IIT aspirants up in Andhra Pradesh

IIT aspirants up in Andhra Pradesh

The number of students from the state who are trying to get into Indian Institute of Technology has increased by 25 per cent when compared to last year.
While nearly 39,000 candidates had applied for Joint Entrance Examination in 2007, the number went up to about 50,100 this year. Last year, over 500 students from the state secured seats in various IITs.

The JEE-2008 for admission to various undergraduate courses in the seven IIT's and other technological universities of the country will be held on April 13. The last date for submitting application forms ended on January 4.

"There has been more than 25 per cent increase in the number of applicants across the country and not just in Andhra Pradesh," said Mr N.M. Bhandari, chairman of JEE-2008.

Last year, 2.43 lakh students had appeared for the test and one lakh more students have applied for JEE-2008. The number of students competing for a seat has gone up to 77 while it was 55 last year.

There are nearly 4,500 seats available in the seven IITs across the country.

"The number of students competing for a seat in prestigious global universities such as Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology is eight," said Mr Bhandari.

"The competition for IITs is tougher."

Veteran IIT trainer and MLC, Mr Chukka Ramaiah, said the drop in standards and lack of faculty and infrastructure in most engineering colleges of the state had forced students to opt for IITs.

"Most of the engineering colleges in the state produce graduates who are unemployable," he said. "They are forced to undergo training in Jawahar Knowledge Centres to develop skills."

Meanwhile, the newly announced IIT at Medak may not start functioning from this year.

Nehru’s Stratagem: IITs and declining student activism

Yeah, I know the title sounds very heavy, but this isn’t a serious or well-thought or well-researched post. It’s just a random thought that occurred to me now when I was arbiting looking for things that will help with this. [Advertisement: NITK proudly presents Engineer 2008. Online events are aplenty, one of which is Virtual Bounty, everyone’s favourite online treasure hunt which requires little apart from your Googling skills. Prize money to the tune of USD 250, and more importantly, bragging rights, at stake. Check it out! Event’s on 10 Feb 2008, Sunday. Timings will be put up later, but rest assured it won’t clash with GATE. Teams of Two. Everyone’s eligible, whether you’re a techie or a student or a teacher, or a doc or a lawyer…. all you need is a working Net connection. Tell your friends].

You find students, and in general, youth were at the center of any revolutionary uprising. Universities were cauldrons of simmering new thought and bubbling novel ideas. And student activism. Like it’s portrayed in Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi, or any of those ’80s Bengali movies. Student leaders were big fish who later moved on to mainstream politics. Like Laloo Yadav - I believe he was the Students’ Union leader of Patna University, from where he has a degree in Law.

Now however, all we have is the dregs. There’s Manohar Parikkar, ex-CM of Goa, who was apparently Mess Manager while he was a student at IITB. Oh, and there’s another rival Goan politician who’s also from IITB… I forget his name. And the last remaining vestige of the student activist or student politician would be Michael Vasanth from Aayutha Ezhuthu/Yuva (played excellently by Surya and botched up like manure by Ajay Devgan).

You don’t find such types anymore. Nehru saw to it when he took a critical first step of getting Soviet co-operation to convert the Hijli Detention Camp to IIT-KGP.

Since then, any Priya Venkateshan who would have come under the the influence of right-wing idealogy (or worse, left-wing), taken it upon herself to start and edit a student newspaper which would idealize and provide good press for Swami Vivekananda, Veer Savarkar, Bose, Godse, RSS and VHP (or alternately, China, Marx and Communism, with special attention to denouncing agriculture, hating Jews and pursuing an anti-US stance), spend half her youth in and out of lock-ups, wear khadi kurtas, thick-rimmed glasses and carry a jhola… okay, I’m getting ahead of myself… any such person has instead spent half her teenage in JEE coaching centers, then giving n-hazaar exams, and then wasting away at an undergrad college in the middle of nowhere, and which is certainly not a hub of original political thought, or anywhere close to one, and what she learns at college (if at all), has absolutely nothing to do with politics or running the country.

The brightest young minds in the country are busy swotting for entrance exams, so busy that they don’t glance at the paper unless it screams out about paper leaks or exam postponements. When they get together to discuss, it’s almost always about problems in Irodov or ML Khanna.

