IIT-JEE Distortion: Why CBSE, Rich & Urban Students Fare Better

For very long the venerated and coveted IITs and their entrance exams have been considered as the great leveller in India, a country where inequality and diversity are two sides of the coin. Students from villages, from uneducated backgrounds and low economic strata have qualified for these exams. But now this notion seems to be turned on its head.A statistical analysis of the results of 2012 admission tests by scientists at Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Kolkata shows that certain Boards, students from high income families, and urban areas bag most of the IIT seats. In fact, among those who had registered, students from higher income group have four times higher success rate than those from lower income group.As for the Boards, IITs picked over 57% of their selected students in 2012 from CBSE, a board that represents that 6% of their target group.Isn't that shrinking the supply base of these institutions to a disastrously narrow band? And if you've followed the rather messy process of “improving” the supply base of IITs — not to get just factory-produced students whose primary (and secondary) aim in life becomes to ‘crack’ the admission test and then lose steam when the actual learning starts at IITs — then you’d see below how even the new system that was adopted in 2013 beats the entire purpose of admissions revamp downright hollow. Predictably, the preliminary analysis of 2013 JEE-Advanced results shows that CBSE predominance continues.The table below from ISI  shows IITS hardly select an inclusive group. As far as board affiliation is concerned, CBSE and ICSE accounted for less than 7% of all students appearing for Class XII Board examinations in 2012 in India. . Whatever the verdict of the apex court, the case is far from settled, in more ways than one.“As a non-IITian my view has been that the current IIT students barring may be the top 1000 JEE-rankers  are simply one-track horses, having spent about four years preparing just for the JEE at the cost of everything else. No amount of tinkering with the selection process is going to fix the core issue that very high career rewards are dependent on one or two numbers (in the current case, JEE advanced and Board normalised score),” says Swami Manohar, managing director of LimberLink Technologies, a start-up that is attempting to re-engineer education in professional engineering colleges.Unfortunately, after the two-year ‘pilgrimage’ of IIT admission tests revamp, perhaps everyone is still standing in purgatory.