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Saturday, July 13, 2013

JEE 2013: More on Normalization

That some students and parents are upset will be an under-statement of the year. They are really angry. And the least I can do is to write my side of the story.

First of all, let me explain my role and JIG's role in deciding the formula.

The process to find a normalization process started soon after the August 14th notification of the MHRD regarding the admission process to be followed by IITs, NITs and other CFTIs (Centrally Funded Technical Institutes) in the year 2013, which talked about 60:40 ratio of JEE Mains marks and Board marks (normalized on the basis of percentiles) for admission to NITs and other CFTIs. A committee was formed under the chairmanship of Dr. S K Joshi. The committee asked and received several suggestions from people working in the areas of testing, measurement and statistics. The committee first shortlisted two methods as the only reasonable methods to do normalization and then suggested one of them. Their report was discussed in several forums and there was a huge amount of debate on which of the two methods should be chosen for normalization.

In April, 2013, the JEE Apex Board decided to set up a JEE Interface Group, and ask this group to look at S K Joshi committee report and give its recommendation. I was a member of JIG. The JIG decided that we should recommend the average of the two methods. The JIG recommendation was then discussed in JEE Apex Board and they accepted the recommendation of JIG. Soon after that, CBSE published the formula on its website. So note that JIG's role was fairly limited in deciding the normalization formula, and even if I wanted to play a role, it wasn't possible.

As soon as CBSE made the formula public, I decided to write about the formula in this blog. Immediately a lot of concerns were raised about it. I then asked in one of my comments for people to suggest an alternative. The comment page was kept open for about 5 weeks, and there was no alternative which I could be convinced about as being better than the formula arrived at by the S K Joshi Committee.

Indeed, almost all the suggestions were a variant of just taking the percentile score of the student in the board. I had written in one of the comments, why this was a bad idea. This idea essentially said that all boards are equal, which I could not agree with. Also, this idea meant that everyone will have very similar marks at the upper end, and at the upper end, the ranking essentially becomes same as JEE Mains ranking, with minor perturbations being introduced by board marks.

Since, there was no proposal better than the one which had been proposed by Joshi Committee, despite such a large number of people reading the blogs, and in my final comment on that blog, I clearly announced my support for this formula, and said that it was now too late to change, and any newer suggestion, I will forward to who ever are in the committee for 2014. It was clear to me that one cannot hold admissions in the entire country in order to continue a debate in which for over 5 weeks, no better idea has been generated.

I find it extremely strange that people are talking about my appearance in Delhi High Court as going back on my words. I had announced my public support to the formula (which, as I have repeatedly said, is not my formula or even JIG's formula) about one month before the Delhi High Court appearance, and I have not said anything in the court which I had not said on the blog. So why are people surprised, shocked, angry, I do not understand. I have only repeated which I have publicly said earlier, nothing else.

Let me come back to the Delhi High Court case a little later. Continuing with the formula, I did take all those initial complaints and examples seriously, and requested CBSE that I want to see the data of all those students before the result is announced. I went to Delhi on 1st July, despite the visit of President of India to IIT Kanpur campus on 5th July, where I was the Chairman of the Organizing Committee. CBSE had told me that they were trying to announce the result on 1st evening, and latest by 2nd.

And let me tell you what I noticed in all those complaints. In most cases, the student had a decent JEE Mains score, but was not in the top 2-3 percentile in the board marks, and hence lost the ranking. I even exchanged a couple of emails with a couple of such students to understand what their complaint really was, and I quickly realized what the problem was.

When MHRD announced the new admission policy which said that the board performance will have 40% weight, it had two kinds of impact on the students and parents.

In one group (let us call them Group 1), there were students who were convinced that somehow a formula will be used for normalization that will render the difference in board marks meaningless. They were convinced since many of the influential persons were going around in media giving some formula and claiming that this formula will only cause minor perturbations in the ranks of JEE Mains. (This was wrong as one could easily see that even if we were to use that formula for normalization, it will lead to top ranks being decided on the basis of JEE scores and board marks causing minor perturbations as they called it. But the latter ranks being decided by the board performance with JEE marks causing minor perturbations. So the best institutes will continue to admit students on the basis of JEE marks, while the weaker institutes will have to admit students based on board marks. And all this is besides the fact that such a process would have been completely unfair to students from good boards.)

There is another set of students (let us call them Group 2) who did not believe this theory that 40% weight should lead to only a minor perturbation of the ranks. These students realized that a 40% weight means that the board exams would be almost as important as JEE Mains and should cause serious impact on ranking. They did not know what that formula was going to be, but they were convinced that there can be a mechanism where 40% weight would lead to and should lead to a serious impact on ranking.

The Group 1 students continued to focus on JEE Mains, while the Group 2 students gave some additional time to Boards as well.

Now, it was unfortunate that the students had to decide their strategy for the year (to be in group 1 or group 2) without knowing what would be in their own interest. And this is the reason why I said on my blog that the 60:40 rule should be challenged in a court. A few groups approached me in August/September last year. They wanted to file cases in High Courts, but only on issues related to IIT admission, whether a limit of 1.5 lakh is reasonable, whether an 80 percentile is a reasonable restriction, etc. I advised them that these things, while we may like or dislike, are on strong legal footing. I have read in the last decade more than 100 Court decisions on education related cases to understand what courts sympathize with, and what they don't. I advised them that if they have to go to court, they should challenge 60:40 rule and ask the courts to postpone its implementation till we have clarity on implementation details, and some other things.

Surprisingly, no one challenged 60:40.

Anyway, I digress. Back to normalization and Group 1 and Group 2. Which assumption about normalization is more sound. The assumption of Group 1 is based on statements made by some influential persons. The assumption of Group 2 is based on a more common sense approach - 40% weight should have significant impact on the rank. The final normalization process is essentially saying that Group 2 was right in its assumptions, and not Group 1.

Group 1 took a gamble because they believed some statements, they lost the gamble, and now they don't want to admit that they took the gamble and lost. They need to put blame on someone else, and I become the villain.

Let me give you an example of the complaint. There is a student who says that he had a little more than 98 percentile in JEE Mains, giving him a rank of about 21,000. He has about 88 percentile in boards, and he is shocked that his rank has gone down to 39,000. If his rank in one exam is 21,000 and in the other exam about 1 lakh, and we are going to have 40% weight of the other exam, should he not expect that his rank will go down to 39,000. The formula has worked perfectly for him. But he wants his rank to remain 21,000 and that is why he is upset and angry.

So the anger in Group 1 is really about the 60:40 rule. They always believed that 40% weight would have close to 0 impact on their rank, and this formula is causing 40% impact, and they are not willing to accept that 40% weight should have 40% impact. But I am surprised that your anger is not directed towards people who told you that 40% weight will have 0% impact. (Don't direct your anger at them. They are still very powerful people. They may even now go to Ministers and ask them to change the normalization to make a 0% impact. So work with them, and keep your anger directed at me, who kept warning you through out.)

