Percentiles for Class 12 board exams to be calculated on the basis of 5 subjects only
New Delhi: The Council of Boards of School Education (COBSE) has declared that all school boards across India will calculate percentile for Class 12 exams on the basis of five subjects for the last four years – 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. This will help in finding out whether a student waiting to appear for JEE Advanced or IIT JEE 2014 exam actually fulfills the Top 20 percentile in the qualifying exam criteria or not.
The result data these boards have to provide will include all candidates who have appeared for the exams.
The stream of the code will be mention in the specified code while subjects will be specified in full.
| Stream | Stream Code |
| Science – Medical | SCI-M |
| Science – Non-medical | SCI-N |
| Science – (Both Medical and Non-Medical) | SCI-B |
| Commerce | COMM |
| Arts & Humanities | HUMA |
| Vocational | VOC |
| Other | OTH |
Placement of subjects will be in the following order:
- Subject 1 will be one compulsory language with higher marks
- Subject 2 to 5 will be another language and three electives OR four electives (conforming to the Scheme of Studies)
- Subject 6 offered to student or allowed to student
For non-medical Science stream (the category which IIT JEE aspirants will fall into), placement of subjects will be in the following order:
-  Subject 1 will be one compulsory language with higher marks
- Subject 2 will be any other language or elective with other higher marks (other than Subjects mentioned for third to fifth positions)
- Subject 3 will be Physics
- Subject 4 will be Mathematics
- Subject 5 will be any one from following that has higher marks:
-  Chemistry,
- Computer Science,
-  Biology (Botany & Zoology), or
- Biotechnology with higher marks
- If it is compulsory to study six subjects in the Board, subject other than ones mentioned above that has lowest marks will be mentioned here. It will be treated as an Additional Subject.
The percentile will be calculated and normalization of marks will be done only on the basis of Subjects 1 to 5.
For students who have appeared in less than five subjects in 2013 due to compartment or supplementary exam, results of their previous years’ performance and current year’s performance will be combined into a single record.
For students who appear for ‘Improvement of Performance’ exam, they will have to appear for all the five or six subjects they had appeared for earlier and their data will be compiled separately too.
This post was written by Aditya Singhal, managing director of askIITians