In a big shock to students who are preparing for IIT JEE joining coaching centers and joining dummy schools for their class 12, HRD Ministry has announced that common aptitude-cum-advanced knowledge test will replace the IIT Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) in 2013 and the bigger shock is that 40% weight-age is given to class 12 marks.

The NIT Council and IIT’s have approved this proposal and are going to make a formal announcement at a meeting of the Joint Admission Board (JAB) on February 18.”The common entrance exam will have two elements — simple aptitude testing to assess scholastic levels, and an advanced section which a student can choose to either continue with or skip” Said an official as quoted on Indian Express.

Reportedly as planned earlier Common Engineering Test will not be implemented for all the 15 Lakh Engineering colleges but only the central funded institutions, i.e, 15 IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), 30 NITs (National Institutes of Technology), 4 IIITs (Indian Institutes of Information Technology), IISERs (Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research) and a few deemed universities will be having a common engineering entrance test from year 2013.