«The cut-off for candidates for qualifying the JEE Main Session 2 Paper 1 is from 100 to 93.1023262»
7 significant digits! Our first class in Chem 101 at IITK ended with a quiz where we had to do some questions of the kind
7.2+0.0002= ____ .You got it wrong if you wrote 7.2002. (BTW, Meta AI first suggested 7.20002 and then when I ignored that, suggested 7.2)
For an IIT professor who has worked there for over 3 decades (and who has headed one of the most sought-after departments), I have kept myself blissfully clear of the setting of JEE papers and the admission processes (other than -- many years ago -- being part of invigilation oversight teams).
I am not sure what the JEE really tests for these days, especially when it is conducted as a exam that employs Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs). While analytical abilities and some conceptual knowledge are tested, it is not clear whether this correlates well with the ability to synthesise good programs, proofs, or engineering systems that solve real-world problems. Negative marking only makes it harder to sift the imaginative from those who have been through a coaching process where pattern-matching skills are perfected. Even a nodding acquaintance with the Pigeon-hole Principle should convince us that the scores given to us by the JEE process would have several students earning the same marks, with ties broken using convoluted formulas so as to rank students according to a total order. (I continue to wonder why Indians are so quick to seek an immutable rank order in almost every examination process).
Perhaps one should not read too much into JEE results other than seeing the test as a filter that measures to a modest degree the preparedness of a student for engaging with undergraduate education offered in an IIT. For that purpose, no significant digits after the decimal point are really needed.
The other chief virtue of the JEE, as I see it today, is that it is competently administered, and that it has over the years largely kept itself free of the taints that afflict many of our public higher educational institutions. (I am, of course, aware of the small-minded manipulations over the selection some years ago that my whistle-blower friend Rajeev Kumar has tirelessly crusaded against). This "objectivity" enables us within the IIT system to get on with teaching our classes without having to worry about endless litigation on whether someone was unfairly denied an opportunity of studying at an IIT.
Six decades is perhaps a long enough period to develop a testing methodology, such as ETS has done over the several decades, on the basis of which one can develop a test the outcomes of which correlate well with something other than being able to perform well on such tests.
