IITK Admits 4 Errors in JEE 2014 Paper, More Inaccuracies Suspected to Arise

It comes as a shock to see errors in entrance question papers, especially when the institutes involved are the supreme IITs, and worse still, thisphenomenon repeats itself year on year. Now as just two days are left forstudents and other stakeholders to send their queries on answer keys of JEE Advanced 2014, IIT Kharagpur has conceded errors in four questions worth 12 marks. Well, it wouldn’t be surprising if some more inaccuracies would be found, by the time the deadline of giving queries gets over on Thursday.

Out of the four inaccurate questions in the entrance papers, one is from physics and three from chemistry. Where each question is worth three marks, there is no negative marking for incorrect answers. 

In physics section, the correct answer to question number 18 is a single digit integer. Nonetheless, due to uncertainty in the same, IIT has announced two correct answers. Similarly in chemistry, for question number 33, two correct answers have been announced as well. 

It is being pointed out that many candidates did not darken the bubbles, as they realized that there were two correct answers. This is so because in case if a candidate darkens more than one bubble, the involved answer becomes null and void. Thus the candidates were in a dilemma during the exam where each second counts. Would grace marks really justify on the time they lost on such ambiguous questions?

The third error is in chemistry question number 26. As per the answer keys released last week, there are two sets of correct answers- 'A' and 'C'; as well as 'C' only. A student commented on the same- ‘It took me a lot of time to find out if option C is right or wrong, thus I could not attempt it due to ambiguity of the question. Finally, I could not darken any of the correct answer." 

Fourth error, also in chemistry, was a printing error. The answer key to question number 29 shows two sets of correct answers- ABD or AD. Now due to printing error, the option B is shown as both right and wrong. 

Not just the erroneous questions, but problems with imprecise marking scheme have also been highlighted by students. Now for instance, if model answer is A, B and C, and a candidate has darkened all the bubbles i.e., A, B, C and D. So he has darkened all bubbles corresponding to the correct answer as well as darkened one extra bubble D which is incorrect. In such a case one student asks, ‘Since there are no negative marks for incorrect answers, would the student get full marks for darkening all the correct answers?’

Students are also questioning why IIT did not upload the marking scheme of JEE Advanced 2014, along with the answer key. Marking scheme of previous years JEE along with question answers is also unknown. But the larger question being asked is how errors keep recurring in JEE question papers, repeatedly year after year. And this happens despite a team of 60learned professors involved in question paper setting.