Thursday, May 27, 2010

JEE-2010: How well did the OBCs do?


Not very well, seems to be the verdict. Even though 2,357 of them qualified, that number is 210 short of 2,567 seats (27% of 9,509 seats overall) reserved for them. Thus, those extra seats will now go to the general category.

This year marks the third and final stage of OBC reservation -- bringing the total to the full 27%. The quota policy at IITs doesn't work like it does in other institutions: IITs use a cut-off for the reserved categories: for OBC candidates, it's 10% less than the general category cut-off, and for SC and ST, it's 50%.

It turns out that 11.3% (or, 1,489) of the students in the Common Merit List are from OBC -- these are the students who did not need the relaxation in the cut-off. This figure was close to 14 % (~1400) last year.

The share of OBCs among the JEE-qualified candidates (13,104) stands at just under 18%, less than the 2009 figure of 19%.

This is roughly in line with what I said last year:

Out of 1930 students who make it to the OBC list, about 1400 would have made it to the common list without needing a relaxed cut-off. In other words, 14% of the available seats would have gone to the OBC students anyway; this figure was the same last year [2008] too. Thus, a relaxation of 10% in the cut-off marks (both at the subject level and in the aggregate) gets OBCs only an additional 500 seats (or, 5% additional seats).

And here's the thing: the IITs will probably keep this relaxation in cut-off marks at 10%. If the ratio (10% relaxation to 5% additional OBC seats) holds, this would imply that OBCs' share of IIT seats will settle at about 19-20%, and that this share can go up only if the OBCs get into the common pool in greater numbers. [Bold emphasis added].

In the event, OBCs have a smaller share of the common pool this year; as a consequence, they have been unable to fill the seats reserved for them.

7 Comments:

  1. Prashob's blog said...

    "that number is 210 short of 2,567 seats (27% of 9,509 seats overall) reserved for them. Thus, those extra seats will now go to the general category."

    But effectively 1699 seats originally reserved for OBC cat. would go the General Merit [2567-2357+1489]. Isn't it so?

  2. shwetank said...

    bro ur argument is valid but plz look at it this way... they cant keep decreasing the cutoff just to fill more left out seats... wat abt the merit or rather say just by getting into iit one cant become intelligent rather you need certain amount of intelligence to become a good engineer... so your argument about doesn't hold correct...

  3. Prashob's blog said...

    @shwetank..

    buddy I was not presenting any case here...May be your prejudice has led you to conclude on this assumption. I am not arguing that cut off being lowered further. I just pointed out what I thought was the right data i.e 1699 instead of 210 seats being transferred..Anyways peace

    @all
    A question I would like to ask is..How are they going to fill the 1699 seats (i.e. if they dont remain vacant and actually get transferred to GC)? If they add more GC students then effectively the lowest GC score would again go down and therefore as per rules OBC cut off should be lowered further..Or is there any other mechanism to fill in the seats ?

  4. iitmsriram said...

    2567 seats are reserved for OBC candidates; OBC candidates are entitled to a 10% relaxation in cutoff and it turns out that only 868 candidates fall in this 10% relaxation range. Hence, it might be argued that 2567-868=1699 OBC reserved seats have been trasnferred to general category; actually, upto 1489 of these seats might be transferred not to general category candidates but to other OBC candidates who prefer to give up their general merit list rank and use their OBC category rank in order to get a branch / institute they prefer. It is only 'upto' and it could be anything between 0 and 1489; past experience tells us that it will be close to 1489, so maybe 210, maybe somewhat more seats (including upto the maximum of 1699) may be transferred from OBC candidates to general candidates. This is in conformity with the recent 5 judge bench ruling of the supreme court in the civil services case (and unlike, say, medical admissions). With the existing cut offs, 13104 candidates have been ranked for 9509 seats, so there will be no further lowering of cut off for anyone. One might wonder what would happen if all 13104 want to join IITs - there simply are not enough seats. Past experience is that beyond rank 5000 or 6000 (when 'old' IIT seats are filled and only 'new' IIT or BHU-IT remain), lots of candidates prefer to give this up and go for NIT or some other institution. The rank list is counting on this to happen.

  5. Prashob's blog said...

    @iitmsriram

    thank you for the detailed answer.

  6. Bruno said...

    Why is that they fix this Arbitary 10 % as Cut Off

    1. Why can't be it 15 %

    And then

    By OBC you mean, Non Creamy Layer BC. If the seats are vacant, it should be filled from Creamy Layer BC

    Was OBC Concept brought to benefit the poor BCs
    Or
    Was the OBC Concept (creamy) brought to give backdoor entry to FC

    --

    If the Creamy layer concept was introduced to actually benefit poor OBCs, then the seats that are vacant has to be filled by Rich OBCs

    If the Creamy layer concept was introduced to have back door entry for FCs, then the vacant seats can be filled by FC

    --

    So what are the IITs going to to

    This is the time for us all to understand their real intentions

  7. Bruno said...

    //This is in conformity with the recent 5 judge bench ruling of the supreme court in the civil services case//

    That judgement actually RESERVES 50 % seats for Forward Castes + Creamy BCs.