Some are engineers because they are born for that, some are engineers because they consider engineering leads them to a glory profession. However, in Indian education system, if anyone needs an official engineer tag they have to crack an entrance exam, until and unless they have a huge bank balance to purchase an engineering seat from any private engineering college (even a certificate from private university). It does not mean that the entire private education system is corrupt and only the entrance exams conducted by government organizations are valid. Notwithstanding the fact that, both JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) Main and JEE Advanced are the top notch engineering entrance exams in the country, there are few colleges and universities in the private sector, which ensure integrity and it is worth attending their entrance tests.

Why Entrance Exams are Necessary for Engineering?

Fortunately, our education system has been designed in such a way that 12 years of schooling will give students credit of all subjects. However, for engineering aspirants and their parents, the whole knowledge is concentrated on three big alphabets – PCM (Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics). It is due to the fact that, the door to engineering will open only if a student can answer maximum multiple choice questions correctly in the given time. These exams only test their knowledge in PCM not the talent in literature or any other subject, which are not belonging to the engineering curricula. Under these circumstances, students and their parents are happy to depend on coaching institutions, which had unchecked mushrooming growth without any regulatory mechanisms.   

While many more arguments have risen against this state of affairs, the system here is still glued with conducting entrance exams for engineering and the question is ‘why.’ According to many educationalists from the engineering education sector, the curricula of engineering is complex and a student who has passion towards engineering subjects and strong fundamentals in PCM can only excel in this intense study process. It leads to a need of filtering mechanism before engineering admission to stop any Tom, Dick and Harry to join one of the toughest courses in the world. Elimination of 98 percentage applicants every year in JEE is a mere example to concrete the thought that engineering needs quality intakes.   

Cracking is not an Easy Task  

It is true that engineering entrance exams are one of the toughest tests to clear. If 12^th exam is a test of memory, then entrance exams are tests of speed. Those who are passionate and fascinated about engineering should start necessary preparations from the high school level and the doors of good engineering institutes are always open for them. On the other hand, there are many students, who think that it is just about choosing one good option from the given four. This is just a misapprehension and they should remember the fact that every wrong answer can push them back by another thousand candidates who marked that question correctly.

 While the whole preparations will come to the climax on the day of exam and it is important to give the best performance at those couple of life-deciding hours. As per the analysis of many entrance question papers, majority of them follow a single pattern; 25 percent easy questions, 50 percent average questions and 25 percentage difficult questions. Experts say it is better to attempt theoretical questions first and then questions which require calculation. Spending some time on filtering the questions according to the difficulty level will save more time than attempting them in the serial order given in the question paper. More than everything, keep in mind that the best of all comes out when they are calm and composed. Approaching each question without panicking the mind is the best trick to crack any of the entrance exams.     

Few Exams that should not be Missed

Engineering entrance exams pan over individual colleges to national level. Everything has its own importance as they are conducted for choosing most skilled and competent candidates for admission into engineering institutes across the nation. From this plethora of entrance exams, JEE Main, JEE Advanced and BITSAT (Birla Institute of Technology and Science Admission Test) are few exams, which have been given a separate slot by the candidates. It is obvious that performing well in these exams will lead the students to any one of the top ranked engineering institute and that will help them to ‘settle’ in the life. More than future settlements, preparing for such tough exams will give the students more confidence to attend any other exams and also helps in facing the challenging few questions prepared by top class authorities.

In the near future, the engineer entrance exams may be brought to a halt. However, these are one of the sources of knowledge and a scenario that teaches students to calculate faster. Above all, these are also among the challenges to be hurdled in the early stages of life. Nothing can substitute the intense and well-concentrated preparations, as there are no shortcuts to success.