The proposed joint entrance examination (JEE) for admission to Engineering programmes (B.Tech / BE) in IITs, NITs and IIITs will be held from the next academic year, 2012-13. The Joint Councils of the IITs, NITs, IIITs and other centrally funded technical institutions has accepted the proposal to the HRD Ministry to conduct joint entrance exam for these reputed technical institutions. Most important change of the selection process is that the marks obtained in Class XII Board examinations will also be considered in the admissions.
Initially it was reported that the IITs had not in favour of the single entrance considering the standards of the institutions. The IITs have managed to persuade HRD Minister Kapil Sibal to allow them to maintain a separate merit list from the common entrance. This process will be reviewed after 2015 and IITs will also join the common merit list from that year.
Exam Structure: There will be two stages in the new JEE 2013-13. The test will be conducted by the IITs’ Joint Admission Board (JAB). The two parts in the test are : JEE Main and JEE Advanced. The marks secured in Class XII Board or its equivalent stream will be normalized with percentiles plus the marks obtained in the JEE-main test with equal weightage. Other institutions will use different weightage percentiles for screening candidates.