The union government is planning to introduce a common test for admissions in various government engineering colleges such as National Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Technology. The proposed examination will be introduced from 2013. The common entrance examination will be called Indian Science Engineering Eligibility Test (ISEET). The ISEET will replace JEE for admissions in IITs and AIEEE for admissions in the NITs and few other colleges.

Proposed Structure of Common Entrance Exam

The ISEET will consist of two parts, namely Main and Advance. The duration for each parts of the examination will be 3 hours and both the parts will be conducted on the same day. The first test is proposed to be conducted in April or March, 2013.

The main part will consists of objective type questions which are intended to evaluate the students’ critical thinking and logical ability. The advance part will consists of questions that will evaluate the problem solving skills of the students in different science subjects. The evaluation based on two parts will bring out the students intellectual level and aptitude for engineering.

The performance of the student in the 12th grade examination will also be taken into account, which will make 40 per cent weightage of the total score. The score of ISEET will carry a maximum weightage of 60 per cent. The state government or the engineering college will have the liberty to decide on the weightage that should be given to the Board examination score and the score obtained in two parts of the ISEET.

The question for ISEET will be prepared by the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) and the Central Board of Secondary Education will be responsible for the management and conduct of the examination.

Issues and Concerns on proposed common exam

However there are many concerns regarding a common entrance test across the country. The test is proposed to be conducted in English and Hindi. This is a major concern for many of the states where medium of instruction is mainly regional languages. In that case students will not be competent to take the test in English or Hindi. This will affect the performance of such students in ISEET.

Even though such a common entrance test will reduce the stress, effort and money spend in taking different examinations, there is another drawback too. With many entrance tests in place, even if the student is not able to perform well in one examination, he or she will have the opportunity to perform in the next examination. But with a single examination, the student need to make sure that he or she perform well in that exam, since there is no other opportunity. This will add to the stress levels of the students.

There is also no clarity on the syllabus that will be used for the test. If the CBSE syllabus is followed, it will be a problem for students studying in schools following the state board syllabus. This will give the students in CBSE schools an advantage over the students in state schools. It will reduce the chances of the later to score good marks in the entrance exam.

Hence unifying the qualification norms, examination conduct methodology, syllabus and ranking methodology will be critical in ensuring the success of such an exam in India.