Vriti Edustore
This year, one half of the seats from each NIT was opened to all students, irrespective of the states they came from. Admissions began to 8 new IITs, taking the total no. of participating JEE institutes to 17. Together, these were enough reason for me to assume that our college would do much worse at the AIEEE counseling.
That has not happened.
Here then, are the results and trends of the admissions to the undergraduate program at IIIT Hyderabad for the year 2009. Posts on the trends from 2006 to 2008 can be found here and here. All information has been taken from CCB's website. These numbers are from the first round of counseling. (Beginning this year IIIT will participate in the second round of counseling, and admit students directly without AIEEE as well.)
Table 1: Opening and Closing ranks, IIIT Hyderabad, 2006 to 2009.
| Branch | Total no. of seats | Opening Rank | Closing Rank | |||||||||
| Year | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
| CSE | 129 | 108 | 108 | 90 | 82 | 256 | 162 | 27 | NA | 1705 | 1729 | 1067 |
| CSD | 31 | 60 | 60 | 50 | 1006 | 1378 | 157* | 746 | NA | 2636 | 2613 | 2021 |
| ECE | 41 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 332 | 650 | 344 | 189 | NA | 1855 | 1921 | 1210 |
| ECD | 9 | 12 | 12 | 15 | 1335 | 1884 | 2093 | 890 | 1971 | 2273 | 2646 | 2065 |
| CSDL | - | - | - | 10 | - | - | - | 895 | - | - | - | 2176 |
| CSDN | - | - | - | 15 | - | - | - | 1179 | - | - | - | 2727 |
| Overall | 210 | 210 | 210 | 210 | 82 | 256 | 157 | 27 | 1971 | 2636 | 2646 | 2727 |
The total number of seats on offer has remained constant at 210 for over 6 years now. However, two new branches -- C.S with Master's in Computational Natural Science, and C.S with Master's in Computational Linguistics -- have been introduced, by reducing seats in the traditional CSE program. In spite of the reduced no. of CSE seats, the closing rank of 1067 is impressive.
How does IIIT compare with other AIEEE institutes? Here are the opening and closing ranks of NIT k (Surathkal), NIT t (Trichy), NIT w (Warangal) and IIIT a (Allahbad) in 2009:
Table 2: Opening and closing ranks of competing institutes, 2009, in the Open category
| Branch | Total no. of seats | Opening Rank | Closing Rank | |||||||||
| College | NITk | NITt | NITw | IIITA | NITk | NITt | NITw | IIITa | NITk | NITt | NITw | IIITa |
| CSE | 44 | 45 | 52 | 90 | 334 | 102 | 65 | 1910 | 6432 | 5336 | 1974 | 5654 |
| EEE | 45 | 44 | 44 | 0 | 1173 | 39 | 225 | 0 | 5718 | - | - | - |
| ECE | 47 | 43 | 54 | 45 | 71 | 123 | 101 | 1229 | 3384 | 2410 | 1297 | 3101 |
Another heuristic to measure a college's performance in the counseling would be this: for how many students admitted to that college, was that college their first (or second) preference? Here again, IIIT does much better than any competing AIEEE institute:
Table 3: No. of students (Open Category) admitted to various colleges, and the the number of students for whom it was their first or second preference (% == second row / first row * 100):
| College | IIIT | IIIT a | NIT k | NIT t | NIT w |
| Total no. of students (open) | 210 | 135 | 361 | 372 | 361 |
| Joined with preference 1 or 2 | 148 (70%) | 8 (6%) | 133 (37%) | 154 (41%) | 136 (38%) |
* * * * *
The number of students from AP has declined from 79 in 2006, to 50 in 2008, and 35 in 2009. This could be because awareness of the institute has spread across the country, or because Kota( Rajasthan) and Delhi continue to grow as training hubs .
Table 4: State-wise break up of the in-coming batch.
| State | AP | RJ | MP | DL | UP | MH | CH | HR | PB | CG | GJ | JR | KR | BH | TN | WB |
| students | 35 | 32 | 26 | 24 | 19 | 15 | 12 | 10 | 10 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
* * * * *
This may well be the last year I write such a post. Reasons are plenty. I have grown increasingly disillusioned with the idea of a CSE/ECE-only institute at the Undergraduate level, and increasingly frustrated with several moves that my college has made. Take, for instance, the addition of 2 new branches this year: while other colleges (NIT Nagpur) are working towards abandoning branches at the UG level altogether, here we are, making students who've just passed 10+2 to commit to a dual degree in Computational Linguistics!
IIIT remains one of the best colleges in the country, but that is not saying much. To call our college or the IITs "World Class" would be to take extreme liberty with that phrase. Still, they remain among the handful of institutes in our country worth going to.
How many students can they together take? 10,000? 10 lakh students wrote the AIEEE this year. 10 Lakh! Where will the rest go? Please pause and think about the injustice of that number: 10 Lakh students. If you do, you will, like me, begin to see the absurdity of discussing the 'trends' of 50 seats.
Goodbye.