If there are only 15,000 general seats in all CFTIs (including NITs), to claim those seats you need to be in the top 15,000 ranks. If there are two exams which, for the sake of simplicity let us assume will be combined in 50:50 fashion, it is obvious that you need to be in about 20-30K ranks in both the exams. If you are 10K rank in one exam and 100K rank in the other exam, you will not make it. If you don't understand this, I can't help it. And most of the complaints are from such students, those who have a significantly better rank in JEE than in the boards.

So, as I was saying, I sat down in CBSE office on 1st July, checked out each complaint and figured that in most of the cases, the issue was his/her expectation that the board marks will have 0 impact. Of course, in some cases, the issue of "long tail on the right" distribution of JEE Mains versus the "long tail on the left" distribution of Board marks was causing unexpected gains or losses. But that would happen in any normalization of 12 lakh students.

After the result was announced on 2nd, another round of criticism started. It was mostly, again, based on Group 1 expectation that board marks will have no impact on the ranks. Many people in the JIG were concerned, and we requested CBSE to organize a meeting between JIG and the Professor in Oxford who had written the original paper on this sort of normalization, and another colleague of his. We had this meeting on 9th July. They went through the entire data carefully, showed us some graphs, and explained to the group that a few unexpected outcomes are because of reasons that we had suspected - the long tail stuff that I said in the previous paragraph. But these are few and mathematically acceptable. In any case, these are not the complaints.

Unlike the original decision of the government to do 60:40 without any data, analysis, etc., S K Joshi committee did extremely exhaustive analysis, how the scores in different boards are distributed, what would be the rankings (working on 2012 data) with different tweaks of normalization process, how much is the impact on each board, and so on and so forth. And they have communicated with so many experts in ISI, IITs, NITs, and so on. A rare situation where a decision has been reached at after talking to so many people outside the committee. But those who feel that 40% weight should have 0% impact will find no solace in all this.

For a long time I had no idea what is happening about normalization. The first time I heard of S K Joshi committee was sometime in January. I was given a copy of the interim report. I did not know at that time that they had shared it with several people. I felt that I have been given a confidential copy, and hence I did not share it. But when I read it, I realized that the so-called Group 1 (as above) would be upset with this. People who have got good ranks in JEE Mains and had a weaker performance in Boards would have to have access to some good institutions, if they will not find access to NITs and CFTIs. So, in January, I sent email to a few institutes, including IIIT Hyderabad, asking them to do admission on the basis of JEE marks alone for this year. I mention IIIT Hyderabad since they had a detailed discussion with me. Others either did not respond, or told me that they will just use the final rank on the JEE score card. The confusion that happened in May/June was because they put on their admission website that admission would be based on JEE rank. They were assuming that there will be something called "JEE Rank" which will be based on JEE marks alone, and there will be some other name for overall ranking after 60:40. Anyone who approached them for clarification on "JEE rank" between February and June, they explained to them that it was only JEE marks. But in June, when it created confusion, since CBSE started using "JEE Rank" for the final overall rank, I (and lots of others) asked them to clarify and they did.

Now coming to the case in the Honorable High Court in Delhi. As I said in the beginning, there is absolutely nothing that I have said in the Court that I had not already said on my blog. In fact, I did not have to say much in the court anyway. The judges were brilliant. They had read the formula, understood it, and understood it so minutely that I was absolutely amazed. Their main area of expertise is law, but they showed better understanding of nuances of the normalization than what I have seen in most academicians. I mostly had to only confirm whether their understanding of the formula is correct. They only asked me about the outliers, and I told them that it was due to long tail distribution of JEE Mains marks. They intuitively understood what a long tail distribution is. And I did not have to say anything else. I may have spoken for
about 2 minutes only.

Now the learned judges started asking questions, very similar to the questions that anyone should ask of normalization, and what I have asked on my own blogs. And throughout this discussion, CBSE lawyer was silent and I was silent.

The first contention was that there is a change in the process. Judges asked how the process has changed. They could say that the August 14th MHRD notification was different from the formula. The judges said that the formula is not different but just implementation details. Nothing in the formula is inconsistent with the August 14th notification. If it was obvious to a judge, shouldn't this be obvious to students, parents and academicians.

Regarding the delay in announcing the formula, the Court was clear that if the formula was announced a few days in advance or even a few weeks in advance, it would not have had any impact on the study pattern of the student, and hence the delay is irrelevant in this case. (Of course, this does not answer the question why the formula should not have been announced six months in advance of the board exams, when the students could indeed take advantage of that knowledge and adjusted his/her study pattern. But CBSE lawyer, I am sure, would have said that the implementation of a policy requires at least some time, and hence the formula could not be announced in September. So if delay in knowing the exact formula was affecting you, you should have gone to court in September 2012, and not in June/July 2013.)

The judges even asked them to give an alternate normalization formula, if they were not happy with the current formula. They could only come up with the "0.4 * percentile in board" formula, which many of the students and parents are asking for, and about which I have already explained why it is not a good formula. And something amazing happened. The judges took just five seconds to understand the implications of this formula, and they said, "but this formula means that the topper of one board has identical academic credentials as topper of another board." When the other party agreed, they said that they cannot agree with this, and asked a counter question, do they believe that Delhi university topper in a particular subject has same academic credentials as topper of another university. Thankfully, the other party agreed that that is not the case, but I could see where the learned judge was going. If they had said that indeed the two toppers are same, the judges would have perhaps suggested that in that case it does not matter where the appellant studies. All universities are identical. Let him study where ever his current rank is allowing him to study in. So something that most academicians find difficult to understand (that percentiles of two boards are not comparable), the judges understood it intuitively without either me or the CBSE lawyer having to explain.

I was thoroughly mesmerized by their brilliance, not just in this case, but in all cases that preceded this one since morning.

The other party told the judges that I have written on the blog that the policy of 60:40 was absurd. (I chose to not react to it, since what they had said was correct. I still believe that 60:40 policy is absurd. The current issue is not about 60:40, but if 60:40 is forced upon you, then what is the best way to implement it. And I am only supporting one implementation of it. And it does not mean that I like the 60:40 policy.) But the judges, brilliant as they were, were quick to respond. "We are not asking him to explain his views on the policy. He is here only to explain the process." The judges could immediately see the difference between the policy and the implementation, which unfortunately most people fail to see.


