IITs to start preparatory courses for quota students

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will open their classroom for special coaching for reserved category students. The coaching will be available for quota category students who fail to make the grade this year apart from lowering of the cut-offs for reserved category.

The main reason behind this initiative is that there may not be enough students to fill the reserved category seats this year too.

This year, only the marginal number of students cleared the JEE Main entrance exam. This forced the prestigious engineering institutes to lower their cut-offs but also re-start the preparatory course. JEE Advanced chairman H C Gupta, said, "Although we are at the stage of certificate verification and everything currently is provisional, I think we might have to conduct a preparatory course this year."

After evaluating the present situation for quota students IIT authorities decided to reduce the cut-offs for reserved category students and conduct special coaching for them for a year, so that they can clear the exam. The main objective to start this programme is to bridge the gap between the reserved category students and general category students and to provide them equal opportunities.

Every year, the IITs provide concession to reserve category students. It lowers the entry levels for them, going as low as 50% the last general category student's marks to do the justice to the quota. There may not be enough number of students to fill the seats reserved for SC/ST and OBC students who appeared in the JEE. IIT director, said, "There are wide variations we saw in the reserved category candidates, especially among the scheduled tribes. Some do very well and then there is a huge drop."