JEE Counseling in Covid era

 I have been receiving emails and phone calls ever since the results of JEE Mains were announced about three weeks ago. Some of them weren't going to take JEE Advanced and wanted to know where to apply. And some others were sure about their ranks in JEE Advanced and wanted to know where to apply. Each one of these parents (and never a student) would tell me that everyone gets a better rank in JEE Advanced compared with JEE Mains and there is a rule of thumb. If you had 2X as your rank in JEE Mains, your rank in JEE Advanced is likely to be around X. Go figure.

I would start off with my favorite statements. Don't think about placement. Think of your interest. And if you are normal and therefore, haven't found your passion yet, just get admission to the best college you can get into. Also, travel to a few institutes which you are considering seriously and talk to some faculty and students there.

But as I finished discussion with 20th parent (just two students so far), I have come to realize that Covid has changed the way we should consider choosing a college. And the change is not only about the inability to travel.

Till last year, if someone said that they are interested in Computer Science (and 90% people said that), one would quickly get into a discussion of Civil at an old IIT versus CS at a 2nd generation IIT, or Meta at an IIT versus CS at an NIT, and so on. I believe the discussion ought to be different today.

The concern in the recent past has really been this: I don't know my interest and you are telling me not to consider placement numbers. What if I just take admission in an unpopular discipline in an IIT, and then I don't like the discipline and I will be forced to change career through an MBA route. It was a serious enough concern. A 12th class student hardly knows about various disciplines and has no easy way to find out what s/he would like. So over the last decade or so, most progressive engineering institutes have been having a large number of electives in their curriculum, which could be used to do a "minor" program within your degree program. So if you were interested in CS, you could at least do 4-5 courses in CS. But that was not enough to gain sufficient confidence and sometimes even capability to compete with those who are doing may be 15 courses in Computer Science. And hence the minor programs ensured some relief, it wasn't enough. You needed another 3-4 courses to really get into that discipline.

This is where Covid has come as a savior. Today, the online education is more widely available, the quality has been improving, and most importantly, the market has started to appreciate online courses. So now, if you join an unpopular program, and you realize that this is not what you want, just do the minor program offered by the college in the discipline of your choice, and do an additional 3-4 courses online in the summer or even in parallel with your semester courses. With 7-9 courses, you have pretty much all the skills of that discipline that you need in the beginning of your career and you can keep learning on the job or online.

So earlier I would suggest that if you are interested in CS, study CS even if that meant taking admission in a somewhat "lesser" college. Now, I would suggest that you better be passionate about CS to take admission in a somewhat "lesser" college. The better strategy is to take admission in another discipline in the top college, do a minor in CS, do a few online courses in addition, and you are as good as anyone else.

This means that the most important question that you must ask is "how easy it is to do a minor in a popular discipline?" All IITs, I am sure, would proudly display on their website that they offer minors and lots of electives, flexibility in curriculum, etc. But is that flexibility for real. I know some CS departments would argue internally that if everyone were to be allowed a minor in CS, their teaching load would go up substantially. Why should they do this for students of other departments.  You shouldn't be joining these IITs if the goal was to keep the option of CS (or any other discipline) open.

So the ordering has been simplified, thanks to Covid. Order all IITs based on whatever criteria you like. Whether you prefer big city or small city, whether closer to home or away from home, whether your friends joined there last year or not, whether they already have most of the academic infrastructure built or not, and so on. Then those IITs where you have a strong chance of getting at least the least popular program, find out how much flexibility they have in curriculum. Specifically, do they have a minor program in all disciplines you might be interested in. Second, how many students graduated in 2020, and how many of them were able to do a popular minor like CS. If this ratio is small, remove that IIT from your list. And now, you can specify all the programs of the remaining IITs.