Telugu students fail final leap into IITs

From 2015, AP, TS see 50% drop in IIT admissions

Telugu students cracking the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for admission into the prestigious IITs is more hype and less substance – especially when last year’s data on final admissions is considered.

While local educational institutions conduct huge publicity drives to highlight the number of Telugu students in the top-10 or top-100 rankers’ list, the final admissions list shows a massive drop of 50 per cent. This data is from 2015.

Students from states like Bihar, Rajasthan and Chandigarh (Union Territory) are bagging the lion’s share of seats in IITs when compared with engineering aspirants from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

The performance of Telugu students in the JEE was excellent until two years ago. Nearly 4,975 students from Andhra Pradesh joined the IITs across India in 2014 but in the following year, the figure dropped to an unexpected 1,546 (from both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh states). There are a total of 10,400 B.Tech seats in the 20-odd IITs spread across the country.

And now, academic experts are blaming the mechanised teaching methods and the insistence on the learn-by-heart technique. Also, children join IIT training right from the sixth standard itself.

“There’s this fact too. In 2015, and even this year, the standard of the paper was a shade tougher. The quality of the paper exposed Telugu students and their learning methods. It is high time, we focused on concept-based teaching methods, which will help students understand formulae better,” Ananda Raman, an expert said.

Even the few students from here, who manage to join the IITs, face hurdles right from the first year itself.

A Telugu student pursuing undergraduate engineering at IIT-Hyderabad said, “The main difference between us and students from other states is creative ability. When a problem is given to us, our first instinct is to check if we have studied the problem before or if it’s outside of the syllabus. But students from the North will just focus on the job and try to find the correct solution without wasting time.”

In 2015, and even this year, the standard of the paper was a shade tougher. The quality of the paper exposed Telugu students and their learning methods. It is high time, we focused on concept-based teaching methods ANANDA RAMAN,

EDU EXPERT