The Ministry of Human Resource & development of India(MHRD) under the leadership of its minister Kapil Sibal has proposed to replace prestigious Joint Entrance Examinations of IITs and related institutions and AIEEE- meant for admissions to NITs/RECs. This is the first step towards unifying most of the individual engineering entrance examinations into one common entity called the ISEET.
THE ISEET is MHRD’s attempt to address the increasing number of stress and suicides among students at schools as well as those of the premier institutions who are unable to cope up with the mental stress exerted by the preparations for these elite exams. In addition the increasing commercialization of the ‘Entrance Exam Coaching’ has created fear among the Child welfare community including psychologists, social workers and parents regarding the overall development of character in children. The pressure to sit among the books for hours together, lack of social integration, peer pressure, fear of society’s impression of oneself are some of the reasons which has pushed the students to sacrifice more of their lives to prepare for these examinations. In 2009 alone 2010 students committed suicide for failing in examinations. The number might be small in terms of our overall population but what if one of the deceased was our loved one?
The psychological stress due to multiple exams, cost of conducting multiple exams all over the country and few other reasons has nudged the MHRD to adopt a American SAT like examination which serves as a one-stop-shop for assessing a student for University admission. But ISEET will differ from SAT many ways, the question will be if the Indian society or government is able to address the issues arising out of these differences effectively.
SAT exams:
1. They are administered by a private non-profit organization which has innovated itself over the years and has maintained a reputation for reliability and high correlation between test scores and student ability.
2. It can be taken seven times a year and hence any reason that might have prevented a candidate from performing well on a certain day can be addressed by taking the test again. But the number of attempts are also recorded and hence serves as a parameter of differentiation during evaluation of applications by universities.
3. The SAT scores are evaluated along with high school grades. In addition to that extra-curricular activities of students are also taken into consideration to recognize students who are exceptional in other areas of human endeavors apart from math and science alone.
In contrast to SAT, ISEET will be government administered, once a year phenomena and evaluates only based on high school grade and ISEET score and hence puts a definite limitation on criterion available to evaluate a student upon.
By giving the students only one opportunity once a year to compete for admission into premier institutes of study is going to be much more of a stress than the present scenario where even if you ill-perform in one exam there is hope for the next one to go well. The increased insecurity about the outcome of the exam will further the cause of private coaching institutes and enable them to stay in business anyway but with a reduced annual turnover nonetheless.
Unless the government is ready to come up with a multiple-attempts per year structure and an efficient way of implementing it, ISEET is going to be more of a bane than a boon to the Indian student community.
Jai Hind
Conscience of a liberal 