Most of the counsellings are approaching final phase. IIT counselling is over, while AIEEE, BITS and IIIT-Hyderabad have completed 2 to 3 rounds. These national level entrance exams and admission processes are about two to three months of rigorous exercise for engineering aspirants across the country. The career paths of the candidates are debated and decided by teachers, parents and many others. Few thousands (if not lakhs) of brilliant young Indians not only decide their future but take a step forward towards building of the nation.
In this blog, I have highlighted a few trends emanating from the data collected from few national level admission processes (read counselling). Please note that these processes are not yet complete but signals/trends emerging are significant.
IIT JEE 2012
Let me cover few salient points from IIT JEE 2012 counselling, which just got completed:
Note: 1. Varanasi has not been included to avoid bias due to its re-christening. Hyderabad has been covered separately.
Note: 2.Only general category ranks have been considered for comparison.
AIEEE 2012 counseling is currently midway and three rounds of counseling have been completed. Though, any analysis cannot be final unless all rounds have been completed, inferences can be drawn through trends emerging so far. If one does apple to apple comparison of AIEEE 2012 (3rd round) against AIEEE 2011 (3rd round), there are some visible differences in terms of closing ranks.
For the sake of simplicity, I have taken representative sets of NITs from all the regions uniformly. At least 2 to 3 NITs have been taken randomly from each region and only general category All India Ranks (other than home state) have been considered in the analysis.
There are few observations:
I have been following trends in few private engineering institutions as well. BITSAT 2012, IIIT-Hyderabad and DTU(DCE) are few of them, which I have followed. All of these have shown improvement in closing ranks as compared to previous years. BITSAT 2012 (2nd round) closing marks are significantly higher than previous years closing marks at the end of second round. The same is the case with IIIT-Hyderabad. IIIT-H is possibly one of the very few institutions which admits few more candidates (overbook) than sanctioned seats, in anticipation that few of the candidates will leave. This avoids the pains of multiple rounds of counseling, waitlist etc. IIIT-H claims to have overbooked most of its courses in first few rounds itself and there is significant improvement in closing ranks (which is based on AIEEE ranks) this year.
What would happen in 2013?
Government is contemplating merging AIEEE and IIT JEE examination from next year. This combined exam would have a debatable process to screen candidates and select candidates for IIT and AIEEE along with few other government institutions.
It is true that IIT JEE has its own format and tests candidates on their academic excellence in great depth – both at conceptual level and application level. It can be certainly debated if this format needs any change or not, but IITs have been conducting the tests, have been successful in attracting top talent and have been imparting quality education. On the other hand, AIEEE is the exam with largest number of candidates appearing for reputed institutions (NITs/IIITs etc.) all across the country.
The manner in which these two examination are being clubbed and proposed for year 2013, AIEEE would end up as a second cousin of IIT JEE. If one observes the data above, AIEEE has its own place and can not be treated as secondary to IIT JEE in large part of the country. In fact, it is the big brother.
On the whole, it can be noted that:
- Sandeep
14th July 2012
Sources: jee.iitd.ac.in; jee.sdslabs.co; ccb.nic.in; www.bitsadmission.com; www.iiit.ac.in; dtuadmissions.nic.in
In this blog, I have highlighted a few trends emanating from the data collected from few national level admission processes (read counselling). Please note that these processes are not yet complete but signals/trends emerging are significant.
IIT JEE 2012
Let me cover few salient points from IIT JEE 2012 counselling, which just got completed:
- IITs remains the most sought after institutions of the country for engineering aspirants. Only handful of candidates decide to leave the IIT dream from the top half.
- Overall average change in closing ranks through IIT JEE 2012, as compared to IIT JEE 2011, have been noticeable. The closing ranks have dropped by about an average of 200 ranks per course this year. (This means that each course in IITs have, on the average dropped by 200 ranks as compared to last year).
- The drop in closing ranks have been pretty uniform across all the IITs/ISM, except Hyderabad and Ropar. Either Hyderabad or Ropar have been doing something distinctively different, or it is the result of their proximity to two major IIT coaching centers (Hyderabad and Kota). The chances of former are remote.
- IIT Indore and IIT-BHU have been able to maintain their closing ranks to previous year’s level with marginal drop.
- The trends in terms of regional affiliation of the IIT aspirants can be observed from the data below. All the IITs/ISM have been grouped into four regions and average closing ranks drop as compared to previous year have been tabulated :
| IIT Region | AVG Change in Closing ranks (-means drop) |
| North | -109 |
| West | -172 |
| East | -237 |
| South | -309 |
Note: 2.Only general category ranks have been considered for comparison.
- Despite uniform decline in the closing ranks, there are two distinct groups. North and West regions have shown less decline while South and East have been more affected. The charm of IIT continues to attract more candidates from the north and west.
