| Monday, May 05, 2008
More Tamil Nadu students take the AIEEE this year
Only if the State Board standards are raised on a par with CBSE,
can students feel confident about their AIEEE performance
Living in a state with a large number of engineering colleges
— over 250 across the state — Tamil Nadu students
have largely been content to stay at home. The rising numbers
of students from the state who wrote the All India Engineering
Entrance Examination this year, however, proves that that may
be changing.
N. Sandhya, a Chennai-based student says that with the Tamil
Nadu Common Entrance Test (CET) being scrapped, she had time
to study for the AIEEE instead. Another Chennai student, Jacob
Mathew, feels that since he did not do very well in his Class
12 examinations, he is unlikely to get into an engineering college
under the Anna University counseling system. “AIEEE is
my safety card,” he says.
Coaching centres across the state have taken advantage of the
increased interest in AIEEE. Geetha Prabhu of Aims Education
said her institute had seen a 100 per cent increase in the number
of students applying for AIEEE coaching. In Coimbatore, S. Sivakumar
of Brilliant Tutorials says that while the growth this year
was marginal, last year’s growth — which immediately
followed the abolition of the CET — was very high. Clearly,
State Board students are gaining interest in an examination
that has been a forte of CBSE students till recently. In fact,
of the 500 students who came for coaching at Brilliant, only
34 were from the CBSE, he said.
It was the same story at T.I.M.E., another coaching centre in
Coimbatore, according to co-ordinator Liza Phyllida. “The
representation from State Board schools has increased tremendously.
There is much awareness now and also students like to compete
and go to colleges outside the State.”
The AIEEE examination determines the entrance to the 20 National
Institutes of Technology, including the one in Tiruchi, 4 Indian
Institutes of Information Technology and 10 deemed universities,
apart from several central government institutions, central
government quotas in state government institutions and the state
engineering colleges of several states which use AIEEE for their
own counselling. Many Tamil Nadu students are now willing to
take advantage of the many opportunities offered by AIEEE. “If
I get into a good NIT, I would rather take that than a second-rate
college here,” says R. Subhashini of Villupuram.
Tiruchi was not a centre for the examination, but it hosts the
most prestigious institution in the state which depends on the
examination: the National Institute of Technology (NIT-T). Of
the total number of 1,346 students who took the Mock AIEEE this
year at the NIT-T (compared to 954 last year), 646 students
were from State Board.
Though the increase in the awareness about AIEEE is a welcome
trend, State Board students stand little chance of faring satisfactorily,
observes S. Raghavan of NIT-T, pointing to the vast difference
in the standards of the State Board and the CBSE. Students from
the State Board will stand a fair chance to secure admission
in IITs and NITs only if their standard is raised on a par with
CBSE, he said.
A. Rajagopal, a full-time trainer for AIEEE and IIT-JEE, felt
that crash courses to prepare State Board students for AIEEE
would help only if they are comfortable with the Class XI syllabus
in the first place. The ratio of questions from the Class 11
and 12 syllabi was about 45:55, according to trainers.
Mr. Sivakumar of Brilliant points out that the style of questions
also matters. “In addition to the problem-oriented questions,
there were assertion and reasoning type questions that were
introduced for the first time somewhat based on the IIT-JEE
pattern,” he adds. CBSE students are better trained to
deal with such questions, several trainers feel.
With inputs from Amutha Kannan, R. Krishnamoorthy and Priscilla
Jebaraj.
Courtesy: The Hindu - Education Plus
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