Parents’ literacy, income level no bar for IIT entry?

NEWDELHI: The literacy and income levels of parents do not necessarily impede their children from aiming for and gaining admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITS), according to an inference drawn by IITKanpur from an analysis of this year’s entrance process.

Close to 800 students out of 31,988 who qualified for the Advanced test under the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), passing which is a prerequisite for admission to the 23 IITS and other centrally funded engineering schools, reported that their parents are illiterate.

The analysis also shows that the annual parental annual income of 8,531 students out of 31,988 who qualified for JEE Advanced was up to ₹1 lakh per year, the report accessed by HT shows.

“This is the information provided by the students and a margin of error could be there. This information is provided through online portals during the registration of JEE Main exam,” said professor Shalabh, who uses only one name and is the JEE Advanced chairman from IITKanpur.

The trends from this year’s JEE (Advanced) were analysed by IIT Kanpur, which organised this year’s edition of the test.

The analysis showed that 77% of students who qualified for the exam were from urban India and 23% from rural areas (village – 10% and towns – 13%). This year marked the first time that the entire JEE Advanced test took place online.