The IIT-JEE has always been a source of nightmare for a majority of Indian students studying in classes 11 and 12. The intimidation they face as well as the pressure makes the teenagers want to run the other way.
Clearing the JEE is the first step to get into the Indian Institute of Technology, which the most prestigious university in India.
Surprisingly, Australian professors who took a look at the JEE question papers also called the questions "tricky and intimidating".
A video of Australian professors reacting to the questions went viral on social media, with the professors talking about how intimidating the questions were and that the test was literally a race against time. Six Australian professors, including two of Indian origin, were interviewed for the video, posted by a YouTuber, 'Tibees'.
In the video, a Chemistry professor, Dr James Hutchison, said that he will be surprised if a school going student will not find the questions intimidating since he found them slightly so. "I'd probably, you know, leave the exam room crying if I was in year 12 and I had to do this. Yeah, good luck, good luck," he said.
He added that the topics discussed in the examination are usually taught at the university level.
Professor Barry Hughes, a mathematician, pointed out how answering the questions was a race against time. He also spoke about access to training for these types of examinations.
"We all know that in any educational system if you go to a good school, well resourced, with the best teachers and so on like that, you expect a better outcome... But with these race-against-the-clock-style examinations, there's a trade-off between the student's ability in the subject, natural intelligence, and their having been trained to deal with examinations of this type," he said.
Other professors interviewed in the video said that most of the questions here depend on memorizing facts instead of applying concepts. They added that passing the test doesn't necessarily mean they will turn out to be good engineers.
