The Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur, will take the IIT route to admit students from next year.
IIEST director Ajoy Kumar Ray said the institute’s executive council decided at a recent meeting that students would have to crack the JEE Advanced to get a berth on the Shibpur campus.
The decision has been communicated to the human resource development ministry for formal approval.
“We want top-notch students for our dual-degree programmes, which aim to build in them a strong research base. Between the JEE Main and the JEE Advanced, the council has settled for the JEE Advanced to ensure we get the best,” Ray told Metro.
This year IIEST will admit students through the state JEE, as was mentioned in the advertisement published by the JEE board late last year, when the Bengal Engineering & Science University was yet to be upgraded to IIEST.
The JEE Advanced is the second tier — the first being JEE Main — of the all-India test for admission to engineering institutes. The 15 IITs and the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, are among the institutes that admit students through the JEE Advanced, which candidates who clear the JEE Main are eligible to write.
The NITs and a few other institutes take students through the JEE Main.
Besides, institutes like the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, Rae Bareli, the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER), the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology Thiruvananthapuram and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore offer admission by using rank list of JEE-Advanced.
“We too would be joining the institutes like IISER to admit students by using the JEE-Advanced rank. Once MHRD approves the proposal, our criteria would be announced,” said an IIEST official.
An executive council member said the MHRD had suggested to the IIEST to explore the possibility of admitting students through JEE Advanced from the 2014-15 session itself.
“But we did not want to tweak the criteria following the state JEE board’s notification on our mode of admission,” said the member.
Only the top 1,50,000 candidates (out of around 13 lakh) who qualify in the Paper-1 of JEE Main are considered eligible to appear for JEE Advanced.
Roy explained what prompted them to opt for the JEE Advanced ranks.
“We are restructuring our programme with an eye to preparing students for the industry. Speaking to industry experts our course curriculum is being drawn up. Only the bright students would be able to cope with such programme,” said Roy.
JEE Main ranks are considered to get admissions in engineering institutes like the NITs (National Institutes of Technology).
Roy has also written to the MHRD to set aside fifty percent of seats at the IIEST for “home (Bengal) students” from 2015-16 academic session.
An IIEST official said the ministry had in a letter to the then Left Front government in 2007 promised to reserve 50 per cent seats for students from Bengal. In the IIEST act, however, there is no mention of such reservation.
“We have written to MHRD that 50 per cent seats be set aside for the state students coming through JEE Advanced exam from next year. Once the board of governors-- the proposed decision making body at the IIEST-- is constituted shortly, the proposal would be resent,” added Roy.
The IIEST has also finalised its fee structure. Registrar Biman Banerjee said a student would be charged Rs 44,500 in the first semester and the fee would come down to Rs 36,500 from the subsequent semesters.
“The first semester fee would comprise a tuition fee (Rs 35,000), institute development fee (Rs 5,000 one-time), caution money (Rs 2,000 to be refunded on completion of the dual-degree programme), examination fee (Rs 1,000), admission fee (Rs 1,000 one-time) and student activities fee (Rs 500),” said Banerjee.
SC and ST students-- for whom altogether 22 percent seats of the 488 berths would be reserved--won’t be charged any tuition fee through out the semesters.
