NIT admission nightmare for students after tech glitch over renamed states

NIT admission nightmare for students after tech glitch over renamed states

Thousands of students who had been selected to NITs (National Institute of Technology) of their choice and to a course they desired were in for a shock when they found that, on the morning of the admission, a new seat allotment list had been drawn up.
    While many found that their names had gone missing from the list, in some instances, students’ preferences had altered; also, the institute they had been asked to report to, was no longer where they had to go; in other cases, the course assigned to some students was no longer what they could sign up for.
    The seat allotment list was put online on July 10 but was pulled off after four hours, when the error was spotted. What had happened was that the alphanumeric codes in the software and databases — of the CBSE and the Central Seat Allocation Board (CSAB) — did not match. For instance, while the CBSE database assigned students of Odisha the code OR (going by the old name of the state, Orissa), the CSAB software had assigned code OD.
    So, Odisha students with an OR code were being read as outstation students by the CSAB software. There are 30 NITs in the country and 50% seats are reserved for home state students.
    There were also a couple of glitches involving UP and Uttarakhand students, and those who had opted for dual allocations — for engineering and architecture.
    Admissions across NITs started on July 11, but the first round of counselling was a nightmare for students after the new allotment list was put up.


Maximum IIT entrants docs’ kids

Alarge number of candidates, about 9.92% of the total aspirants, who make it to the IITs, are children of doctors. Data from the IITs also revealed that one-third of the candidates at the competitive exam last year were children of government servants or public sector employees. But they were the third-most successful, as children of engineers came a close second to those with doctor parents. Children of entrepreneurs were only 4.48% of successful candidates, a fact experts attributed to the fact that many businessmen preferred to send their children abroad for education. 

Rectifications in 2nd round promised
    The information, specifically the data on the home state quota of 50% for NIT seat allotment, did not match properly. The mismatch between the two databases led to wrong allotment which ran across the spectrum of institutes and branches,” the notice to students read.
    “There was no time to test the software. UP and Uttarakhand codes got mixed. This was not supposed to happen. It was our responsibility to ensure bugs are eliminated before the process is put into execution,” NIT director & CSAB chairman Sunil Kumar Sarangi told TOI. A letter dated July 11 sent out to all the students tendered an “unqualified apology”.
    But the institute officials said the flaws had been rectified. The director said in his letter, in capital letters, “I once again seek forgiveness from all students, particularly from those who were erroneously allotted seats yesterday. I sincerely hope that all of you who lost your seats (albeit erroneously allotted) because of the correction will secure seats in the second round of counselling.”