At a meeting recently held regarding admissions between HRC and External Affairs ministries, it was decided to have entrance exams for foreign students wishing to get admitted in the prestigious IITs.
The SAARC member nations (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) and Ethiopia in Africa, Singapore and Dubai (UAE) have been finalised for holding entrance tests for foreign nationals from next year onwards.
Until now entrance exams (JEEs) were conducted to admit Indian applicants only; from next year onwards international applicants too will have to give these exams for both graduate and post graduate courses. These will be conducted by IITs themselves. “The entrance tests to the IITs abroad have been held till now only to admit Indian nationals. This is for the first time that it has been planned to admit foreign students through tests held abroad. It is aimed that the plan would be operationalised from the JEE/GATE exams to be conducted in 2017,” a senior HRD Ministry official told PTI.
IIT Mumbai has been asked to prepare information material that shall include details of the tests, the courses and FAQs; a website for the same will be created soon. Although the test will be in 2017, the outreach programme starts this August.
Now, should the Indian students be worried about getting their seats snatched because of this programme? No, the officials told the media that seats to be offered to foreign nationals would be supernumerary or additional in nature and would not reduce those available to Indian nationals at the 18 IITs.
We predict this should boost the ranking of IITs in international academic world.
