Candidates Of TN May Feel Tougher To Enter IIT's

The new norms which were cleared for admission to Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) the IIT council based on an advanced All-India test and the performance of applicants in their board exams, may be more taxing for students from Tamil Nadu than others.

Students from the state will have to score about 78% in their Board exam in order to become eligible for IIT Admission unlike their counterparts in states like West Bengal and Jharkhand who could gain entry with lesser scores.

An analysis of the board marks made by the Council of Boards of School Education reveals that a Tamil Andu candidate would have to secure 78.1% to find a place among the top 20 students with the highest percentage unlike a candidate from the West Bengal board who could make it to the top 20 with just 58%.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle from New Delhi, Prof.DV Sharma, the general secretary, Council of Boards of School Education in India, which compiled the data for the Dr. T.Ramasami committee, said that the council found Tamil Nadu to be liberal in valuation.

IIT Madras director, Prof.Bhaskar Ramamurthi, said a student in West Bengal was as good as any in Tamil Nadu but the problem lay with the way valuation was carried out. The IIT council had decided to use the top 20% scored as a yardsick as absolute marks differed in each board, he expanded. "We only want to say that unless a student does his board exams well we don't want to consider him for the IIT's, he added.

The former deputy director and professor Emeritus of the department of ocean engineering at IIT Madras, Prof VG Idichandy said that basing the eligibility on percentage eliminated the argument that one board was tougher than the other in terms of standard of education offered and valuation conducted.