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Friday, June 3, 2011

High Court Directs JEE to find ways to fill vacant seats in IITs

Recently, the Honorable High Court of Andhra Pradesh has passed an order directing JEE to find ways to fill up the vacant seats in 15 IITs, IT BHU, and ISM Dhanbad. Here is a link to download a copy of the order.

Since only the judgment is on the web, it is difficult to know the exact argument of all stake holders, but what I can make out from the judgment is the following.

The petitioner is a student of ISM Dhanbad, who got admission to the Institute in 2010 after passing the Joint Entrance Examination. When the results of the first round of counseling were announced, she was allotted MSc (Chemistry) in ISM Dhanbad. She paid her fee, etc., as per the JEE procedure. If you recall, last year, there was an error in the counseling. The Counseling software had not taken into account the results of the Architecture aptitude test. When this error was detected and corrected, it turned out that the course allotment of several students had to be canceled. This student was one of them. There were 52 such students. She got lucky that at least she could get a program allotted. She was assigned MSc (Mathematics and Computing). By the only 41 students could get some course in the second round. Eleven students had no where to go (even though as we will see later, there were hundreds of seats vacant in the system).

After this the details are sketchy. She apparently wanted a better branch. ISM Dhanbad refused saying that the branch changes will be done after 2nd semester, based on performance in the 1st year. However, she noticed that the rules in ISM Dhanbad did not allow too many people to get branch change. The rules said a student is not allowed to leave a branch, if that would cause the strength of the program to become less than 50%. A very large number of students who had been offered admission to ISM Dhanbad had not joined, leaving more than 250 vacancies in the Institute. This meant that many programs would have less than 50% seats filled up. Or the number of branch changes that would be permitted would be extremely few. So, she appealed to High Court that JEE should have filled up those huge number of vacant seats in all the institutes put together, and if such a thing was done in 2010, she would have got a better program to begin with.

JEE responded to the writ petition by arguing that it is not possible to keep doing multiple rounds of admission, since the classes have to start at some time. And IITs have such a high standard of academics that doing admission even a few days into the semester would be harmful to the quality of education.

The court asked for information on the number of vacant seats after the students had joined various institutes. It turned out that the number of seats vacant were 8% of the total seats available through JEE. The court has said that based on JEE's argument, if there were a small number of seats vacant, it would have accepted the situation. But the argument cannot justify such a large number of vacant seats, particularly when JEE could have started the admission process a bit earlier, and tried to incorporate another round of admission process.

For 2010 admissions, the court has asked ISM Dhanbad to allot any of the vacant seats to the student in question before doing its branch changes. And for 2011 admissions, it has asked JEE to do whatever it deems fit to make sure that such a large number of seats are not left vacant.

This is an excellent judgment which will make JEE more student friendly. However, there is one aspect of the whole admission process which has not been clearly understood by the court. If JEE were to do a 3rd round of counseling, it would still leave 8% of the seats vacant, unless the 3rd round was done AFTER the semester started.

Let us understand why third round prior to the semester would not help. The reasons for vacant seats is NOT that students who are offered seats do not accept it. Such a number is rather small after the 2nd round. The reason for vacant seats is that students accept the admission offer by paying whatever amount is needed, and then never inform JEE that they would like to withdraw. They just don't show up on the campus on the 1st day of the semester. So you can have any number of rounds prior to the semester beginning, and you still wouldn't know how many people won't show up on the appointed day.

So what is the solution. There are, in fact, several solutions possible.

The obvious one that Central Counseling Board (which does counseling for all NITs based on AIEEE ranks) makes use of is to offer admission after the semester has started. The assumption with which CCB works is that teaching is unimportant and even if a student misses a few days, nah a few weeks, may be half the semester, it is still ok for him/her to get admission. The underlying assumption appears to be that teaching in most such places is so poor that it is perhaps better for the student to not face such teaching :-) But JEE can't make such an assumption, and it has correctly argued in the court that late admissions will result in poorer quality of education.

The second solution is to admit more students than the number of seats that you have. This is the solution that every single country in the world follows (other than India, of course). In India, we believe, we are very unique. Our problems are very unique. So nothing that works in the rest of the world will work in India. (Of course, the corollary is that what does not work in the rest of the world will also not work in India.) And, therefore, we must do opposite of what the rest of the world does, and consider our seats as sacrosanct.