So the summary of all this is:

1. I continue to oppose the inclusion of board marks in ranking.
2. But I do not want the admission in the entire country to be jeopardized, and hence have worked towards the best possible implementation of that policy.
3. The formula being used was neither devised by me nor by JIG, but it was given to us by S K Joshi Committee, who have done extensive consultation, and data analysis, and I have had no impact in acceptance of this formula. The charge of JIG was fairly limited.
4. However, as an individual, I am yet to see another normalization process which is better than one being used.
5. The real problem with the normalization process is that students expected 40% weight to have 0% impact, while this process is based on the premise that 40% weight should have 40% impact.
6. I have been publicly saying that this formula is the best (read the comment #201 on my blog, where I have summarized the other suggestions and why this one is better), and that is exactly what I said in the Delhi High Court. There is not an iota of difference between what I said in the Court and what I have written on the blog. So I don't know why some students are upset and feel that I betrayed.


And, of course, I won't allow any abusive comments on this. They all go to spam folder.

64 comments:

Shubhamgarg1 said...

But please tell me
How can you expect uniformity in checking of papers of board I got more than 95 in all subjects expect english where I got 75 only due to the fact that the teacher which checked the bundle gave a maximum of 80 where as for other teachers it was like minimum was 80.
and you justify this system
"you should have said the formula to be stopped for now".
What's the use of using it.
I got 290 in Jee mains expected a rank of 600
But due to 93.2% in boards got 1809 rank
And now I don't get the desired branch I was expecting!!
It wasn't like I didn't concentrate on boards but due to that checking I can't do anything

the rocker said...

In my school,i was not in the top 3 on the basis of board marks !but i scored 200 marks !and the board toppers from my scho
ol couldnt even score 80 !my point is ,that you are being valid when you say that 40 percent weighage should have 40 % impact!but the thing is that boards shouldn't be there .toppers of boards generally know nothing .by this 40 % impact theory,you are awarding seats to undeserving people who cant even solve simple equations,and even draw free body diagrams .i personally know them !why are you intellectual people not voicing against inclusion of boards marks !?

Siddharth Jain said...

I respect and admire the way you present the things. I do believe this formulae has many good things but the only concern of mine is the students coming of from rural background. I know that there aren't many such people coming before but there were few every year. When I joined MNIT in 2004 I saw many of my batch mates with two or even more year drops and lot of such people were coming from backgRound and places where till twelfth they are hardly aware about the exam details of JEE or AIEEE plus there schools were like either physics teacher post is vacant or chemistry is vacant or in short the environment not conducive to get 99.99 percentile score in boards. In first year drop they just get familiar with the way of exam and in second or third they can really compete in a way to justify talent. I am supporter of only two attempts but remembering those friends shakes me up. Now in present scenario there is no place for NITs even if they score say 99.99 percentile in jee main exam. Some of my friends can say IITs way is still open as such people most likely makes way in top 20 percentile for sure. I remember one of my friend with AIR 35 with just around 80 percent in xii and he was first engineer from his village. But that looks like Ali baba stories from now on. Plus you can't expect such guys to get very good percentage in xii improvement as basic writing skills needed for language subjects can't be improved that much for them at that environment.

Unknown said...

I agree with you sir ........40 percent weightage should have a 40 percent impact ......scoring in jee mains isnt sufficient.....if u can score.excellent in mains then why not.in boards ......u need.to concentrate.on boards too

Chennai Volunteer said...

sir,
with due respect to your explanations, i would like to know why the actual impact % was not revealed at the first instant......being in class XII they are not matured to be on their own, they need guidence and proper explanation on how it would impact the new normalization process.
this is thrusted on children and not on scholars.
A student with same marks in JEE and just about 5 marks below the other in class XII - stand far below the the later by 5000-6000 ranks ......is this justified and that too when the difference is in English language paper.
When JEE is testing students on MPC, why is that Language and 5th optional subjects are considered while calculating board percentile ?
In your comment, you have agrred that you would like to modify for better results.....then why do we follow defective methods ....that too when deciding the future of young talents.
Above all, such changes can be implemented ONLY after making children aware of its consequences to its finest detail......they are children because they are < 18 years.
Today, both Children and parents were in dark until the rank list was released.
we can refine the formula, promulgate by August this year and implement in 2014.

Chennai Volunteer said...

Amit Pandey Ji,

CBSE introduced CCE to abolish the differences in ranking students with negligible difference in marks scored......why do you advocate for bigger impact now ?

To substantiate my claim, one student scored better in MPC in Class XII and also in JEE over his friend ( subjects that are tested by JEE )., but scored 5 marks less in English language and today he is at 15K rank, while his friend is at 9K.........will you accept this as evaluation under level playing field ?

Do you rate one student over the other because he scored 5 marks less in English ?

Above all, they are 17 years old children and anything that affects them must be explained properly before implementation.

Unknown said...

First of all to Dheeraj Sanghi sir,
you forgot that there are students who gave board exams in march 2012 and got the resuts in may 2012, but could not manage good ranks in IITJEE or AIEEE and decided to drop a year. Now can you tell what about them. How could have they know about about normalisation or 60-40 formula during april to march 2012.
To Mr. Amit Pandey,
i don't know who you are but as much as i know board marks in india are very biased. Cheating at its best during these exams (for some board such as UP board, etc.) and then rich and influential people pay money to teachers to get good marks for their children prime example being CBSE board (and no one can argue on it). So, as long as you cannot get a uniform board all across india with no corruption how can board marks be used to determine whether a students is good or bad.

sanjeevsanghi said...

Dheeraj, I beg to differ with your views. You have made your analysis very simplistic by dividing students in group 1 or group 2. Let me assure you from personal experience that this was not the case.
The formula proposed is fallacious. Why was normalization introduced? To take care of differences in Boards. If that is the case, then the anchor distribution had to be something similar to the Boards. You cannot choose an anchor distribution so different from the base exam and then base normalization on that. Just as you say 60-40 was pre destined, basing the normalization on percentile was also pre destined. But the wise committee that decided the normalization decided to use the percentile of Boards and map it on the JEE mains. This is the flaw. Let us take the degenerate case of only 1 Board. If there was 1 Board do you need any normalization? The clear answer is no! So if the formula CBSE adopted was proper it would degenerate to no normalization in case of a single Board. But this formula will normalize even if there is 1 Board. And hence this is a totally erroneous formula. I do not find any merit in your or the Judge's argument of all Board toppers not being equal as this also was assumed by NIT council (see all discussions of IIT-NIT council and the minutes where Prof. Barua had also spelt out the normalization procedure)65. The mistake the NIT council made was that it did not specify the full formula and let CBSE apply too much mind to it. Sanjeev Sanghi, IIT Delhi

Srikanth63 said...

Thanks for the detailed explanation, Sir. I strongly believe, when there are only 20000 seats, a student can reasonably be expected to come in top 3 percentile of both Board and JEE Main (your disapproval for 60-40, not with standing)

This and 20 percentile clause in IIT (AP Students' problem in IIT Madras) may in fact, result in better examination and evaluation in Boards. If they can remove State Quota in NITs and Removal of reservations in Institutes of National Importance, quality will go a long way. (Actually, I am in favour of reservations and reservations cannot be removed till there is discrimination in the society.)

