AIEEE goes IIT way

HYDERABAD: For IIT aspirants, AIEEE-2009 was a cake walk as the exam followed the IIT-JEE pattern of the past three years.
AIEEE, which was held at various centres in the city, had a huge turnout on Sunday with over 35,000 students writing the test at Hyderabad centres alone.
According to official estimates, over one lakh students from AP alone attended the examination this year, 64 per cent increase compared to the past two years.
Over 10 lakh students from across the country took the test. With this, AIEEE has become the largest single-day competitive examination in the world. The examination was conducted at 1,460 centres in India and abroad.
When compared to last year, the marks have increased from 320 to 432 this year. However, the number of questions reduced from 35 per session to 30. Equal weightage was given for physics, chemistry and mathematics.
AIEEE experts said there was a mix of different questions this year, which could have troubled the students.
"The variety of questions in the paper is not typical of AIEEE. This is the IIT style. But since most students who write AIEEE also appear for IIT, most of them would be comfortable with the questions," TIME academic coordinator Ajay Anthony said. He said that the eight marks question type would be the decisive element in this AIEEE and this might decide the ranks of students. The three different question types which was introduced in AIEEE this year was normal multiple choice questions, assertion reason type questions and paragraph questions.
Some students from the city found the questions easier than the previous year. "The mathematics part was tougher than physics. Though the number of questions reduced, the questions were designed in such a way that the candidate has to spend more time on it," Rishi Karthik, who wrote the examination at Obul Reddy Public School, said.
Some students said they had not got their hall tickets on time and had to get special permission to do so. "We had to bring our application form number and other details to write the examination," Kiran Charvana, another AIEEE aspirant, said.
NIT Warangal director Y V Rao said the conduct of the examination was smooth. "Some students who had applied for writing only the second part of the examination wanted to write the first part today. Those who reported before 8 am on the examination date with the required certificates were allowed to do this," Rao said.
He said the results of the examination would be declared on June 7 and the counselling sessions would begin on June 15. NIT, Warangal, which will conduct the counselling session, will arrange for online counselling. The admission process would end by July 24. Over 20,000 seats would be available for students.