Student Union causes are now down to getting enough funds for Engineer, Incident, Saarang, Techfest, Shaasta, Mood I, Cul-Ah!, Down Sterling, Alcheringa, Strawberry Fields and godaloneknowswhatother college fest. Social causes, if any, include collecting money to be sent to earthquake victims at Bhuj, or cleaning the beach for the mandatory extra-curriculars Credit. Other worries include having nightmares about the (extracurricular interest) club website having crashed. Or worse, hacked into.

Instead of perusing political news and getting incensed, people now are forced to mug financial news and arbit stats; they need to be prepared for their IIM GD/PI. And anti-US sentiments ha! Which other place is affordable, Indian-friendly and provides good quality graduate education? The part of India that would probably have been incensed is safely in the US, sufficiently far away from causing havoc by voting. And the incensed ones that remain in India feel that the best way of lodging their protests is by *not* voting!

And we are the generation whose grandparents were members of Indira Gandhi’s Vanar Sena. And whose parents were brought up on the legend of Chacha Nehru, the kid-friendly PM. And who too, have grown on the same idealogy, so much that we would say “Nehru-Chacha? Naah…. how can you believe he sent Subhas Bose to the Gulag (concentration camp in the USSR) with help from Mountbatten and Stalin just because he feared Bose would be the PM? This guy loved kids! Any man who likes children can’t be all that bad…”

Mr. Nehru, you were probably the brightest person in your family (you were the last to get a college degree… only your great-grandson Feroze Varun has attained that distinction since… Antonia Maino failed to complete her spoken-English course… Rajiv dropped out…), your services would have been at great demand at Ogilvy and Mather. The US could very well take a leaf out of your book when it comes to shaping public opinion, perception and social engineering. You’ve basically insured generations of your progeny from public backlash irrespective of how much of their *own* garibi they hataao-fy.

Of course, your KGB Agent granddaughter-in-law tries her best, but being of foreign origin, she only divides and rules the country on sectarian lines by increasing Quota Raj and asking for head-counts of people of various religions in the Armed Forces, apart from pleading clemency for a convicted terrorist; she doesn’t quite understand the importance Indians give to education and social status the way you did.

PS: I don’t think students focussing on things other than politics is wrong. We need to focus on wealth-creation and technological innovation more than anything else now. But heck, just why are the inborn-leader kids not hitting the political scene?

IIIT for IIT

IIIT for IIT

The Andhra Pradesh CM has laid the foundation for an Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) at Basar in Adilabad district.

The IIIT is a supposedly compensation for shifting the proposed Indian Institute of technology (IIT) to Medak.

Now, to the interesting part of this article -


Addressing a public meeting, he said the IIIT would be more useful than the
IIT, as many students from backward Adilabad district would benefit. If the IIT
had been established here, only a couple of students would have got seats.


Now, I have been to Basar as recently as November 2007. Its a peaceful place with the Godavari flowing nearby and the life of the people is linked with the Sharada temple. The people are nice and simple who would have every reason to believe the CM. And the opportunity to unleash some unrelated bull-shit has not been foregone by the CM.

But dear sir, there are a few doubting thomases in this world. Hence I checked the website of the IIIT at Allahabad, because that is the model I presume will be followed here. What does it say?


Entrance to these courses is through the All-India Entrance Examination
conducted by CBSE.


OK? Now, what is the means of admission to IITs? The JEE right?

Now,

1. Can this be a valid appeasement? - take an IIIT for an IIT. Why not an NIT? The purpose of asking this is - how does an Information technology institute replace an engineering institute? Even if it does, was this "replacement" IIIT shifted from somewhere else? And if so, what will that place get?

2. How can the CM guarantee in the scenario of competitive exams the proportion of students who will clear the entrance exams (JEE/AIEEE whatever)? What if more students from Adilabad clear JEE in comparison to their counterparts from Medak and show the proverbial middle finger to the CM? Will he revert the proposed IIT back to Basar?

3. Most importantly, since when has clearing competitive exams become an inter-district competition? I thought it was mostly about the achievement of the self.

How to get your rank certifcate for IIT JEE?

How to get your rank certifcate for IIT JEE?