Unknown said...

Very much convinced with your views Sir...(there was some bad impression about you after I came to know about the happenings in Delhi HC, but now I respect you)...but still I strongly disagree with this way of normalisation...
I believe normalisation is the best way to bring equality among different boards and to prevent injustice to students from "weaker" boards...but the thing which I still don't understand is why is the JEE score corresponding to the normalised percentile taken to decide the rank? Everyone knows that the distribution is extremely uneven...and one more thing too...the proposed idea was to give 60% weightage to JEE Main score and 40% weightage to the board...that means both influence the rank "independently"...but that is not what is seen here...the 40% part still depends on the JEE main results...
So what I still believe is that "0.4*percentile in board" is a much better formula than the existing one...fortunately, IIITH were able to realise the bad side of this formula and so I got a seat there...
And I do not agree with your idea of "group 1" or "group 2"...even if the student realised the importance of board exams and studied extremely hard, there is no use unless he gets 96% (CBSE)...and that isn't possible for everyone either...there will be a great difference even in the ranks of students with 96% and 97% marks as the slope is increased suddenly after 96% (you must have seen the JEE main score vs Board percentage graph of CBSE students)...
Concluding with a stats:
My JEE main score : 275, CBSE board : 91.2%, JEE rank : 3930
My friend's JEE main score : 235, CBSE board : 96.2%, JEE rank : 1267
(Difference in JEE score is 40, while difference in board score is only 5%, ie, 25 marks, and you can see the difference in rank occurred...is this what you claim the right way of 60:40 implementation?)

Unknown said...

thanks sir for enclosing the matter with certainity and clearity.

sir please explain these point also

does they consider percentile of the same year in which the guy appear in board or they have taken all it off as acc. to 2012 13 season

What was their justification regarding droppers ?


if they announced earlier deffinately i go for reboard since i was able to score only 84.4 .

and how can they say that in one board in two different period 81% = 81% only. doesnt they have to take these seprately.


thanks



Not yet! said...

Dr Sanghi let me appreciate you for a very clearly written blog. I loved it, sincerely.

Now though I stand in this war against you, I switched sides to your team for a few minutes after reading it. It was because I started believing what you strongly believe, which is the fact that if Board exams have 40% weightage then they should have 40% impact.

After this you spoke about the example wherein at 88%ile the student ends up at 39000, though his rank in JEE Mains is 21000, and he wants just that lower rank, no matter what.

Very nicely written.

If I held the viewpoint that 40% impact is needed from an exam having a 40% weightage, you are absolutely correct, and I stand by you, and all members of the JIG and SK Joshi committee and Mr Kapil Sibal and whoever.

However, the simple problem is this.

Have you ever heard of a sport called the Decathlon? There are 10 different sports in it (with different units for ranking for nearly each sport - in seconds,metres etc.).

I'm not sure you are aware of the scoring system, but let me initiate you on this. There is a formula with certain constants A, B, C for each sport (so A1, B1, C1 for the first sport to A10, B10, C10 for the 10th sport), and a variable P1 to P10, which is dependent on how well the competitor did (eg. in Shotput, it is the distance thrown in metres, in Swimming, it is the time in secs to complete the length etc.).

So if me and you were competing , and we did almost as well in lets say swimming, we would get almost same points for that sport even though I might have come second in this particular sport. Note here that individual sport rankings is unimportant. The more different our performances are in a particular sport the more the difference the points I am awarded for that sport.

Appreciate the fact that each sport is a separate, however there is no winner in each game. There is only an overall winner. (Try to understand now that Percentiles in one sport are nothing but a way of giving ranks in individual sports, if you don't understand this point, it'll be hard to follow whats later)

The JEE Main Ranking Game (JMRG for short) is nothing short of a sport which I call as a Biathlon. consisting of JEE Mains and Boards (the analogy of apples and oranges ofcourse was referred by you, which are the different units for performance in Boards and JEE Mains). Each sport should be given a certain points system, and the individual's performance should be marked(remember not ranked) based on 'how well the individual does in that respective sport'. There is no mixing of sports, that ranking of one sport, or points from one sport correspond to the some rank and corresponding points of another sport. (the mapping as is being done).

The final ranking is determined from the sum of points gathered from 10 sports in the Decathlon or 2 sports in our so called Biathlon (JMRG).

This is where your committee and you have gone wrong. Give this some thought.

I site one example (I have the marksheets, just in case you believe these are made up) just because you put in one of yours and to clarify my point.

Student A
JEE Main Score: 290
Board Exam Score: 491
Rank: 5234

Student B
JEE Main Score: 168
Board Exam Score: 523
Rank: 3786

JEE Main Marks difference (290-168=122), is much more than Board difference (491-523=-32), how can the below candidate have a better rank when Board exams have lower
weightage (40%) as compared to JEE Mains (60%).

If me and you have a wrestling match, and then a swimming competition as part of our Biathlon, I believe you would not like being awarded for the swimming competition based on how well you did in your wrestling match. Internationally it is not acceptable. The impact from a particular sport should come implicitly based on the difference in performance in that particular sport, and not externally forced. But I have gone ahead and assumed you would not like such a thing. Would you? I leave that question open to you.

-kshitij
8879335165

Vyom Raj said...

Why dont't you clear that who made the formula.
why didn't you say to judges that a boy scoring 94% gets 150 as his normalized board score and a boy scoring 96% gets 300 as his normalized score!!

_grn" said...

@amit..i think u should say it reversely. Why a student getting high percentage in hs can't get good marks in jee marks. For example i have proof .a student getting 99percentile in his repective board is getting just 49 marks in mains. Now about normalisation i would say taking the example of above student. due to normalisation he is getting about 70,000 rank which far better than a rank got by a student with 88percentile in his board and getting marks 100+ .now i want to ask how is normalisation working?? As jee is a exam which is mainly to find talent.. How is this find'ing talent..do u think a student with 49mark is more talented than a student with 100+ (also a big question is that how he is in 99percentile??whom to blame??) this was only 1example .thousands of other are there...so is this normalisation or a plan to degrade the education system?? ..and to sanghi sir..i am really sorry. Thanks.

Not yet! said...

Just to clarify a point, both the examples were from the same board, AP Board.

Jyoti Kamat said...

I suggest that scrap this JEE Main entirely & admit students to NIT through State CETs. Another thing is that, if this normalisation is so great then why not implement in IITs also?

Anyways, I have told my son to do B.E. & then go to US for further studied. India is not meant for really intelligent students.

Unknown said...

Student A has 195 marks and B has 180 marks in jee main.Both are from CBSE. Student A has got 93% and student B has got 95%. But their rank difference is around 8,000. Why is a mere 2% increase in board marks affecting so badly when it has just 40% weightage. Can it be totally offset by a good jee main performance?

