Joint Entrance Examination – Advanced is considered to be one of the toughest entrance exams in India. It is conducted to screen students for admission in the Undergraduate courses at Indian Institute of Technology (IITs). An Australian vlogger named Toby, recently shared a video of professors from the University of Melbourne reacting to and analysing questions from the JEE papers.
In the very first go, one professor says that just by the face of it the paper looks extremely intimidating and that a lot of the questions are taught at an advanced stage at universities.
Prof. Barry Hughes from the University is flummoxed by the fact that the paper tests the students aptitude in Physics, Chemistry and Maths all in one go and that they are expected to score literally 1 mark every passing minute!
The professors in the video slam this strategy and say that there’s no one. way test a student’s aptitude in any subject or for that matter his future as as scientist.
Prof. Barry Hughes says, “I had a look at a couple of the math section papers and I would say that I would be fairly challenged to get a decent result in an hour. That’s also because as an aspirational Mathematician I would rather tell a story while answering a problem,”
“The ability to reason and explain your reasoning is what matters in any scientific discipline. The JEE according to me is not an optimal selector. But with the race against clock style exams there’s a trade off between a students ability in the subject and being trained to deal with it.”
Dr. Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway, from the University of Melbourne also slammed the rote method and said, “Entry exams that are in drill format usually requires students to practice before making that grand attempt. When you have large number of students practice and time limited environment is not the determinant of how well the student will do in the next step of education.”
Dr. Shane Huntington says that a lot of principles behind the paper rely on memorisation and recitation and that’s a really bad education tool because it assumes that everyone has the exact same capabilities.
Around 12 to 14 lakh students appear for JEE Main and only around 2.2 lakh students are selected to appear for JEE Advanced. Ultimately, around 11,000 students make it to the top engineering colleges in India. The craze is so much that the aspirants are enrolled in the coaching from 8th standard itself.
The reaction of the professors tell a lot the education systems in India and abroad. We may pat our backs for conducting and clearing the examination of such difficulty, but we should also consider the sacrifice the students make, the societal pressure he is subjected to. Another thing to notice is that despite getting the crème de la crème, we hardly make our presence felt in University Rankings at world level.