This yr, getting into IIT a tad easier

MUMBAI: At a time when the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are gearing up for expansion, the number of students aspiring to get into these hallowed institutions has dropped dramatically this year.

While almost 3 lakh students competed for 4,078 seats last year, almost 50,000 less have applied for the joint entrance exam (JEE) this year.

According to data from IIT-Bombay - the nodal IIT that will co-ordinate JEE 2007 - 2.52 lakh students will take this entrance exam across seven centres in the country on April 8. Of these, 120 foreign students have also applied to sit for the JEE.

With the fall in applicants this year, 55 students will vie for every precious IIT seat, a slump from last year when 74 students battled it out for every place.

Despite the increase in the number of seats and fall in applicants, the competition is going to be tough as compared to those in internationally acclaimed universities like Harvard and MIT, where the ratio is eight students competing for one seat.

While the IITs have not chalked out the exact seat expansion plans for this year, officials in the JEE office said the total number of seats in all the IITs put together would touch a little over 4,600

source : TOi
 
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