JEE and not ISEET for IIT and NIT aspirants for 2013?

Since the time hon'ble minister Sri Kapil Sibal said that examinations like IITJEE and AIEEE for admission to prestigious engineering colleges of India, will be replaced by a single examination, a series of meetings and brain storming sessions have been held between the government officials and AIIFF(All India IIT Faculty Federation) but a final decision is yet to be taken. The picture is slowly getting clearer and is set to take the final shape soon.

Following are the significant points for the aspirants who are going to take the examination in 2013, but it must be understood well that none of the points mentioned below, has got firm approval as yet:

Examination that will replace IITJEE and AIEEE:

A single combined examination for admission to the most prestigious engineering institutes of India will replace the existing entrance tests like IITJEE and AIEEE.
The new combined examination will be known as JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) and not ISEET as assumed earlier.

Institutes which will accept the new JEE as the base examination for admission

15 IITs, 30 NITs, 1 IISc(Only BS programme), 5 IIITs, several government and private colleges including state engineering colleges will accept the said examination as the basis for admission to various courses run by them.

The weightage scheme:

The weightage schemeof marks has not yet evolved fully. Although it is almost certain that 40% wiehtage to the marks scored in class XII CBSE Board examination will be taken into account, owing to a vehement opposition by AIIFF, final shape is yet to emerge. The final structure shall be announced soon after a meeting to be held between HRD ministry and 7 IIT directors, flashes its outcomes.
The rest 60 % weightage will come from the JEE score.

Scheme of the new JEE:

Scheme of new JEE will comprise two papers. The first paper will be JEE MAIN and the second one, JEE ADVANCE. The entire examination will be completed in two sessions on a single day. The morning session of 3 hours, JEE MAIN, will test a candidate's rationality of thoughts, comprehensive skills and willl consist of objective questions. The standard will be more or less the existing standard of AIEEE.
The afternoon session, JEE ADVANCE, will test a candidate's depth and way of thinking innovatively. This will actually test whether a candidate is fit to get admission to prestigious IITs. Both the papers together will have a wieghtage of 60% in the total assessment system.
This information corresponds to the minutes of the meetings held hither to present moment. But the final outcome is still awaited and will be made public only after the final meeting.

Frequency of the new JEE and validity period of score:

JEE will be held two times in 2013(April/May & November-December) and may be increased to 3-4 times from 2014 onwards.
The validity period for JEE score will be two years, i.e. admission may be sought to any of the Engineering colleges accepting JEE as the base exam for admission, on the basis of same JEE score in the existing year as well as the subsequent year.
It remains to be announced how many times may a candidate be allowed to appear in JEE and whether he/she will be allowed to improve upon an existing score. Authorities on the subject have opined that a candidate should be allowed 3 to 4 chances to improve upon a previous score.

Which are the bodies responsible for conducting the new JEE?

The JEE question papers are supposed to be designed by IITs and the examination will be conducted throughout India by CBSE in collaboration with Boards of states.

Language of the JEE and the view of states :

The examination for admission to central institutes like IITs, NITs etc. shall be conducted in English and Hindi only. If a state is willing to accept the new JEE as the base examination for its engineering colleges, the JEE may also be conducted in the particular regional language too.
A majority of states has expressed positive attitude towards accepting the new JEE. Pondicherry, Odisha, Bengal and Himachal have sought for some more time to consider the acceptance of JEE. Tamil Nadu has different opinions. The selections in Tamil Nadu solely depend on the state board examination and the state has decided in favour of continuing the trend.

Conclusion :

The criterion of 40% weightage to 10+2 marks is yet to be swallowed by experts of the field and there has been a strong opposition from IITs, a section of students, parents and many others. The argument, which no doubt holds good merit, is that different state boards apart from CBSE conduct 10+2 exams and have different syllabi, pattern of marking and standards. So without creating a common syllabus it is quite unfair to accredit importance to an examination which has different forms and course materials at different places. It may amount to discrimination.
Moreover, IITs have always been known not to compromise anything with quality. Being the premier institutions in engineering streams they deserve to keep a watch on the merit of students being selected. That exactly is the reason why IITs are opposing the formula of 40% weightage to 10+2 marks.
Another point of significance is that the new pattern is interfering with the conventional preparations already being made by the batch of students which has just entered class 12. Many have expressed concern over the matter saying that the new mode of entrance test should be applied to the fresh batch of students scheduled to take admission to class 11 in April-June, 2012 session.
Amidst all such speculations, a sincere advice to the aspirants of 2013 and all other future aspirants will be to continue their preparations without getting distracted. They should find out the common portions from the syllabus of 10+2 CBSE and IITJEE and give more importance to these topics. If these parts of the syllabus can be covered much earlier, the students will find enough time to go for more cryptic parts of the IITJEE syllabus. In this respect it will be in the interest of the students to utilize the summer vacations and the slack period from April to May-15 in order to cover a major part of the syllabus. Furthermore, students may complete writing practical notebooks in the summer vacation to save time for studying thoroughly later.

Here is a flash...
According to latest reports, AIIFF has strongly objected to complete acceptance of the proposal before allowance of more time for further discussions.