A video showing Australian professors reaction to the JEE question paper is currently going viral in internet. The Joint Entrance Examination or JEE is used to admit candidates into the top engineering colleges of India, including the renowned Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). The exam requires candidates to answer questions on physics, chemistry and mathematics. The video shows how difficult the entrance exam is, even for the experts in the field.
A YouTuber named Tibees showed the question paper to a few professors from the University of Melbourne in Australia. The professors were shocked to see the paper. He said that some commented on its length while others were simply taken back by the fact that students' knowledge in 3 streams of science would be judged by a single paper.
Prof. Barry Hughes, a mathematician said “It's really quite ambitious that they are testing chemistry and physics and mathematics in one paper” adding that “I had seen some maths questions and I would say that I would be fairly challenged to get a decent result in an hour as the paper seems to be tough".
He pointed out that there is “ugly question of coaching and unequal access to resources” and said "I’d probably leave the exam room crying if I was in year 12 and I had to do this yeah good luck".
Dr. Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway also pointed out that the paper is basically a 'drill format' of judging someone's knowledge and he too added that the papers difficulty level is high.
He said " Entry exams that are in drill format usually requires students to practice a lot before making that grand attempt because attempting three subjects in an hour is not a joke . When you have bulk of students practice and time limited environment is not the determinant of how well the student will do in the next step of education".
Difficulty is one thing but making a paper so tough that it stops serving its purpose actually seems counterproductive. With around 12-14 lakh students appearing for the JEE Main every year, only around 2.2 lakh students get through for JEE Advanced. Out of which, only about 11,000 students get selected for the best Indian colleges and other are left with a option of drop and to study again for the next year.