But, if somehow JEE can come out of this anti-rest-of-the-world feeling, then what they may do is to look at historical data about the percentage of students who don't join a particular institute, and admit that many extra students to each institute. So if we have 500 unreserved seats (since we need to do this category wise), and 10% students did not join on an average in the last 5 years, then may be I can admit 8% more (to be on the conservative side - I don't want to exceed my target strength, not by large number, anyway). So, we shall admit 540, and if 10% did not join, I will still have 486 students as opposed to 450 in the current scenario. Yes, there is a risk that I might have 510 students. But the question is that if you have capacity to deal with 500 students properly and in the best way that you want to deal with them, would you rather have 450 students and waste a significant investment, or would you rather live with a very small probability of 510 students in some year (and hence the quality of education for that batch presumably going down).

Of course, the immediate question will be what branch to assign to these extra students. It is assumed that the students will give a choice during the counseling that they are willing to be admitted to an Institute without any assignment of a program. So someone, for example, could give a higher preference for IITB-NONE compared to ISM-Dhanbad-Mining-BTech. On the joining date at an institute, we will know how many students in each category have joined. Based on this data, we know vacancies in each program in each category. We can do an internal branch change of each student based on their preferences in JEE counseling, and by this process, the unassigned students will get some program assigned to them. It is assumed that when they opt for unassigned seat, they are actually willing to take any program in the Institute. So if they have not put in all the choices during the JEE counseling, they could be given a random seat.

The problem will come when the number of vacancies (or people not joining) is less than the number of students admitted against unassigned seats. In such a case, each institute will take its own decision on how to assign programs to these people. The easiest will be to increase the number of seats in each program by same proportion. If there are 10 programs, and there are 10 unassigned students, increase 1 seat in each program.

This has a downside. Most of the JEE selected candidates - while they may have solved hugely complex mathematical problems in JEE, they will now claim that they don't understand probability and statistics. They will make statements like this: If you have 500 seats and you are admitting 8% extra, then theoretically you could have 540 students. It means that at least in such a case, you will somehow manage 540 students. Then why not admit 540 students anyway. The only answer to this question is that if you do not understand probability and statistics, then you don't deserve to be in an IIT. We will take your name off the JEE merit list.

There is a solution number 3. This is to somehow have an incentive for the student to inform JEE in advance that he has decided not to take admission. What could be such an incentive. How about returning some of the money that you charge them. Right now, JEE asks for Rs. 40,000 to be deposited for accepting admission, and whether you decide to withdraw the next day or 2 weeks later, you don't back a single paisa. If we could have a sliding scale. If you withdraw within a day, we will give you back most of the money, if you withdraw within a week, we will deduct some more, and so on. Then there is an incentive for people to decide fast and communicate that decision to JEE.

The problem with this scheme is that the Government has mandated that anyone leaving the program till the day of beginning of the semester, has to be refunded the entire amount (except a token processing fee of Rs. 1,000). IITs currently are below the radar of the government, and don't get hauled up when they don't give any refund. But if they start giving refund, they will have to follow this policy of 100% refund. This policy of 100% refund has played havoc with admission process in India. Ever since this rule has been made in 2007, most admissions are now done after the beginning of the semester in most colleges across the country. To know more about it, you may want to read one of my old blog article on refund rules. Strangely, most students and parents believe that this refund rule is very good, not realizing how it has destroyed education in NITs, and other good institutes, and how it is actually making more money for private colleges, since most admissions are now happening after the beginning of the semester, where the refunds are not controlled by this rule anyway.

So, IITs may have to argue with MHRD to junk this rule and come with an alternate scheme with gradations for refund depending on how many days before the semester the student is withdrawing.

Of course, there is a 4th solution. IIT Directors can agree that after the 2nd round of counseling, each Institute can decide on its own whether they want to do more admissions, and do those admissions in whatever way they deem fit (increase ad hocism). Of course, JEE could go to Supreme Court and not do anything on the ground this year.

The right thing to do is to do both 2nd and 3rd solutions. Admit additional students, and have a graded refund policy. Doing these things together will clean up the admission process not just in IITs, but in all engineering colleges, since they will then be able to do the same thing.

In my opinion, this high court ruling is a godsend to IITs to improve their admission process without political interference or too much media glare. After all, they will be following the legal mandate. I hope they will do something that will have a positive impact on all engineering admissions throughout the country.

In the end, I will like to just give out the vacant seats last year in old IITs, BHU and ISM in unreserved and OBC categories (combined). IITB (2/663), IITD (5/640), IITK (8/622), IITM (10/630), IIT-GHY (20/442), IIT-KGP (54/1008), IIT-R (114/866), IT-BHU (146/785), ISM (213/760).

