Chennai: Even as several students dream to take up JEE (advanced) exam or admission to IITs in the country, about six per cent (1,583 students) of the 26,398, who registered for the test from IIT-Madras zone did not attend the exam held on Sunday. Of the 3,930 from Tamil Nadu about 200 students did not appear for the exam. The percentage of absentees in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana was about two to three per cent.
According to sources in the IITM-JEE office, 26,398 from IIT-Madras zone (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, Karnataka and Puducherry) qualified to take up JEE (advanced) as they bagged a slot in the top 1.5 lakhs of JEE (main) rank list. A total of 1.22 lakh IIT aspirants across the country from the 1.5 lakh toppers list registered to take up the advanced test this year. IIT-Bombay zone had the highest number of candidates among the seven IIT zones in the country topping the 1.5-lakh rank list with 29,037 followed by IIT-Madras—26,398.
The sources said they witness the same trend ever since IIT entrance exam pattern got converted into JEE (advanced) a couple of years ago.Last year, there were 9,800 seats in 16 IITs and with new four IITs (Tirupathi, Palakkad, Goa and Chattisgarh) this year the number will go up to 11,500.This year IITs and NITs will have joint counselling with a common rank list from which students will be selected.
Commenting about the trend, SASTRA University Dean (Planning and Development) Professor S. Vaidhyasubramaniam, said students might be fence sitters and satisfied with a good JEE (main) score
to get into National Institute of Technology (NITs) and other progressive institutions like SASTRA, which use JEE (main) score.“Some may havedecided to avoid another round of gruelling and are satisfied with one to prove their point. Some may have genuine reasons but that number must be a miniscule minority,” he said.
