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In order to ensure that seats in engineering colleges do not remain vacant as in the last year, the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination is taking various measures this year. The Board plans to hand out forms of the West Bengal JEE 2010 along with the details of each of the 60 engineering colleges and the list of vacancies. The forms will be available from the third week of November. By providing details on all colleges to aspirants, the board attempts to reduce the vacant seats this year that reached 2,500 last year.
“Details of colleges with their addresses, their strength and number of seats will be distributed along with the forms. It will help examinees zero in on their chosen streams,” said Siddhartha Datta, chairman of JEEB.
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Indian Institue of Technology, Kharagpur now rank among the top 500 universities of the World in the list prepared by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. This listing is based on the Nobel Prizes awarded, medals won in different fields, articles published in journals like Nature and Science and mentions in the Science Citation Index-Expanded SCIE and Social Science Citation Index. IISc secured a rank of 303-401, while IIT, Kharagpur secured a rank of 402-501. The universities that are in the top 10 are:
1. Harvard University
2. Stanford
3. University of California-Berkley
4. Cambridge University
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6. California Institute of Technology
7. Columbia University
8. Princeton University
9. Chicago University
10. Oxford University
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Indian Institue of Technology, Kharagpur now rank among the top 500 universities of the World in the list prepared by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. This listing is based on the Nobel Prizes awarded, medals won in different fields, articles published in journals like Nature and Science and mentions in the Science Citation Index-Expanded SCIE and Social Science Citation Index. IISc secured a rank of 303-401, while IIT, Kharagpur secured a rank of 402-501. The universities that are in the top 10 are:
1. Harvard University
2. Stanford
3. University of California-Berkley
4. Cambridge University
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6. California Institute of Technology
7. Columbia University
8. Princeton University
9. Chicago University
10. Oxford University
The Central Information Commission has ordered the IITs to reveal the details of the candidates ( like name, addresses and marks scored in individual subjects ) who took the exam this year. However, the institute believe that revealing the details would be a violation of privacy and might be considered as an issue of profit-making.
IIT-Guwahati (which organised the 2009 JEE) director Gautam Barua said, “We (IITs) are apprehensive that this request for electronic data is to profit from it by using the data for IIT-JEE coaching purposes (planning, targeting particular cities, population segments, etc).”
However, Gautam Barua agreed to show the software which calculates the cutoff procedure with the original data, but was hesitant to provide an electronic version of the data to the applicant.
The case is being viewed as an examination of IIT-JEE’s credibility, as disclosure of the 2006 JEE data revealed discrepancies between between the cutoffs arrived at by using the formula the institutes claimed to have used and cutoff marks used by the IITs that year. Also, the answer sheets were destroyed earlier than required, despite pending appeals.
“There have been concerns among the public that we are keeping crucial information regarding the JEE hidden, even though we believe the exam is transparent. This move will help clarify any misconceptions,” professor N.M. Bhandari, the chairman of the JEE organising committee at IIT Roorkee, said.
A committee set up by the UGC last year under the leadership of Pondicherry University Vice Chancellor Prof. J.A.K. Tareen after examining the admission process and fee structure in the institutes which were under UGC’s lens to acquire the deemed status suggested that a common entrance test for admissions must be conducted in all the deemed universities. With both the UGC and HRD’s review committee, a committee set up by the minister S.K.Sibal to study the functioning of all the deemed universities in the country, accepting to the reforms suggested by the UGC’s committee, UGC has issued directives to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to conduct admissions in the deemed universities on the basis of an entrance exam while the admission fees should be regulated according to the proposal setup by the fee fixation panels. “Admissions and high fees are two major accusations against the deemed universities. At least for medical and engineering programmes, the UGC committee is in favor of conducting an all-India based entrance exam for admissions while the deemed universities can conduct their entrance exams individually. The basic idea is to increase the transparency in the admission process,” said an official.
However, adding on to his comment he also cited that, “It has been recommended that the fees should be pre-determined either by a national- or a state-level fee fixation committee.”
IISc and IIT-Khg, the Indian premier Institutes have made it to the list of the top 500 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ACWU) 2009 prepared by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Published this week, the list accords the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, a world ranking of 303-401, and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur a world ranking of 402-501.
However the list is dominated by universities in the US: Harvard University tops the list. The others in the top 10 list are Stanford (2) University of California-Berkley (3), Cambridge University (4), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (5), California Institute of Technology (6), Columbia University (7), Princeton University (8), Chicago University (9) and Oxford University (10).
Separate lists for the top 100 universities in specialized fields were also released. While both the IISc and IIT-Khg secured a rank of 51-77 in the top 100 engineering and technology universities, there was no representation from the country in the list of top 100 universities in natural sciences and mathematics, in life and agriculture sciences, clinical medicine and pharmacy, and the social sciences.
Among the top 100 universities from the Asia-Pacific region, IISc secured a rank of 43-67, while IIT, Kharagpur secured a rank of 68- 106.
IIT Kanpur is going to organize its annual festival Techkriti on 11-14 February 2010. One of the flagship events of Techkriti will be ‘Ideas 10’, the international business plan competition. The event will witness participation from leading MBA schools, such as IIMs and XLRI as well as IITs and many international institutes like Stanford University, Cornell University, University of Purdue and the National University of Singapore. Cut throat competition from the best in the world will give participants tremendous exposure and will be an excellent test of their business acumen. There are high chances for the participants to start a company based on the B-plan.
IDEAS is the platform where the seeds of future business tycoons will be laid down. Ideas will have best prizes for Bio Business plan Competition, Web Business idea, Clean Energy Solutions and Social Business Plan. This year IDEAS has American Embassy as its co-sponsor and NEN, VC Hunt, Rajeev Kumar Foundation as its associates..
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Students appearing in the next Joint Entrance Examination for admission to IITs will get performance cards specifying marks and the ranks secured by them in the test.
For the first time, the JEE Board would issue such performance cards which can be considered as certificates by many other institutions wanting to give admission to JEE candidates. The board will also put out the answers of the questions on its website to help students make assessment of their performance.
The Prime Minister’s Office had sought a reply on the issue from the HRD Ministry which said a decision for issuing such score cards has been taken by the Joint Admission Board (JAB) for IITs in its meeting on August 23.