21 comments:

iitmsriram said...

Dhiraj,

How about a 2(a) solution (this is my favourite). If we are so obsessed with not going over capacity (well, the capacities are arbitrary anyway, I can never understand whats the big deal about going over those; I digress ...), we can use a carry over system so seats vacant one year are added on to the next year. This way, we will not go 'over capacity' in an integral sense. I think I will put this up to the admissions board.

But, as you rightly point out, it may be next to impossible to eliminate the no shows, which are the main reason for the vacancies; also, the vacancies are concentrated in a few institutions, but for others, something like what I suggest above would make the cumulative vacant seat count near zero.

Anonymous said...

The only answer to this question is that if you do not understand probability and statistics, then you don't deserve to be in an IIT. We will take your name off the JEE merit list.



Ha ha. I laughed at this :)

Dheeraj Sanghi said...

@iitmsriram, This is an excellent suggestion, easy implementation, everyone understands it.

Saurabh Nanda said...

What about the IIT holding on to the student's identity documents (birth certificate, mark sheet, etc) with an SLA of returning it within a few hours (if collected in person) if a student withdraws his/her admission?

It would force people to inform IITs before accepting admission elsewhere.

iitmsriram said...

Well, I just ran my "excellent suggestion" by my Director as he was leaving for the meeting that will discuss this court judgement and he voted it down. He had a point when he asked "What, do you think, will happen at ISM?". In a few years, with the carry over seats, they would probably end up with more seats on offer than on their rolls ...

OK, let us try to understand the problem better, since it is not actually a single problem. The vacancies in the old IITs are due to a small number of no-shows and this can be solved with my suggestion. At KGP and Roorkee, the bulk of vacancies are in a handful of specific programs, like architecture and integrated MSc. At BHU, the bulk of vacancies are in the SC/ST category and there is a specific reason for this. SInce BHU is a state university (unlike the IITs), the scholarship bill is footed by the state. And, the state gives SC/ST scholarships only to "local" students, so almost no out of state SC/ST student chooses BHU. At ISM, the vacancies are spread all over. The BHU problem will get solved once it is upgraded into an IIT and receives central funding, but how do we eliminate vacancies at ISM?

Dheeraj Sanghi said...

Sriram, BHU is a central university. The real problem is in the unreserved category (including OBC, since vacant OBC seats get converted to unreserved). The no shows in SC/ST seats are few. The vacancies there are mainly due to insufficient candidates qualified. The no shows can be easily adjusted there by having a larger number of people called for preparatory courses. The preparatory course starts 3-4 weeks after the regular semester. So they know exactly how many no shows are there, and they can add that many more seats to the preparatory program. That is an easy problem.

Yes, I see that your suggestion will work when there are few vacancies in a particular program. If there are 50% no shows then the vacancies will just keep getting added.

Dheeraj Sanghi said...

Saurabh, why do you have to come up with police action for problems that everyone else in the world has solved with much more care.

gautam barua said...

Solution 2: If we add 100 seats, 49 will be GE, 27 will be OBC,15 SC, 8 ST and 3 PD across the categories. Now the vacant seats are almost all in GE and some in OBC (let us assume only GE seats are vacant). As far as SC and ST and PD are concerned, there wont be enough candidates. But then should we not increase the Preparatory seats by 23? But this will upset next year's balance. We are likely to be left with 27 vacant OBC seats, so the net result will be that the number of vacant seats will go down from 49 to 27 and the number of preparatory seats will increase by 23. Further, the IITX-NONE option will create confusion and chaos.
Solution 3 - the rule is that if a candidate has paid fees and not joined AND the seat has been allotted to another student, the fees (less 1000) has to be returned. This is to prevent unscrupulous institutes from making money through this method. So IITs do not have to return the 40K or that a student pays on accepting a seat and does not join, if that seat is not filled up by another candidate. If this were not so, there will be no second round or third round. Why should anyone give up a seat if only 1000/- is going to be deducted in any case?
Yes, an incentive to declare that they are not going to join by offering to return some of the 40K may help. But time is still going to be a problem. One available seat can result in a complete change in allotment of IITs of a large number of candidates with ranks lower than that of the person who vacated the seat. How will students get train reservations to Guwahati, Kharagpur, etc. at the last moment? Will local filling up (sliding up within an institute only) be acceptable to civil society?
The IIT JAB has been debating the issue for a number of years. Not everyone in JAB is a fool or a conservative. The problem is complex.

gautam barua said...

