Saturday, May 7, 2016

Normalization in JEE (main) / NEET-1 (AIPMT2016) and NEET-2

AIPMT2016 has been converted to NEET. There are now two exams, of which, NEET-1 has already happenned and neet-2 will be conducted in July 2016. Ensuring that the evaluation by both the questions papers is same, is almost impossible. I thought there must be some normalization across the two. It has been done in GATE for last many years. Interestingly, I could not find any through my search on Internet, CBSE site, various examination brochures. Interestingly, this year, JEE (main) had four online exams and one offline exams. There is no normalization talked about among the five papers.

This introduces the luck factor in the selection of students. Amazingly, in the recent court hearings, this aspect has not been communicated to the court. Even slight variation can jeopardize the chances of many students who should have got the seats. Now it is exam and a luck factor both will decide if a student gets a medical or engineering seat and not your ability.

Gate has been doing equalization of marks spread (difference of average marks to 0.1% students to average plus std dev of all students) for students scores across all papers where multiple sessions are held for a discipline is held.This formula is announced before the examination. Earlier they were using equalization of mean and variance across all disciplines to the mean and variance of last ten years mean and variance. Current equalization formula suits more for where top candidates are selected for admission as it equalizes the spread.

As of now, CBSE should do this equalization across all the five sessions of JEE (main) and then see how many students and to what extent, are affected by not using the normalization. If it is even about 5%, then rethinking on CBSE part is needed.

Also, a similar strategy should be immediately specified by CBSE for NEET-1 and NEET-2. There is already lot of anxiety among students due to this uncertainty.