In Part I of this series of articles on the data released by JoSAA, we discussed the reasons why 1749 students from the top 10,000 ranks in JEE (Advanced) were unable to get seats allotted to them through JoSAA. Here, we discuss the allocation process as well as the issues around it.

The allocation process began with JEE (Main) ranks being announced, and the online filling of choices between 1st & 6th July, 2015. Of the 1.3 million+ students eligible for the allocation, only 1.52 lakh students registered for the allocation process. These students made about 12.9 million choices, hence averaging at about 80 choices per student.

For those students who are aware that their chances of getting a seat through JoSAA are minimal, the whole process does not matter much. The same holds true for toppers who are assured that they will get into the institute and course they want. However, the process is highly confusing for those students who are in between: those who have good ranks but not good enough to get their first choices. It may also seem that the process is designed to be against such mid-range students, to drive them away. The main issue lies in those glitches which proved to be a deterrent for the process.

During the choice filling process, many technical issues were noticed, which led to students being unable to completely fill all their choices. This may have led to the “Wrong choice of choices” possibility that JoSAA has mentioned in their tables.

Another issue has been the delay in CBSE releasing the JEE (Mains) ranks, due to which the JoSAA process was inordinately delayed. To some, this led to the process being hurried through at the beginning. Except a mock allocation round during the choice filling period, the system did not allow for students to learn how it worked and how they could use it to their benefit.

To acclimatize students to the allocation process, many coaching institutes used to run training sessions in previous years. This year, however, the choice filling process started on the same day that the JEE (Main) ranks were announced, on 1st July 2015. Since there were only 5 days to fill up the choices, coaching institutes were also unable to hold the training sessions they usually held. “The gap between releasing the JEE (Main) ranks and the start of the allocation process was just a few hours. Students were left with hardly any time to seek advice on the choices they had to make,” said Pramod Maheshwari, MD and CEO at Career Point, Kota.

A major complaint about the process is the absence of any option to safely withdraw or surrender a seat at any point in time. For students applying to international colleges and institutes running parallel admission processes, this is a dilemma they are unable to get out of. Once a student is allotted a seat, unless they withdraw from the allocation process totally, they cannot surrender the seat. If a student confirms a seat by paying the seat acceptance fee, and reports to the reporting centre, that seat is blocked for them. If the student later leaves the institute for any reason, the fee will not be refunded. At the same time, the seat will go empty.

It may not entirely be the fault of students in this confusing scenario. The JoSAA has been constituted for the first time, and there are bound to be some issues that crop up. The authorities constituting JoSAA have to understand enough about them so that they do not cause any hiccups for students, and re-jig the process accordingly. At the same time, JoSAA has also been beneficial for some students who would perhaps have had no chance of getting a seat in the previous processes. As an example, the Home State Quota for the Electrical & Electronics Engineering course at NIT Sikkim closed at rank 324,599 at the end of CSAB Round 5 in 2014. This year, at the end of Round 2, the closing rank which has been allotted the same course is 1,133,483.

While it is only Round 2 of the JoSAA process, and there are two more rounds to go, we have seen many issues crop up without being fairly resolved. It will be only in the coming rounds that we will be able to get a complete picture of things as they stand, and how joint seat allocation between the IITs/ISM and the NITs/IIITs/GFTIs has worked out.

The Business Rules, allocation data and all other information about the process are sourced from the JoSAA & JEE (Advanced) websites at  http://josaa.nic.in & http://jeeadv.iitb.nic.in