JMET cancelled

The joint management entrance test (JMET) used for admitting students into the institute’s department of management studies has been cancelled and replaced by the common admission test (CAT) conducted by the IIMs. Therefore, all IITs and IISc will use CAT instead of JMET.

For a long time, many IITs have wondered where their management departments rank vis-a-vis the IIMs. In India, the reputation of the institute is primarily governed by the cutoff in JEE/GATE/CAT and now we will know  the "real" rankings of the management schools of IITs/IISc with respect to IIMs.

GATE eligibility

There seems to a sudden change in the eligibility for GATE 2012. Apparently, prefinal students are not allowed to write the exam. I am not sure about the rationale behind the decision and it may be just to reduce the number of students taking the exam. In any case, I feel such sudden changes in the eligibility criteria should be informed to the candidates before an year or so.

ARWU rankings

Only one institution from India has made it to the top 500 in the ACWU ARWU 2011 rankings: IISc.

Success

After the trashing of the Indian cricket team by England in the test matches, there is a lot of discussions on the forums for the cause of this debacle. However, there are several more comments that claim that the Indian cricket team is the world champion. But this is in an ODI format and one can not compare formats. Superiority in one format may not translate to superiority in an another format.

Similarly, when talking to young faculty in IITs/IISc recruited from USA, it strikes me that success in US universities as Ph.D students and post doctorates may not necessarily translate to success as a faculty in the Indian system. Success in academic research can be defined in two distinct ways: (a) publishing in standard journals consistently (b) getting promotions, awards and fellowships. These two are not necessarily linked and the ascent to each path of success is different.

Grad school enrollment

Admissions to foreign students in US graduate schools grow. The article in Chronicle says,

Much of that growth is fueled by a 23-percent expansion in offers of admission to prospective students from China, the sixth consecutive year of double-digit gains.
Admissions offers to students from India also jumped, by 8 percent, the first uptick in prospective students from that country since fall of 2007. India trails only China as the largest source of international students to the United States.
Offers of admission to students from South Korea, however, remained flat, compared to 2010, after four years in a row of declines.
Together, those three countries account for half of all non-U.S. citizens on student visas at American graduate schools.

On the contrary, a 10% increase in graduate school enrollment was not possible in India during the period of 1980 to 2005. Suddenly, the enrolment increased by 54% as the OBC quota was implemented and the government forced IITs (and IISc) to expand ! IISc has continued to expand its graduate school enrollment with the number of registered post graduate students crossing 3000 for the first time in its history.


You can also read a comparison of academic performances of Indian, Chinese and American students in UT-Austin.

Ticket pricing

The above screenshot shows how the executive fare is lower than the economy class fare ! No one can beat the pricing algorithm of Air India.