My opinion of the IIT-JEE, which is the entrance test to gain admission to the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, took a really hard knock today as I read a report in the TOI.

According to disclosures that came to light thanks to the Right To Information Act, the cut-off marks for mathematics, physics and chemistry last year were 1, 4 and 3 respectively, as compared to 37, 48 and 55 in 2006 !!!

Words simply fail me. The IITs are supposed to be world class institutes of learning, and have churned out some excellent students, some of who are leaders in their fields and captains of industry today. However, I’ve been seeing a steady decline in the standard and quality of these students whenever I’ve interviewed them recently. Hardly surprising, if you take these cut-off marks into account. It means any Tom, Dick and Harry can simply show up for the examinations and get selected.

The cut-off marks are decided by the highest marks scored by the bottom 20% of the candidates in each subject. So if there are plenty of flunkies sitting for the exams, the cut-off automatically comes down.

IIT-Roorkee, which is holding the 2008 exams, seems adamant enough to follow in the footsteps of IIT Kharagpur and IIT Mumbai by adhering to this same stupid procedure, which means more single digit cut-off’s or heaven forbid, decimal cut-offs now !!!!