Only after consultation with our faculty and parents, a clear opinion will emerge,” says Prasanth, Academic Affairs Secretary, IIT-M.

    Source : The Hindu

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