Though I generally keep all my important documents (certificates, identity cards etc.) safely and am not that irresponsible as to have no idea about their location, this time I was in a pickle. I got to know that going forward, I would require proof of everything that I want to include on my CV. Though this requirement always remained at the back of my mind earlier as well (for e.g. when I was to undergo my campus placements, I tried to make sure I have all relevant certificates for the interview), this time there was to be formal checking of these before I can present my CV to anyone and that meant you cannot leave anything just like that on the CV.

The first thing which I was asked to make sure was that I have a proof for the rank I secured at the entrance examination for my under graduation. I think the reason for this to be the first issue was that it was important and that many people would have faced the issue of not having such a proof and these people would have gone through a lot to get it, if they at all managed to do that. The importance of the matter increases with the reputation of the alma mater.

So, began my tryst to get my rank certificate. The IIT in which I studied was the first point of contact. As it would be a while before I could go there physically (it was in a different city from where I was working), I asked one of my friends who was in his final year there to ask the concerned officials about the process. After going through a few offices and meeting some people, he was told that since the exam was not conducted by that IIT for the year, they cannot provide any such certificate. First fort lost ... not yet!

I tried to contact my alumni cell and see if they could help. I also mailed directly to the officials asking help. The cell tried to help but could not go very far. The officials gave me an argument similar to the one they gave my friend. I tried to call them and convince but again no use.

Next stop was the IIT which conducted the exam. I was a little skeptical about getting any success. I started with sending a mail to the concerned office of the IIT to issue me a certificate explaining the issue and giving my details. I was not too sure if I could even get a reply. At the same time, I came to know that one of my friends' father is a Professor in that IIT. I also gave him the details and requested him to ask his father to push for the matter. He was kind enough to agree.

I received a mail next day wherein the concerned office asked for my email address to send the certificate or gave me the option of collecting it from them in person. Now, this thing happened because of my friend's father's efforts or otherwise, I had not expected success, at least so fast. I was in the same city and so replied back saying that I would collect it from their office the next day; thanked them as well. The IIT was close to my office, so went the next day and collected the certificate. It was kept all ready to be handed over.

Now that this rank certificate was safe in my files, I started to arrange for the proof for the next point on my CV. My only suggestion to everyone: Please take good care of all your certificates etc. You never know when they would be needed.

New Book for Physical Chemistry IIT JEE

New Book for Physical Chemistry IIT JEE
TMH published a new book

Physical Chemistry : For IIT JEE & other Engineering Entrance Examinations

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PREM DHAWAN, Delhi Public School, R K Puram, Delhi



ISBN: 0070655461
Copyright year: 2008
Table of Contents




1. Stoichiometry - I
2. Gaseous State
3. Atomic Structure
4. Oeriodic Properties
5. Chemical Bonding
6. Chemical Thermodynamics
7. Chemical Kinetics
8. Chemical Equilibrium
9. Ionic Equilibrium
10. Stoichiometry - II: Redox Reaction and Oxidation Numbers
11. Solutions
12. Electrochemistry
13. The Solid State
14. Surface Chemistry


Book Preface


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The objective of this book is to make the study of physical chemistry systematic and enjoyable. Apart from a thorough grounding in the fundamental concepts, emphasis is also on enhancing your ability to solve problems and to use relationships between concepts and information that would strengthen your mastery of the subject.

The book is tailored to meet the requirements of those appearing in IIT-JEE entrance and similar engineering entrance examinations and also classes XI & XII students.

As you begin reading this book, you will soon see that there are many examples given and each topic ends with a practice test along with their solutions. A large number of exercises are given at the end of each chapter. Written in a simple and systematic manner, the books' highlights are as follows:

A large number of examples to supplement the text
Practice test at the end of each topic
Large number of chapter-end exercises divided into
(i) Subjective Problems (ii) Multiple choice questions with one answer correct (iii) Multiple choice questions with multiple correct answers (iv) Fill in the blanks, True/False questions, Match the following (v) A special section on comprehension-based questions.
With such an exhaustive coverage of the topic, I am sure that students would find the book an ideal companion to understand and master the subject.

You can download solution manual of the book from

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0070655461/student_view0/solution_manual.html