Where do they candidates who do not join an IIT go to? Most probably to an AIEEE institute. So here is solution 5:
Have joint seat allocation of JEE and AIEEE. Candidates will fill in one choice sheet for all JEE and AIEEE insitutes in order of preference and allotment will be done at each round based on the highest preference choice available for a student. This will be done by a common JEE - AIEE committee. The IITs could drop out after round 3 and let AIEEE continue with its 4th, 5th rounds etc. This will not only help the IITs, but the AIEEE institutes too as their attrition is dependent on round 2 and 3 of JEE. Will it eliminate vacancies? Probably not, but it will definitely reduce it.
This was suggested in 2009 but fell through.

Dheeraj Sanghi said...

Gautam, Not everyone in JAB a fool or conservative. I agree. None of them is in fact a fool. But most of them are extremely conservative. That is why we don't see any changes to JEE unless forced by Ministry. The problem is not complex, in fact, it is very simple, and as I said in my blog, this problem is faced by EVERY country in the world, and they have a solution for it. You need to have reservation only in your target strength, not in actual offers of admission that you make. And as I said in response to another comment, the problem is only for unreserved seats, since for SC/ST/PD seats, the issue is more of non-availability of students.

I think about the effect of rule that only Rs. 1000 can be deducted, we can compare the admission process in 2006 with admission process in 2007 in NITs, and you will know how much chaos did this rule create when you were forced to refund all the money that CCB took. And that chaos has already increased in the last 4 years. So, on paper, it appears to be very student friendly rule, but its side effects are disastrous. As I said in the blog, students today are losing more money overall than what they were in 2006, but they don't complain as much because it is considered fair to lose money after the semester starts, and it is considered unfair to lose money before the semester starts.

Also, I am suggesting that you leave this refund rule completely to the institutes. I am only suggesting that the rule be changed and Rs. 1000 loss should be some X days prior to semester beginning, and so on. You must have a graded refund policy, if you want to bring sanity to admission process.

Joint counseling for IIT and NIT only solves problem to some extent and only for IITs. (There would still be a lot of students who would have gone to BITS Pilani, IIIT Hyderabad, etc.) And this is typical of how we think at IITs. Let us solve the immediate problem of IITs, and let us not worry about the rest of the country. We need to change that mindset and come up with systems which if everyone implemented would cause the whole admission process everywhere to be smooth.

The chaos in admission process in India is because of three reasons: Admission process starts too late, we consider seats to be sacrosanct (and admit just as many students at any point in time as the number of seats), and we refund either 100% or 0% when someone withdraws. We need to solve all three problems, and solve that not just for IITs, but for all colleges and universities.

chitta said...

As has been said, the IITs have to come out of the mind set of the "number of seats" being sacrosanct. In reality it has not been that sacrosanct. For example, in my batch there were additional students who did not pass from a senior batch.

So implementing solution 2 of Dheeraj, which is used widely (and in more riskier places, such as in airlines, who have to find volunteers to drop out if situation arises) must be seriously considered.

Solution 3 of Dheeraj with some enhancement should also be adapted. A possible enhancement is that the money to be initially deposited could be made more (for general and OBC) by including an amount to cover the hostel related fees of Year 1. If the amount is more then more students will try to get it back by declining early.

Prashb said...

We have enough reason to believe that people in the JAB and IIT-Administration are conservative, fools . At the risk of repeating myself on this blog -

Apart from the issue of vacant seats, has IIT ever thought about the distribution of the seats? Does it make sense to have even half as many undergrad seats in Civil/Chemical/Mechanical/Metallurgical/Textils..[and all these unwanted courses], as compared to CS/EE. Professors in all those departments are simply wasting their own time as well as that of their undergrad students knowing fully well that their students have come to IIT for its tag more than technical education. The tag can fetch them some nice marketing or banking job or a good MBA program, so there's no reason to worry. This attitude leads to visible disinterest in a lot of students, which leads to frustration, which in turn leads to bad attitude amongst "these JEE-qualified guys" which self-righteous academics like Nanopolitan and a good number of IIT professors, love to crib about.

This which begins before the student even sees his department - if you don't believe this, check for yourself, the current counselling blogs and everything from Mechanical...Textiles is placed under a common umbrella of non-circuit branches, good to prepare for [banking/consulting/mba].

After all these years of JEE counselling and known trends, I wonder what the IQ of IIT Administration is, that they haven't even identified this as a problem ( forget about fixing it). As long as IIT continues with this ancient ratio of approximately equal seats in all courses, it should not waste time aspiring to be "world-class", when the major chunk of its graduates embark on a parallel agenda from day-zero.

