Andhra Pradesh, Telangana hail the Common Entrance Test for IITs, NITs

New Delhi:  The Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) recently proposed to hold a single (common) entrance exam for both the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs). The move has found a great favour from academic experts of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Ramakrishna Rai, an ex-IIT professor, said “Students these days are under constant pressure to clear the IIT entrance exam. In the process, they often miss out on the actual ‘learning’ part of academics. IITs and NITs are both good engineering institutes and hence, a single entrance exam for them seems perfectly justified.”

Academicians have also accused that the entire coaching industry has cropped up because of the IIT entrance exam. Most students who crack the exam are tutored for it – sometimes from Class 9 onwards. Now, they hope that revising the entrance exam pattern may offer equal opportunity to students from different backgrounds and nullify the effects of ‘coaching’.

The committee has also recommended that the three-month gap between the JEE Mains exam and declaration of its results should be reduced to shorten the time taken for the entire admission process.