Still away from the ‘dream goal’, even after cracking IIT JEE
No longer is cracking JEE a guarantee for becoming a medical or an engineering student in Bengal. As per the current scenario, less than 33% of those who have cleared JEE will get a medical college seat. The cut throat competition clearly shows how difficult it is to realize your dream goal even after cracking one of the toughest entrance exams. In Bengal, 63,330 took the test, out of whom 4,433 cracked it and are eligible for counselling (a success rate of 6.9%). However, there are just 1,200 medical seats. This translates into a “dream realization rate” of only 1.9% which could even go down further if the Medical Council of India (MCI) slashes the seats even more during campus inspections.
While this is for the medical stream, the corresponding figures for engineering are also very demotivating. 1,17,267 candidates had appeared for the test, out of which 77,826 have qualified for counselling, translating into a 66% success rate.
Sushanta Banerjee, director of health education cited, “We had increased 1,200 seats over the past few years, but the MCI slashed around 800 to 850 seats in this academic year. Even more than 15,000 seats across India have been slashed by MCI this year, which is a matter of concern.” Hoping for the best, Banerjee also added, “Currently MCI is carrying out inspections and we expect more seats to be added. As soon as (and if) the clearances are given — and that may happen in phases — a parallel number of seats will be added for counselling as well."
As per the current scenario, a student’s chances of studying medical in Bengal look very bleak unless a JEE candidate is a sub-1000 rank holder. This figure, surprisingly or shockingly for the last year was a rank of 2700 for a general category student!
For Kolkata, JEE has truly brought out the best talent in the city. 6-out of the top 20 in the engineering list were from Kolkata. While for the medical stream, this figure stands at 12. Another ‘high’ for the city has also been in the fact that it has the highest pass percentage in engineering (73.83), closely followed by North 24-Parganas (71.65) and Hooghly (70.7).
Murshidabad has the highest pass percentage (11.31) in medical, followed by Kolkata (8.85) and Malda (8.25). The pass percentage in engineering looks much healthier at 66.37% as compared to just 6.9% examinees who have cracked JEE medical. For engineering also, this ‘healthy’ percentage has dipped from the previous year. The city of joy also enjoys the highest number of top-10,000 rank-holders in the engineering merit list with 1,181 candidates.
Ushashi Saraswati from Sushila Birla Girls School who has bagged the top spot in this year’s JEE medical examination is waiting for her NEET (AIPMT) results and wants to pursue a specialization in oncology. According to this young bright girl who has also got a 96% in her CBSE Class 12th examination, “The exposure and infrastructure of medical colleges outside Bengal are better. Therefore, my preference is to study in one of the best medical colleges outside. I was confident of bagging a top-10 berth when I had calculated the marks after appearing in WBJEE. But the top rank did come as a surprise."
With the three years data available with the JEE board since 2011, they have decided to conduct an academic analysis to gauge how the candidates are coping with the new format of questions. This will be an academic audit which shall be conducted by IISER as mentioned by Bhaskar Gupta, Chairman of the JEE board. The data from this will also be handed over to the prestigious Indian Statistical Institute to further analyse the socio-economic condition of the students who appear in the examination and crack the test along with their geographical location.