Vineet said...

Sir, Regarding normalization I would like to ask you a particular case of isc board(in which I had studied). Here it goes:-
Let the student A be a board topper while the other B at 80 percentile. Acc. to this year data A had 98.8% while B had 83.2%.
So the net diff. in their marks is 75 and after multiplying with .4 it comes to be 30 marks(process used similar to the one used this year for jee marks).
Now acc. to the current formula A would be plotted at 345 marks and board normalised score would be 138 while for B Marks would be around 75 and board normalised score would be 30. The diff. here is 108.
But if we use the proposed formula of giving marks out of 144 the diff. would be at 28.8 which is closer to the actual situation.

Same can be taken for AP board which has many students in the 98-99% range with the max. difference of upto 15 marks but in the calculating the percentile if one gets 99 while other 99.9, the corresponding marks are 200 and 340 respectively with diff. coming at 56 marks.
As seen in the above cases the diff. is amplified by a factor of 3.5. So how can the current formula be correct and not the one proposed? And in your blog you have written that there are anomalies in some cases mathematically small but worth ignoring. But that mathematically small no of 12 lacs would be significant while the previous system(aieee 2012) had almost nil anomalies.

My final question-
Jee main ranks are allotted by anchoring board percentile to jee percentile, i.e. assuming both to be equally distributed.
Question arises, if this is correct then why:-
1. cutoff jee main percentile for jee advance is 90 while board is 80.
2. cutoff jee main percentile for passing is somewhere around 70 while board is less than 30.

Unknown said...

sir , i have a jee main score of 199 and cbse score of 462 while my friend has jee main score of 179 and cbse score of 475 . I got 14000 rank which was expected . But i was shocked when my friend got 10000 rank

is a difference of 20 marks in JEE main out of 360 lesser in magnitude than a difference of 13 marks in Board ??

Alan carter said...

i appretiate all you've written sir! But aieee is happening since 2004 and from then normalisation doesn't tooked placed. Many students dreamed for nit's/iit's are suffering cause' of this huge impact-
Entrance exam is entrance test so why include boards.

Some students dont get marks in board so they think can do better in entrance with sought of little hope.
And is not fair that we've to give both exam perfect.
And btw jee has more value then boards which happened inversely this year.
Sorry sir but i've too suffered as i was 2 year dropper. And even by getting marks in jee i don't even stand a chance.

balajich said...

Sir when student A got board percentile as 95 and student B got his as 98.Meagre change of 3 percentile resulting in sudden spikes like from 150 to 310 normalised score(due to jee main graph).This leads to impact of more than 40% like change of more than 50000 ranks.Could you explain this?

menghanivijay said...

Dear sir , in this regard please refer my earlier comment on your normalisation blog. If the data analysis would have been done earlier as suggested , there would not have any blame of bias.the impact of difference in long tail is not minor it is significant . Why a student who scored 93 % in CBSE I.e 10 marks less than 95 % get a hit of about 60 marks in jee when a similarly placed ( same jee marks) goes miles ahead just because he scored higher in some physical education paper. The methodology had inherent flaws and in this case only scenario analysis is best solution, that is which method create least disturbance while still providing 40% weight age to board marks. This surprisingly did not happened. The problem of group thinking and giving academic papers more importance than real life experience is the root to this issue.regards.

Shubhranshu said...

its not giving a 40%impact
thats the whole point of filing court cases agains this!
a 2% difference in boards is creating a much larger impact than around 30 marks in jee mains!
and its funny how noone realises that

Unknown said...

Board marks impact is not 40% , it is 400%
Why can't board toppers score in JEE mains!

It is very simple
Just check which is easier
Getting 120 marks more in JEE or getting 30 marks more in Board exams


Vinod Kumar Sharma said...

Yes, 40 percent weightage should have 40 percent impact and not 140 or 240 percent. The issue of 'tail'is not so slight as you in your zeal to support the formula have made it to appear. Nor the delay in announcing the formula so trivial as you are trying it to appear. I agree that nothing is possible to amend the things for this year as it is too late. But what you are suggesting is that there is no need to have a re-look into the issue for coming years too! This is really a big change of heart in a years time.

Cherryy said...

It does not, however explains the errors in the rankings.
Its really unbelievable how my score in Physical Education would determine if I can be an engineer or not!

ssj4vegetto said...

how would you explain that when i get 203 marks in jee mains and 90 % in cbse (which i know is not that less), am getting a rank below 17000.. and a person with 216 score in mains and 95 percent in cbse gets a rank between 3000 to 3500?
till last year, both of us would have got ranks between 8000 to 10000.
does this boards marks difference makes him so much more intelligent and makes me a fool? you said 40 prcnt w8age should mean 40% impact right? so why dont you make that happen....cause as far as i have seen...the impact is about 80 %...
also i would like to tell you...till last year...person getting 170 marks scored around 25000 to 30000 rank....this year he is getting 7000 rank just because he scored 96 percent in cbse....i dont think anyone can call it a '40 % impact'...if so...then the definition of mathematics must be redefined...
also i would like to mention in here...that nothing abusive has been mentioned...so i assume that my comment shall be posted soon enough..

Unknown said...

I site one example (I have the marksheets, just in case you believe these are made up) just because you put in one of yours and to clarify my point.

Student A
JEE Main Score: 290
AP Board Exam Score: 491
Rank: 5234

Student B
JEE Main Score: 168
AP Board Exam Score: 523
Rank: 3786

JEE Main Marks difference (290-168=122), is much more than Board difference (491-523=-32), how can the below candidate have a better rank when Board exams have lower weightage (40%) as compared to JEE Mains (60%).

unknown said...

Agreed that students should have taken 40% inclusion of boards seriously but who were to be held responsible for the students who passed in 2012 or 2011 as they had already passed their qualifying exam........????????

Shubhamgarg1 said...

So if you are considering Board marks Why not consider only of PCM?


Blue Alien said...

as the committee decided the formula...it was their duty to explain the impact of the formula too..!
and if the formula should be improved(acc to you)...then the old way of ranking should be there till the "perfect" formula arrives...!

Unknown said...

As like earlier, brilliant explanation. Those who believe 40% have 0 impact, in my opinion, do not deserve to have 10+2 certificate, leave aside having engineering or any other graduation degree, but unfortunately that is the reality.

Unknown said...

you are talking about 40% impact but what about because of 1 marks diff.in board marks,difference in rank of some 1000 odd rank

Dheeraj Sanghi said...

@Shubham, lack of uniformity in grading in board exams is a reason to oppose the policy, and I oppose the policy. I am with you on this. The question here is that since the policy has not yet been challenged in a court, or at least not struck down by court, then in the interim what does one do.

Dheeraj Sanghi said...

