08/08/09

what's atrociously, horribly wrong with you?

MUMBAI: A minimum of 35% is essential to be promoted to a higher class under almost every Indian school board or university. But you don't need
that much to make it On Saturday, when the Indian Institutes of Technology released report cards of students who joined these engineering schools
this year, it transpired that the entry bar for the reserved category students had dropped to a mere 18% (89/480).

The IITs were forced to make various concessions to fill SC/ST seats this year. Entry levels were lowered to half of what the last general category student who got through to the IITs scored. So, as the last general category student admitted to the IITs bagged an overall score of 178 (out of 480), the cut-off for an SC/ST student was brought down to 89 (half of 178). Till last year, the cut-off for SC/ST students used to be 60% of the score of the last general category student.
a report in the economic times on the results of iit-jee this year. and abi, in this excellent post, tells you what's wrong with the report:

Even if she wants to highlight the fact that 18 percent is what the SC/ST students needed to get into the IITs, she chooses the wrong number -- 35 percent that one needs in Board Exams -- for comparison. The relevant number should have been the subject-wise averages in this year's JEE itself: 7%, 4% and 7% (in math, physics and chemistry, respectively).

In fact, one of the striking features of JEE is the very low averages -- percentages in single digits. Remember, this is an exam that students self-select into. Remember also that this is an exam for which they prepare hard and pay good money for coaching.

Given these facts, the single-digit averages are atrociously, horribly, low.

there must be figures somewhere on how many general category and reserved category students appeared for the iit-jee- the total number of candidates, it appears, to be around 4 lakhs. and the average score of those 4 lakh students was much below the average score of the sc/st students who scored above the cut-off of 18%. and this despite history and all its burdens falling heavily on only one side.

i feel compelled to ask, and i find two words that abi used very useful, all those bigoted journalists of the media: what's atrociously, horribly wrong with you?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Superb. They should make it 0% for SC/STs. First come first serve to fill the seats. When they are in IIT the SC/ST candidate should be exempt from taking any exams as exams are a casteist meritocratic exercise and will be an extension of manudharma. They should be promoted and finally given an honors degree on the basis of 5000 years of oppression. Bingo

 
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