Hyderabad: A major revamp in the eligibility and exam pattern of the Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE) - Mains was announced for 2020 on Tuesday by the National Testing Agency (NTA).
Now, a student need not have done all the three subjects — physics, chemistry and mathematics — to take the test for Bachelor of Planning. Only mathematics is required, giving humanities students the chance to sit for the test as well.
The number of questions too has decreased from 30 to 25.
Experts have welcomed the move and said that it will prepare aspirants better for JEE Advanced, as the existing pattern for Advanced also contains numerical questions (question and answer type), which have been recently introduced in JEE Mains as well.
The eligibility changes have made it possible for mathematics, commerce and economics (MEC) or humanities stream students, who have mathematics as one of their core subjects apart from the rest of the arts subjects, to sit the exam.
Earlier, chartered accountancy (CA) was the only major career option for these students.
Last year, over 69,000 students applied for the Bachelor of Planning course in about 24 centrally funded technical institutes that offer the course.
Each institute has about 120 seats. With the doors being open to students with maths alone as a core subject, the number of students applying for the test is expected to rise significantly, said Mr K. Lalith Kumar, convenor, IIT-JEE Forum.
There is a change in the number of questions. Instead of 90 questions, students will have to answer 75 questions in the given time; however, the level of questions might also go up, according to experts.
“The five numeric questions need extra time to do calculations carefully and there is no negative marking for these questions. I expect this will lead to more correlation in the JEE Mains and JEE Advanced rank list and it seems in future JEE Advanced might be called off and this will be the single entrance exam for IITs, NITs, IIIT,” said Mr Siddharth Jain, who coaches IIT aspirants in at a coaching centre in Rajasthan.
