Only 1% of students from the CBSE stream would have figured in the top 500 rankers for the engineering courses in Kerala in 2018 had the rank list been prepared solely on the basis of the marks scored in the qualifying examination.
This and other key interesting facts have found place in a report prepared by an expert panel appointed by the government to study the admission procedure in engineering colleges in the State.
The committee was constituted after a section of the engineering college managements urged the government to scrap the entrance test and admit students based on the marks scored in the qualification exam while referring to the increasing number of vacant seats in various engineering colleges.
At present, the marks obtained in the Common Entrance Examination (CEE) and the marks scored (for Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry) in the qualifying examination are taken into account (normalisation) to prepare a combined rank list.
Rationalised marks
The expert panel had asked the entrance authorities to prepare a separate rank list (Rank List 2) based on the marks of the qualifying examinations (Kerala board, other State boards, CBSE, etc.) as part of their study. On Rank List 2 (based solely on the qualifying examination marks), there were none from the CBSE stream among the top 100 successful candidates.
As much as 98% consisted of those who passed from the Kerala State Board Higher Secondary Examination, said the report.
The proportion goes up to 1.1% among the top 1,000 and to 12.15% among the top 2,000.
It is 47.54% if the top 5,000 ranks are taken. The report observes that no student from the CBSE stream would have found place in a popular higher education destination such as the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram, if the admission was done solely based on the marks scored in the qualifying examination.
‘Unfair to students’
“This is very significant and tells us that doing away with the Common Entrance Examination will be very unfair to the students coming from the CBSE streams,” said R.V.G Menon, academic and chairman of the panel.
The proportion of CBSE candidates was 61.4% among the top 500 in the combined rank list (being followed at present).
Their representation was 59.1% among the top 1,000. Sixty among the top 100 rankers were from the CBSE stream while the corresponding number of students from the Kerala board was 34 as per the 2018 rank list.