@rocker, I am also against the inclusion of board marks. As I have said repeatedly, till the government policy is struck down by courts, we have to have some normalization. Please distinguish between the policy and its implementation. You perhaps have not been following my blogs since last year. Please search in google and you will find that very few people publicly (and not as part of anonymous group, or hiding behind an email address) went against the government policy of inclusion of board marks in a consistent fashion.

Dheeraj Sanghi said...

Thanks, Siddharth. I am fully with you and support non-inclusion of board marks in the ranking. But for that to happen, one has to challenge the policy in a court. Everyone wants to challenge the formula, without challenging the policy. Believe me, I have studied several different formulas. And just a change of formula will help a few people who are currently being agitated, but it will hurt another set of people. What we need is not a challenge to formula, but a challenge to policy which would mean that there should be no formula at all.

Shubhamgarg1 said...

One can say inclusion of marks of PCM only not for subjects like physical education and english which don't have any signifiacance in an entrance exam.

Dheeraj Sanghi said...

@CBSE Normalization, it would be nice if you were not anonymous. I would generally not allow anonymous comments here any further. In any case, I am also against the inclusion of board marks in ranking. So we are on the same page.

Khushnood Naqvi said...

Dear Mr. Sanghi,

Commend your efforts to explain. Glad that you agree the 60-40 weightage ratio is ridiculous. It is so obviously misguided idea, to merge CBSE/other board marks with JEE. The DU cutoff, in some colleges, for CBSE marks was 100%! That means CBSE is definitely easier to score and crowds above 90% for very good students.

At the same time JEE has retained its toughness. Spoke to a parent yesterday, and he confirmed that getting around 50% in JEE is still considered good and sort of sure to qualify marks.

So this means the overall rank is a weird combination. Really weird. 60% weightage to a tough difficult to score exam. And 40%(so high!) weightage to (relatively speaking) much easier exam, and there the best students will definitely get above 80-85 but not necessarily close to 100%. How boring is striving for perfection in mediocrity? Can't imagine somebody managing the two at the same time. On one end trying to push the boundaries of understanding with Resnick Halliday and the likes. And on the other end, exhausting oneself with a silly guide.

Who are those folks in that S K Joshi committee? Why fix something which is not broken?

Unknown said...

Prof Sanghi,

I appreciate your bold and candid views on the JEEMAIN 2013 matter. Not many have the guts to voice their opinion so publicly.

But I wonder what could be the compulsions to develop a formula given the knowledge that the intention (read policy) is not right.

I read in your blog that undoing this current admission would create a mess. I do not agree to it. Is it not right to undo a wrong even if late than to think of consequence of undoing that and not acting upon , when it involves the future of young Indian (at their teen age).

This formula violates the old dictum that even if thousands of culprits escape, not even a single innocent person should be punished

But in this case many innocents would not get a seat even in the new NITs.

Who will answer their silent questions ? Whose actions have brought this life threatening scenario ?

Thanking you again and With regards.

M K Mishra

Unknown said...

Albert Einstein said
"Make things as simple as possible but no simpler,"

So why CBSE(VJ) or JIG cant make things as simple as possible.

The simplest formula which reasonably takes care of every student

Total Score = (JEE Mains percentile X 0.6) + (Board Marks Percentile X 0.4)

Please do consider.

CBSE should stop experimenting in education system, which perhaps started with VJ.

Unknown said...

[Part 1]
Hello Sir,
I discovered your blog recently after appearing for jee mains and have tried to follow this issue with keen interest.
Although, i am one of the "victims" of the above said normalisation scheme, i haven't been quite vocal against it, partly due to the fact that i had appeared for other exams too and am quite likely to secure admission in an institute which doesn't accept jee mains ranking , and partly due to the reason that after going through your recent blog posts and comments i gathered that this was the best possible normalisation method under the given circumstances, and although i have only limited knowledge and don't understand the technical and statistical jargon used here, i do feel that since the committee that arrived at this formula consisted of people remarkable in their respective fields and also included the consent of people who opposed the inclusion of board marks in the ranking (source: your blog) this possibly is the best method for comparing different boards across the nation.
My peers have been quite active in the protests against the new method and helping people taking this matter to the delhi high court but i haven't lent my support (despite being one those on the losing end) because i feel since many students have suffered from this formula, there is an exact same number of students who have either benefited or had neutral impact due to the new formula , so i think the case wouldn't have much support from the student community either.
Other than that, i think you are quite right about the group 1 students. I, myself have been telling my rank in the following way when asked, -
abc rank (had there only been jee mains)
xyz rank (after being screwed over by normalisation)
The major lament of all my friends (myself included) is that we compare the possible rank we could have got with only jee mains all the while simply ignoring the 40% weightage the board marks were to carry, with the ranks that we finally got after normalization scheme.
Since, the cases in courts are against the normalisation, and not against the 60-40 policy itself, i don't see any good coming out of it, as even if cbse is directed to use some other formula, it is bound to upset a different set of people, and the struggle would continue eventually leading to the issue being forgotten after sometime.
And the 60-40 policy can't be done away now as the people who benefited from it would be moving to courts as it had been announced an year earlier, and a group of students had invested a portion of their time preparing for boards.

Unknown said...

[Part 2]
All i see now is an utter mess created by MHRD , regardless of the noble intentions (if any) , they have managed to create discomfort for almost a million youngsters.
And if i may ask, how was the distribution of 60-40 weightage arrived at ? Is there any mathematical explanation behind it , or is just a whimsical number signifying a little more weightage to Jee Mains andconsidering it for admission to technical institutes ?
I assume you wouldn't know either as you have been quite vocal against use of board marks for admission to technical institutes, but i would like to know your thoughts over the matter.
One last query Sir. I may have managed to escape the mess, but i don't think many would have been lucky, and i am concerned for my younger brother who would be appearing for all these competitive exams three years from now if he chooses to pursue the PCM stream.
Since we all know this method of admission is FAR from being perfect, what do you think should be next logical move so that future aspirants do not suffer.
I believe flaming or abusing Mr.Sibbal's name over the net would do any good (although, he may quite deserve every bit of it) , what is it that should be done so that this game of allocation of seemingly random ranks does not occur year after year.
Since IITs are a strong and united system, they could do away direct inclusion of boards in their admission process and board simply came out to be a negative filter in the eligibility criteria. What can be done for the CFTIs to ensure a fairer admission process ?

Is there any sensible way to do things in this country or do the policy makers and government only listen if students start resorting to suicide as the only measure in times of desperation (as had been the case of relaxation in marking scheme of CBSE after the reports of suicides many years earlier).
Hope to see your reply,
Aditya Khanduja

Unknown said...

Sir I think this is best implementation of 60:40.I really appreciate your view that one should show his/her concern on 60:40 policy(which no one did) and now they are appealing in courts which would just delay the admissions for a month or so.

utk said...

