Girls inching up their way to the IITs

In 2014, 8% IIT qualifiers were girls. This year, the number of girls accepted by IITs has increased by 40, which means that 9% of students accepted by IITs in the current batch are girls. In total, 9,974 students have been allotted seats at all the 18 IITs in the first joint seat allocation process – and as many as 900 of them are girls.

 Total number of candidates that had registered for JEE 2015 exam included about 18% girls. Amongst the JEE Advanced qualifiers, 11% were girls.

Before the JEE exam was implemented, the number of female students who had been registering for IIT JEE exam had shown a rise too. 24.3% of students who registered for IIT JEE 2008 were girls while in 2012, the number had gone up to 33.3% – the best ever yet.

According to IIT professors, the great discrepancy in male-female student ratio at the engineering campuses is a result of the mindset of Indian people. Many parents do not have enough faith in our education system to allow their girls to stay at residential campuses.

Not many girls take JEE Main exam in the first place, so it is natural that we don’t get many female students qualifying for JEE Advanced exam. On a brighter side, the male-female student ratio does improve at the postgraduate level programs. In fact, 44% doctorate students in IIT Roorkee are women. But due to heavy tilt in undergraduate programs, the overall student ratio at IIT-R campus is just about 15%.

Devang Khakhar, Director of IIT Bombay and Chairman of JEE Advanced, shared, “IIT entrance test fee has been reduced by half for girls. Moreover, in 2014 placements, out of the 5 students chosen by Facebook during placements, 2 were girls. It might take time to change the mindset of people pan India but it is happening – slowly and steadily.”