JEE candidates come out of exam halls smiling

When candidates sat down for the second paper of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) on Sunday, they were in for a surprise. Most of the questions in the paper were of the subjective kind, and they certainly weren’t prepared for it.

Nevertheless, most of them claimed that the papers weren’t as tough as they  had expected them to be. The JEE is held for admission to the 15 IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) in the country.  Karnataka falls under the IIT-Madras zone and the examination was held at different centres located in Bangalore, Mysore and Mangalore. 

According to Alok Sinha, national head of IIT-JEE training provider Toppers Tutorial, students were – initially – a little unnerved by the surprise element of subjective-type questions in the second paper of the JEE.  The usual format of the JEE comprises two papers with objective-type questions from three subjects – Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics.

“The second paper, with its subjective-type questions,  came as a surprise. They weren’t there in last year’s exam,” said Kiran Pathakota, a student.  But then, this factor didn’t affect their optimism in the least.

“Overall, it was  good. It’s just that they saved some surprises for the second paper,” said Arun S Vinayak, an IIT aspirant. He intends to pursue nano-engineering or aerospace engineering from IIT-Madras or IIT-Bombay.

Many JEE aspirants contended that they had a smooth ride this year. For Sneha Kudli, an IIT aspirant, the first paper was easy compared to the second. “The chemistry section in the first paper was tough, but the maths sections were hard to crack in both the papers. The multi-concept questions were easy, as they offered more than one correct answer in the choices. There was no negative marking in the column-matching sections,” she gushed.

According to experts from JEE training centres, the chemistry section was the easiest of the three while the mathematics section was the toughest. “JEE is the toughest competitive exam in India, but the students found it easier than usual this time round,” said HS Nagaraja, chairman of Base, a training centre.

As many as 4, 000 candidates attempted the JEE from Karnataka, while around four lakh students appeared for it at the national level. While 49,831 students had attempted the JEE from the IIT-Madras zone last year, only 840 of them had managed to qualify. In 2008, there were only 6,872 seats. With two new IITs – Indore and Himachal Pradesh – joining the JEE fray with 120 seats each, the number has increased substantially.

However, the cat will be out of the bag on May 25, when JEE results are declared. Medical check-ups and counselling sessions are scheduled to be held between June 9 and 11.