There is no doubt that the Joint Entrance Examination – held in two stages – which admits students to the top engineering colleges in India, is one of the toughest exams worldwide. The test in physics, maths and chemistry requires candidates to answer multiple-choice questions.
In 2018, Toby, who has an undergraduate degree in physics and maths, posted a video talking about the JEE advanced examination.
She has now come up with another video where she talks to Australian professors on the JEE and seeks their views on it.
“If you’re not intimidated by this exam, good luck, you are a pretty impressive student,” one professor says while looking at the test paper. Professor Rajkumar Buyya, a computer scientist, comments that a few questions can be difficult even for students in the first or second year of their bachelor degrees in Australia. Another professor said that if he had to take the exam, he would have probably left the hall in tears.
A mathematician, Professor Barry Hughes, pointed out that a lot of questions are “basically tricky or slightly sneaky but also don’t necessarily require you to work through the question in full detail”.
Some professors featured in the video were of the view that the exam identifies a basic level of competence among incoming students, but they have to further learn and grow, while a few others were not so convinced about its utility. One professor commented that to excel in scientific disciplines, students must be able to reason well, and that this exam is not an “optimal selector” for picking bright students.
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