- This data can be directly corroborated from the available information on number of candidates selected for IIT JEE 2012 from each state (upto 18k rank). If one consolidates this data region wise, the following picture emerges.
| Region (number of states) | Selected in IIT | Unit |
| North (8) | 31.7 | % |
| West (4) | 31.9 | % |
| East (6) | 12.8 | % |
| South (3) | 5.0 | % |
| Andhra Pradesh | 17.7 | % |
| Source:jee.sdslabs.co |
- Andhra Pradesh/Hyderabad stands out and defies the trend in other southern states. Therefore it has been tabulated separately.
- It is evident that location based preferences dominate in terms of choosing the IIT. This is in line with my previous blog http://alwaysaheadblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/iit-jee-2012-counselling-a-snapshot/
AIEEE 2012 counseling is currently midway and three rounds of counseling have been completed. Though, any analysis cannot be final unless all rounds have been completed, inferences can be drawn through trends emerging so far. If one does apple to apple comparison of AIEEE 2012 (3rd round) against AIEEE 2011 (3rd round), there are some visible differences in terms of closing ranks.
For the sake of simplicity, I have taken representative sets of NITs from all the regions uniformly. At least 2 to 3 NITs have been taken randomly from each region and only general category All India Ranks (other than home state) have been considered in the analysis.
There are few observations:
- There is an overall improvement of closing ranks of this representative sets of NITs from across the country. On average, there is an increase of 212 ranks per course, when compared to last year at the end of round 3.
- The same information, when categorized region wise, throws up following table:
| Region | AVG change in closing ranks (- means drop) |
| North | -74 |
| West | -1111 |
| East | 388 |
| South | 268 |
| Northeast | 1150 |
- This table is in direct contrast with Table 1 (for IITs); the southern and eastern states are more tuned to regional engineering colleges.
- Southern states (except AP) show preference to local engineering colleges. Few possible reasons:
- The growth of IT sector has opened up enormous employment opportunities for budding engineers from local colleges (both government and private) in the South.
- There are reputed engineering colleges in South with good infrastructure and great placement records.
- The North and West continue to show more passion for IIT JEE and drop in closing ranks in AIEEE can possibly be attributed to the fact that candidates from these regions prefer to re-appear in IIT JEE.
- A note on Northeast: From the data it appears that there is more inclination towards engineering from this region than previous years. The other reason could be that candidates from across the country do not hesitate to take admissions here. Both these trends, if true, are very encouraging.
I have been following trends in few private engineering institutions as well. BITSAT 2012, IIIT-Hyderabad and DTU(DCE) are few of them, which I have followed. All of these have shown improvement in closing ranks as compared to previous years. BITSAT 2012 (2nd round) closing marks are significantly higher than previous years closing marks at the end of second round. The same is the case with IIIT-Hyderabad. IIIT-H is possibly one of the very few institutions which admits few more candidates (overbook) than sanctioned seats, in anticipation that few of the candidates will leave. This avoids the pains of multiple rounds of counseling, waitlist etc. IIIT-H claims to have overbooked most of its courses in first few rounds itself and there is significant improvement in closing ranks (which is based on AIEEE ranks) this year.
What would happen in 2013?
Government is contemplating merging AIEEE and IIT JEE examination from next year. This combined exam would have a debatable process to screen candidates and select candidates for IIT and AIEEE along with few other government institutions.
It is true that IIT JEE has its own format and tests candidates on their academic excellence in great depth – both at conceptual level and application level. It can be certainly debated if this format needs any change or not, but IITs have been conducting the tests, have been successful in attracting top talent and have been imparting quality education. On the other hand, AIEEE is the exam with largest number of candidates appearing for reputed institutions (NITs/IIITs etc.) all across the country.
The manner in which these two examination are being clubbed and proposed for year 2013, AIEEE would end up as a second cousin of IIT JEE. If one observes the data above, AIEEE has its own place and can not be treated as secondary to IIT JEE in large part of the country. In fact, it is the big brother.
On the whole, it can be noted that:
- IITs continue to lead as the most preferred place for engineering aspirants. However, There are many other good institutions which continue to attract the best talent from across the country and improvement in their closing ranks, in general only go on to show their increasing influence.
- A number of lower rank IIT qualified candidates do prefer to leave IITs for their other preferences, e.g. location, course etc. Career consciousness is bound to affect these decisions in this world of information technology. Employability vs. Brand plays a role in this process.
- Hyderabad (AP) is emerging (if not already) as one of the major knowledge hubs of the country. It has attracted the best of institutions (IIT, BITS, IIIT…) and best from the IT industry (Microsoft, Oracle, IBM etc.) to its fold.
- Social, regional and economic preferences play a role in terms of preparation, participation and choice of national engineering examination/institutions. These preferences do not suit “One nation, one exam” theory.
- Sandeep
14th July 2012
Sources: jee.iitd.ac.in; jee.sdslabs.co; ccb.nic.in; www.bitsadmission.com; www.iiit.ac.in; dtuadmissions.nic.in
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