A Plus Two class in progress at a college in Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar, Nov. 24: Engineering aspirants are spending more time in their college classrooms than at coaching centres now, as Plus Two marks would carry 50 per cent weightage for admissions under the JEE (Mains)-2014.

Until now, most students preparing for IIT-JEE enrolled in private coaching centres and paid less attention to the college syllabus and board exams. Instead, they would concentrate on scoring more in entrance tests, which primarily governed their admissions into premier institutes.

However, the pattern of selection has completely changed with state embracing JEE (Mains), a common all-India entrance test for BTech hopefuls, which covers admissions to top-notch institutes such as IITs, NITs and other Centre-funded tech institutions that rely equally on Plus Two scores.

Shirshendu Das of BJB Junior College here has started burning the midnight oil to ensure that his revision is completed in time. “I discontinued my coaching classes as soon as I learnt that Odisha joined JEE. I cannot afford to miss out on Plus Two classes now,” he said. “Now we cannot take a chance,” said Prakruti Sahoo, another student.

“Board percentage out of a total of 500 marks will be considered. Students who will appear in the top 20 percentile of their respective Plus Two exams will be deemed qualified for the IITs,” said Jatindra Sethi, a senior professor.

Percentile will be calculated based on the rank of the student in board exams, he said. “Students who are above 80 percentile will be deemed fit for IITs and their JEE (Advanced) score will be considered for the final merit list,” Sethi added. “The best thing is that the craze for coaching institutes will reduce and attendance in colleges will improve,” said educationist Suresh Patnaik.

CBSE centres

While the CBSE authorities have decided to set up six centres in Odisha for JEE (Mains), a group of students under the BPUT Students’ Protection Council met technical education officials and demanded more centres.

“In our state, almost every district has a CBSE-run institute. It will not be a difficult task to open one centre in each district. If the CBSE refuses to listen to the state’s request, we must continue with the Odisha JEE as before,” Biplab Prakash Mohanty, president of the council. CBSE director for Bhubaneswar region A.S. Verma said: “Form fill up for JEE (Mains) is under way. We will have to wait to find out how many applications we get and centre preferences of the candidates. If need be, we can increase the centres, but nothing can be said now.”