SIR,I am very happy to see your views that you are not stereotyped thinker like other professors in the commity.
My point is that how we can compare percentile of this year pass out with
last years pass outs where entire marking scheme is diffrent in diffrent years.for example in up when there was Mr kalyan singh C.M.,only 14% was bord result and when Mulayam took the charge result shoots up to 70% and in Akhilesh Yadav regime it is 82%.So board result depend upon government in power.so 2013 students percentile can not be compared with 2012 or 2011 pass outs in state like U.P.
Also nakal mafia are too much influencive in this state in present government that you can not differentiate stundents on board performance in U.P. board. also 60 marks in practicals is totally depending upon whether you attend private coaching with your school teacher or not.I am an IITian(IIT-BHU,2003 BATCH),I was sellected in IIT-JEE in 1999. Had this system been implemented in our time I would have been adverly affected because I got 12 marks in physics practical and 14 in chemestry practical because I was not attending private coaching by my school teachers and did self study because i was from a poor family.
there were lot of my batch mates in IIT Who were not good performer in board but now they are at top positions in different part of the World. I think best engineers or scientist can not be from best board performers because board can test your scientific temperament where you can score very high by simply memorizing few solved examples and solving previous years papers.I am very sure that many members of Joshi comitty would not be good bord performers in their time. so please sir save future of thousands of intelligent Indians......SANDEEP MISHRA
(sandeepmishraiitbhu@gmail.com
mob.09450229684

Unknown said...

On the argument of yours "I could not see any better formula so I supported this.." I wonder can a person say like " I did not see any better boy for my 20 year old daughter so I'm marrying her to a 85 year old rich and successful man"!

Kindly explain why didn't you highlight before the court that in normalisation of board marks, the marks obtained in practicals play a vital role? Even a diffrence of 5 marks can cost 1000 rank. The total marks for practical are 90 i.e. 18%. Then there are cheating cases. The board marks should not be considered at the first place. If govt thinks that board is important then they should stop JEE main! What is the necessity? All studnets will focus on board only.

Unknown said...

Well, marks speak and english is also important

andy said...

sir policy and its implementation both are faulty. you can not say a student did not concentrate on boards if he is getting little lesser marks . little lesser means say less than 93 % in board and that too may be due to english or physical education . where checking pattern it is making in school,after school is questionable.
when u knew all these things and when your voice mattered most , u could have shown your resentment and opposition to this at your meetings. but at that time u have chosen such a formula which will give so much weightage to board marks that it will make the jee main score redundant. some one getting as low as 88 marks in jee main is getting a rank within 20,000, who was ineligible to write iit jee advance paper. but the other poor chap having 180 or 200 marks was preparing for board, jeemain and jee advance also and could not get the rank within 20,000. your formula is giving so much advantage to top1.5 percentile of each board which is irrational . they are enjoying the fruit of somebody else' handwork.
means harbhajan singh have been gifted the double century score of tendulkar which he has made against austaralia in very crucial match. according to this formula top 1000 students of each board means 1000X29 boards will get the top 29000 ranks and for rest it is all finished
and still u r justifying this formula
have u thought u could have done other way around , by gifting the marks of board to the jee main percentiles.and the kind of rucksack again it would have created. now sir rubbing off your responsibilities that the policy is erroneous only and its implementation is very fine


So there are problem with the implementation part also , which was in your hand. it is again faulty . if govt / jig or whatever u call could not finalize the things till 10th may 2013 , then why this has been implemented this year without proper data analysis and dry run . no new policy can be implemented wihout dry run and no change can be so sharp. every change should be gradual.
by this formula u have put so much weight on each one mark of the board . what was the fun on mapping on th jee main marks when u know the datas are of very different kinds
if some body is converting the dollars into rupees , then dollars of everybody should be converted by same proportion ratio. it is not i ave earned maximum dollars and i have come from weaker /stronger background and i should get 200 rupees for each dollar i have earned. and othrs should gt by the ratio decided by the RBI.

i was asked that there will be a competition of body building and i will be judged on the body weight. but after the competition is over preparation were over i was suddenly told no no u will be evaluated on the scale of height and not weight
how this is justified in choice of your formula . u try to justify equality /in equality among different boards but u failed to appreciate the inequlity it is creating within each board
and i am sure u will not approve my views

andy said...

http://www.thelearningpoint.net/home/examination-results-2013/exposing-cbse-and-icse
board results --a joke on students carreer?

Unknown said...

sir,
i agree with your point that 40% weithage should have 40% impact..

but how will you justify your point that a student with 39000 rank in boards and 21000 rank in jee mains(if we consider only the jee mains marks)

will have a rank intermediate to 21k and 39k.


the normalization procedure is treating all those students with a rank of 39000 in their respective boards at par. and this is just not fair.


NEITHER all the boards have same number of candidates who are appearing, nor is the difficulty level of each board same.



Sharad said...

Sir,

I was the one who had been posting comments here in the name 'CBSE Normalisation'. I am sorry, Sir, to have misunderstood you without knowing what had actually happened in the Delhi High Court. I was prejudiced by biased view of what the court has observed. But now that I understand how deeply you have analysed the situation, that you agree that all the coards cannot be considered as equal, that MHRD has made a mistake, do you think that this normalisation formula is going to be scrutinised so that no anomality in ranks prevail? Do you think that there would be any changes next year, now that it has been too late that any changes be implemented? I ask because if I intend to appear for JEE (Mains) in the year 2014,would it be nessary that I have to take an improvement in my board exams so as to gain higher percentile?

Regards,
Sharad Hotha
Hyderabad

Himanshu Tiwari said...

So sir after all this what we can conclude or think, that will this year's batch have to be stuck in this policy and its implementation matter or their is still hope for change in normalization.

Prashant said...

There is one normalization formula which I'd really like to know about. This one is possibly a can of unopened worms. I'm surprised no one has even asked for this so far.

Sometime back I did a bit of reading up on adaptive testing algorithms of the kind GRE, GMAT etc use. Quite interesting and fairly complicated.

I just noticed that the current CBSE JEE Screening exam has multiple rounds, online, offline, on several days. I'm curious about how that is normalized by CBSE. Are they even capable of doing it? I mean, looking at their board score distributions doesn't make someone feel so.

Manju said...

