The fates of thousands of students aspiring to become engineers and doctors got decided today, as the WBJEE rank list got declared in the afternoon. More precisely, this was already decided sometime back, on the day of the exam itself, I wondered as I saw students eagerly waiting in front of computers, huddled in cyber cafes, to know whether they will get to study in their college of choice. Of course, how one performs on the d-day depends largely on two things – 2 years of preparation and luck factor to some extent. Or is it not? Well, it appears that given the current exam pattern it is not mere luck and hard work that can fetch you a good rank!
It is common knowledge that in recent years the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination has been rife with scandals – as dummy students (TOI HT) emerged one after another and in each case a shady exchange of large sums of money. While fielding dummy candidates involves rackets and lakhs, there is a much simpler method to ensure a coveted berth in one of the better colleges! And no prizes for guessing, it is being adopted by many students every year! It is an open secret that if a group of friends do everything together – from collecting the form in the first place to submitting it after completing all formalities – then they will invariably get the same exam centre and not just that, their seats will be one after another too. So every year some students will be seen collecting the forms together, procuring the bank drafts and finally submitting everything dutifully one after another. I have seen groups as large as 12 people and as small as 2! In one case, a friend had told me about his ‘JEE adventures’. I have seen 2 people adopting this way and getting away with head-to-head ranks! Heard many similar stories from friends as well. Only today, a friend asked me to check the ranks of 2 of his brothers on the internet and gave me the roll numbers – the roll numbers were like …129 and …130!
Admitted that there are sets of question papers – there are 4 different MCQ sets actually each with the same questions arranged in a different order – but it is easy to override the bottlenecks created by different sets as the partners, good friends as they are, use keywords (e.g. “pulley sum” in physics, “phylum” in bio, “mohr’s salt” in chem, “quadratic” in maths) to identify questions. Say out of 2 friends 1 can crack 70% of the questions on his own while his friend pitches in with another 10% to make it 80! Despite the The luck factor is at play here too, in this case a permissive invigilator. In medical there being 9 govt medical colleges with about 1100+ seats (some 610 out of those are in open unreserved category) the competition is pretty stiff and for each mark extra scored your rank can go up 50 places (at least so it was in my time). Now it is anybody’s guess where a combined team effort can land you! I can’t even imagine how something like this can go on for years! While appearing in WBJEE myself, I never bothered to look at anyone’s face so engrossed I was! In the same year, some people were actually cheating like crazy! And the trend, ever so popular since the inception of multiple choice questions in 2006, only continues! If this is not lawlessness, then what is? Will the authorities wake up please!
photo credit: Raveesh Vyas
