IIT JEE simpler, say most aspirants

NEW DELHI: Nearly five lakh candidates appeared for the joint entrance exam ( JEE) of IITs on Sunday. While many aspirants were relieved that the ‘most difficult’ of all engineering entrance exams was through now, others seemed anxious about their performance which will make or mar their chances of admission to any of the 15 IITs in the country besides IT-BHU and ISM-Dhanbad . The exam was held in two parts and each paper was three-hour-long .

Though they had a back-breaking time attempting the papers, many candidates felt that the first part was simpler than the second and JEE this year seemed a bit simpler than previous years.

“Paper 1, which carried 210 marks this year, seemed easier than Paper 2 which was for 198 marks. Last time, both papers were for 240 marks each. Also, I felt JEE last year was more challenging. There were hardly any questions on matrix this time and not many integer-type questions which require a lot of time and exhaustive brainwork,” said Shrustijeet Panda from Bhubaneshwar who prepared for JEE at Kota in Rajasthan and appeared for the exam at Barakhamba Road in the city.

Another candidate, Hemshikha, from Lady Irwin School in the city too found the first paper simpler and more doable. She is keen on pursuing BTech though she is more hopeful of getting through GGSIP University in the city. “I had not done any special preparation for JEE and instead followed CBSE more regularly. Let’s see what happens,” she said after the exam.

Coaching centres got busy analyzing the question paper right after the two papers held from 9am to 12 noon and then from 2pm to 5pm were over. “As compared to previous years, IIT-JEE this year was relatively easy and came with little or no surprises. The students were prepared for more for more aggressive questions like match-the-followingtype questions, which were totally missing from the papers this time,” said T K Bansal from Bansal Tutorials.

Ajay Antony, vicepresident , TIME, added, “There were 10 versions for JEE 2012 from 0 to 9. Paper 1 had 60 questions in the order of physics, chemistry and mathematics. Each subject had 20 questions and the pattern was exactly the same for all the subjects.” He found some questions lengthier this time as compared to last year.
It was also the first time, candidates got to take home a carbon copy of their OMR answer sheets. The answer keys to Sunday’s exam will be put up on the JEE website before the results are declared on May 18.