Over Simplifying the blunders of normalisation: Sir, I am afraid that in your blog the normal streak we find in big people is found i.e., trying to justify the wrongs; you have simplified by creating two groups. There is infact a much larger 3rd group, which would expect the 60:40 to weigh exactly as told instead of reversing 60:40 to 10:90. A difference of 50 marks in JEE main will it mean 50 or more? Similarly a difference of 15 marks in CBSE board (in the same board) will it mean 15 or 100? In this particular instance, the difference in the same board has been amplified, by the normalisation that you have advocated and justified!! I would suggest please look into the Kerala Engineering Agriculture Medical Entrance (KEAM) where too they do normalisation; which definitely is much more scientific.


solidsnake said...

if government wanted 40 % impact then yes,there couldn't have been a better formula.

but just how messed up government's priorities can be?
to get into a college with no international ranking,and average starting salary of just 4 lakhs you have to score more than 98 percentile.


don't you think that it is sad that even if someone scores 95 percentile in jee+boards,he/she will get a college which is mediocre at best?

cut off for iit kanpur cse usually is ~ 300.considering 5 lakh people are usually interested in jee advanced,300 rank means 99.94 percentile.

i know iits are an elitist concept,but competition over 99 percentile is unhealthy and simply ridiculous.(even SAT declares all percentiles over 99 as 99+)

Sabyasachi said...

sir, appreciate your efforts to reach students..since Joshi committee has done so much data analysis, why not couple more?
just take a look at my case..i got 222 marks in jee mains.that is around 99.3 %ile in jee mains exam..last year boards gave me an 82% in cbse board.. considering the fact i was eligible for every entrance exam..which was the only tehcnical use of +2 marks last year, i can say its fairly good. if only jee main marks were to be counted i would have got 7000-8000 rank ..ok i expected it can decrease to 15000 (COZ OF 40% EFFECT)..accepted..but the rank i got was 26000..now what??but a student got 98 marks in jee mains, and 98% in cbse..sitting pretty with 9000 rank..
summing it up..
case1:jee main 222 cbse 82%
case2:jee main 98 cbse 98%
now..the 98% guy is perfectly rote learning guy..i am not saying all >95% are rote learners..but if he is that good getting 98%m he should atleast have got 140-150 main jee mains, consiering we both attneded same coaching clases..
which one would YOU,YOU(forgetting normalisation) like to see in nit warangal??and what could the SC and HC cases possibly result in??any chance of re-ranking this year?

Unknown said...

I scored 219 in Jee mains and 89.8% in CBSE boards.In boards even i scored good in in pcm and english(around 95 in all of them) but now i can't get into any NITs just because i couldn't score well in my PHYSICAL EDUCATION(70),a subject where marks in practical is given on the basis of how well one decorates his/her practical file.

Sunitha said...

Prof Sanghi, your explain it so well. I must say until I read your blog today I felt the implementation of the 60-40 policy was absurd and totally illogical. Btw my son in a major beneficiary of this formula since his ranking in the boards is way higher than his ranking in the Jee Mains and he ended with a better rank than he would have had the ranking been only on the basis of JEE score.

The Group 1 assumes that JEE Mains score is the only and the right way to decide a student's intelligence. I don't believe that 2 years of rigorous coaching on how to eliminate a wrong answer is a reasonable measure of a student's intelligence.

Unlike you I do feel that board marks should count towards the overall ranking. I think we need to move towards a holistic way of assessing a student's merit and not base it on one exam in year. In that I see Board marks input as one factor in a student's merit and eligibility. Ofcourse, I would like to see more inputs into assessing a student's merit apart from the current two. I choose to see the policy as a right step in the right direction.

Unknown said...

Note:I have no personal regrets just the facts about this normalisation. (Already got a seat in iit).
The fact is that the board marks are not causing a 40 percent impact but a 90 percent impact or even more.
As a statistical example,I got 250 marks in jee main while my friend got 227(a difference of 23 marks out of 360 with me leading). On the other hand, I got 96.4 percent in ISC board while he got 98.4 percent in the SAME BOARD( a difference of 10 marks out of 500 him leading). My rank is 1895 while his is in the range 1000-1100 . Don’t you think this is ridiculous? I repeat we were in the SAME BOARD(ISC).
Bottom line is that the system fails to provide an affordable solution within the same board ,let alone using it across different boards.
Solution : I don’t consider myself able enough for giving a solution but this is something I can suggest.
First of all comparing within the same board any system will be unfair if it messes up the scale of relation ,i.e., any method should not multiply or divide the marks by any factor as it is bound to create ambiguity as I explained above .Thus, what we are left with is addition and subtraction. For an example if we take cbse as a standard , and we consider 96% in isc equivalent to 95% in cbse(suppose) ,all we have to do is subtract every isc student’s percentage any 1% and bringing it on a common scale for measurement. Similar factors can be calculated for every board .The addition or subtraction factor can be determined as considered appropriate by deemed organisations such as cobse in collaboration with experts like ISI.

Vinay said...

Dear Sir, If it is so obvious that inclusion of board performance is unfair and an absolutely bad policy, why do you say it was the 'best' way to implement a bad policy. Can any one benefit by best possible implementation of a bad policy? It is like saying that we knew that we were being asked to commit a crime and we devised the most scientific way for it!

Unknown said...

We studied in std VII that you can not add apples and oranges(this was how algebra was introduced). Now the experts are trying to add them. It has to be absurd/comic. This will definitely result in skewed rankings.

Himanshu said...

sir, now since the case of jee main normalisation has gone to several courts, what will be the impact on admission procedures in NITs/IIITs.
CSAB is continuing with counselling and admission process for regular students will be over by 22 july 2013
. if something changes afterwards how can they cancel our admission. so many doubts. now regretting why i dropped one year because of all this ado and chaos.

Unknown said...

Dear Sir,
I wanted to talk about the fact that inclusion of board marks has its problems but you have already approved it so I wont go much into that.

But still a couple of things do bother me:-

1.I feel you and a lot of other people are misunderstanding the group one people. When they want 40% to be 0% it clearly implies that all they wanted was that boards to have no weight age . It is just that once this has been done everyone is cribbing about it.

2.You talked about the 60:40 scheme being announced earlier and the formula as a mere implementation. I disagree. Tell me if it would have been possible for you to predict the extent at which ranks will slide up or down? Even if you continue to stick to your point here is another fact:-
I personally know people who have scored 90% or more in boards just by skimming through NCERT books a couple of days before the exams because they knew the basic idea from their coaching classes or anywhere else.So if the formula would have been in public weeks before I bet there would have been an immense difference in our boards performance.

3.Before I put up my last point I'll like to make one thing clear that I totally respect you and I know constraints you have (thanks to the positions you hold) My question is don't you find it ethically wrong working on something you did not support fully. Why didn't you write to HRD clearly stating that 60:40 scheme is no good? And lastly you are a learned person fully aware of the situation. Didn't you feel compelled to make your stance about the policy clear in the court.I agree the case is about the formula but you are and were fully aware of the real problem.An escape by using words like policy =! formula. THE RESULT IS THE SAME with either of them being the cause of it.

I am extremely sorry if by any means I seem disrespectful.I do not mean to be disrespectful or anything such. I am just seeking for some answers.

Thank You

bikash said...

With the existing policy the present normalisation is the best with the diversified country like india.