Hyderabad: A high level meeting of directors of all Indian Institutes of Technology will be held in the city in the third week of this month to decide the fate of the JEE for admissions to IITs and NITs. The Centre plans to replace the JEE with the National Aptitude Test, which will be conducted along the lines of the SAT in the US.
The new exam will include English as a subject. If approved, it will be in place for the 2017-18 academic year. This has the potential of removing a large number of students who hail from non-English medium streams of education.
IITs are said to be proposing the same two-stage exam for IIT admissions but want to replace first stage “the JEE (Mains)” with the NAT. The JEE (Advanced) will continue as second stage.
In stage-I exam, the IITs directors are proposing to include English as an additional subject since students coming from non-English medium backgrounds were facing difficulties at the IITs where the medium of instruction is English.
The Centre wants to test the English proficiency of students at the screening level. The IITs had held two rounds of discussion earlier.
