Number of female students making IIT entry doubles

MUMBAI: The number of girls joining the IITs has doubled from last year. This time, 1,841female candidates have signed up at the country’s top tech schools as compared to 995 last year. As for boys, as the seventh and final admission round at the IITs closed on Thursday, their number stood at10,101.
This year, the HRD ministry directed the IITs to set aside 800 supernumerary seats for girls and increase their percentage to 14.But the IITs did better: 16.32% of students now are girls.

“The number of girls has increased because of the arrangement of supernumerary seats and because girls have performed well,” said Shalabh S, JEE (Advanced) chairman from IITKanpur.
This year, 28 girls figured in the top 500 ranks, followed by 30 between ranks 501 and 1,000. There are 430 girls in the top 5,000 ranks and 967 in the top 10,000 ranks. A total of 3,028 girls figured in the top 24,500 ranks (see table).
The pool of 1,841 girls includes those who took admission under the supernumerary (present in excess of the normal or requisite number) seats as well as those who joined the gender-neutral quota. Not only did more girls walk past the gates of the IITs, but it upped the female population in popular streams like computer science and electrical engineering.
According to the IITs, female candidates are eligible for a seat from the female-only pool as well as the gender-neutral pool of a programme. So, it may appear that female candidates can reduce the chances of male candidates, who are eligible for only the gender-neutral pool. But a female candidate will compete for a seat in the genderneutral pool only after she fails to get a seat in the female-only pool.
Business rules set by the IITs state that while allocating a seat, the institutes first consider the category and then the gender. For example, consider an OBC-NCL female candidate with a valid general rank. Suppose she is an aspirant of a seat in an academic program. She will be first considered for a seat from the female-only pool of general seats for the programme, followed by the gender-neutral pool of general seats for that programme.
Next year, according to the decision of the Joint Admission Board, additional seats would be created to the extent that girls constitute 17% of the total number of students. Similarly, additional seats will be created to ensure that the percentage of girl students is 20 in 2020.