One of the reason why IIT has probably not solved this issue, is probably to avoid offending non-[CS/EE] professors. IITs can introduce as many Minors and Open Electives as they like but till students doesn't really have much choice in opting for their Major, this problem will continue. CS and Electronics have the least infrastructure requirements in any case, so these courses should be easy to expand on demand.

It might not entirely be practical to offer Majors of a student's choice ( almost everyone will opt for CS/EE in that case), but at least have some kind of a General Engineering course ( where a student can mix and match a distribution of Design, Engineering and Applied Sciences courses from maybe 2-3 different departments ). This will avoid situations where students are stuck with Majors they really hate and at the same time, other courses will be taught to undergrads in the institute.

And this will also solve the problem of extensive coaching. By the way, the current competition isn't for just getting into IIT it is for getting CS/EE at IITs. This puts the pressure for a good rank which in turn leads to the requirement for extensive coaching ( with all its dumbing-down effects ) . Also, on the whole, not more than 30% of the courses should be fixed or pre-decided. The rest should be electives. So, with my solution, both students and professors will be happier. What more does IIT want - Promising programmers and circuit designers studying Metallurgy ?

( No offence to all those core branches, I am just stating people's existing priorities as they are. )

Chandresh said...

Why introduce complex solutions to simple problems?

Any sensible solution will need to be heuristics based, hence difficult to sell in an environment where IIT seats are "make or break" decisions, under the eyes of all & sundry in this country.

It might not be a bad idea to just leave the “vacant” seats unfilled, since any ways the current capacity for each IIT & course is in itself should be treated as a guideline and not a "Holy Number".

Biswajit said...

I found the comment by Prashb quite fascinating. Clearly, young people with no knowledge or understanding of what engineering involves are being forced randomly into sub-disciplines that they have no idea about.

It's also interesting that there is a stigma about certain fields of study. From the fields listed by Prashb it appears that basic engineering itself has a stigma attached to it? So why study engineering at all?

Given that Indian engineers have failed to even come up with a decent traffic system in its major cities, it is worth thinking about the reasons for that failure. Is it because of a cultural stigma attached to innovative engineering?

Giri@iisc said...

To avoid vacant seats in our M.E./M.Tech program in IISc, we offer more than the number of seats available. This ratio varies by department to department. For example, it is 1.1 for CS, 1.5 for chemical and 3.5 for Civil. This ratio is determined by the number of students joined to number of students offered in the last three years and the ratio changes every year (not by much).

Thanks

Giridhar

Abhishek said...

I (strongly) disagree with Prashb. Abolishing the less known branches only takes the education system decades back. Yes, most people take up Computers or Electrical not because they are passionate about the subjects. But they are influenced by several other factors. These factors include the fear of taking radical decisions, fear of going against the public opinion and consequently, social pressure.
I tell you this due to experience, and that too very recent. You see, I've cleared the JEE this year( not as gloriously as I expected, but I'm still satisfied with my rank) and I'm in the middle of my counselling procedure. I've always been interested in solving problems, and was really eager to take up Mathematics and Scientific Computing at IIT Kanpur. But my family members weren't too impressed with my decision, since I can also get Electrical or Chemical at other IITs. And the branch being a BS program didn't help either. But then, it was my job to convince my parents, and luckily I did. So the notion that students aren't interested in the less known(read unorthodox) is completely unfounded. I hope I didn't digress (too much).

What I'm trying to point out is that people are scared to take up radical steps, however rewarding they might be in the future.

Offering only a few courses would mean lesser standards as far as education is concerned. Also, I can not understand how this will not affect placements(I'm only 18 years old and don't have much idea regarding this). According to me, the standard of the jobs will come down since everyone would have studied almost the same things.

In my opinion, the online counseling isn't helping the cause either. Earlier, during the days when my uncle cleared the JEE, he went for face-to-face counseling. It must have provided him clear insight of the subjects he was interested in since the advice of the professors was at his disposal. Even I contacted the concerned professors at IIT-K before I made my decision. But most students or (mostly) parents never take any professional(read intelligent) advice before they take the decision.

Therefore, the root of all the problems here is inadequate interaction and information, and none of the branches here at IITs are BAD! It's just that the students aren't prepared for them.

Again, I'm just 18, and speak only what I feel. I do not claim that I'm completely correct.

iitmsriram said...

giri@iisc,

IITs do it too, for their M.Tech. admissions. We still end up having to do multiple rounds as many of the allottees dont show up or decline later. Finally, at the time of reopening, even spot admissions are done. At the JEE also, some 50% more candidates than the number of total seats available are declared as qualified, with appropriate disclaimers about "having qualified does not guarantee a seat". But, the admission offers actually made are only equal to the number of seats (and skipping over those qualified candidates who want only some specific branches at specific IITs which are already filled by higher ranking candidates). Those offered are then asked to pay 40000 or something like that in some 3 weeks. A second round of allotment is then done to fill those seats which were allotted, but skipped (as indicated by non receipt of the 40K). But, on the day of reopening, some dont show up, though they have paid the 40K. This is one scenario. Secondly, the choices of courses given by many candidates under reserved category are such that they are not allotted anything and consequently, there are "no qualified candidates" available to fill these seats. This reserved seat thing happens at a limited set of institutions and almost never at the old "metro" IITs. The case is actually about an ISM student who wanted to be given a higher preference branch than what she joined in since there were vacant seats in that. The judgement has gone a bit broader and in the words of Dheeraj, "High Court Directs JEE to find ways to fill (all) vacant seats".

Giri@iisc said...

my point was different. IISc does NOT do multiple counselling for M.E/M.Tech. It just offers a ratio based on previous years.

For example, in chem eng, we have 16 seats and we offer 24. Last year, 20 paid fees, and 15 actually joined. Similarly, in another department, there are 11 seats and we offered 50. 28 paid fees but only 9 joined. This year, for 11 seats, we have offered 55 in that department. In another department, there are 45 seats, we offered 50 and 44 joined.

My point was you can determine the ratio, adjust it every year and try to fill up seats every year with just one round of counselling.

Prashb said...

@ Abhishek

a) You haven't stepped into IIT so you aren't in a position to comment about what I'm talking (right now).
I have seen a good fraction of CS/EE grads take to entrepreneurship/research/MS-PhD even though they could have got a finance/consulting job or an MBA.
At the same time I have seen that most Mechanical Engineering grads cancel their MIT/Stanford admits the moment they get a pseudo management job.
There is a possibility and there are some cases where people develop a liking for alloted branches ( if they had an interest to begin with ) . But, statistically this is not the case. Most such people use IIT as an exit option to fields other than science/engineering.

b) In my last comment, you can think of "CS/EE" as "in-demand-branches" . Maybe something else like Mech/Chem will be in demand somewhere in the future ( which will happen when the world realizes its energy resources have reached an end game ). My point is that IIT should identify the "in-demand" branches and increase the proportion of seats in those.

c) I think it will be nice if IIT keeps some track of what its students/ex-students do. What percentage of CS/EE grads went for higher studies ? What percentage of grads from other branches went for MS/PhD despite having job offers from good companies ?

d) People running after good placements are not necessarily the most insecure ones. From my sample spaces, these are the ones who are most likely to chuck their jobs a couple of years later - to take to entrepreneurship ( after having saved up some money ). What is wrong with that ? It is good for the country.

e)You are wrong about people opting for CS/EE not out of passion. Placements do sway the decision of course but I have seen CS/EE students go for MS/PhD despite having good job offers. Maybe, these 2 theory/math-heavy branches appeal to the somewhat theoretical type of students who are successful at JEE. Maybe people are more fascinated by small things than big things . Even 50% of MIT freshmen opt for these 2 majors.

Let's be honest here, why did you opt for Mathematics&Computing ( I did too in my time, despite having some okay BTech courses available ).
Because the Math/Computing component fascinated you. Like it appeals to many JEE qualifiers.
Maybe the JEE is selecting too many theorists, but that is besides the point. In any case, if people had been opting for CS/EE purely for placements, EE would have been no where close to CS.

I can only make guesses about trends and preferences, but I think IIT needs to do some research into how seats need to be distributed between departments.

Akshay said...

I have one more suggestion, that after 2nd round of counselling students desirous to take admission through JEE should be asked to submit there original documents such as 12th and 10th passing certificates and mark-sheets. And for this purpose JEE team should create temporary centers at various parts of nation. Also these students should be asked to declare any legal notice that they are submitting there documents to JEE team ( so that they can't demand a duplicate certificate from the board which issued the original one saying that they lost it). And then a third round counselling should conducted for vacant seats available. And classe should start after completing third and final round of intake.

sai gautham said...

is there any change in correcting pattern i have heard that only who gets sufficient % in paper a will have the chance of getting his second paper corrected