Few institutions in India carry the popularity of the IITs. Getting into them requires intense preparation and intellectual discipline. JEE ranks and GATE scores used for admissions to India’s premier institutions are, therefore, important. Recruiters, too, have often treated them as an indication of a student’s ability. Recently, however, the All IITs Placement Committee has decided to exclude JEE ranks, GATE scores, percentiles, and other such credentials from standard placement resumes. Even if some consider it unnecessary, this decision deserves wide support.
Beyond entrance ranks
An entrance examination captures a snapshot of a student’s performance on a single day. A degree reflects years of learning. Between the two lie classrooms, laboratories, projects, internships, peer learning, teamwork, participation in various extended curricular activities, failures, recoveries and personal growth. If campus recruitment continues to privilege entrance rank, it quietly reduces the IIT experience as a whole to an interlude between JEE and employment. That is unfair to the student and to the institution.
To treat a student’s entrance rank as permanent proof of ability is a constricted view. A more serious view examines whether a student has solved problems, completed meaningful projects, worked in teams, built prototypes, written code, contributed to research, communicated clearly and shown the maturity required in the workplace. Preparing oneself for work requires competence and a willingness to be a lifelong learner. It does not rely on the entrance test score alone.
The Committee’s decision is also consistent with the National Education Policy (NEP 2020), which emphasises the need to move beyond an examination-dominated system. The policy asks us to focus on creating an ecosystem that enables students to develop critical thinking, creativity, ethical judgment, problem-solving, and holistic development. If our higher education institutions are expected to provide these capabilities to our students, why shouldn’t placement systems recognise them?
There could be another, more sensitive reason for the decision. It could be possible to infer social category or admission route from entrance ranks by comparing programme-level opening and closing ranks. Such inference may not always be explicit, but it can influence perception. What recruiters should be looking for is not how the student entered IIT, but what the student can do now.
Both public institutions and recruiters play important roles in designing hiring processes that reduce avoidable bias. Removing entrance ranks from standard resumes prevents a potentially prejudicial and often irrelevant data point from becoming a default filter. Some may say that recruiters need filters. Nobody is contesting that need. But employers already have better instruments. They use CGPA or CPI thresholds, technical interviews, coding tests, case discussions, design tasks, project reviews, research work, communication abilities and behavioural assessments. It has long been recognised that JEE or GATE scores do not reliably capture these.
A student’s entrance rank may say something about past preparation. It cannot say enough about future contributions. With enhanced access, our higher education institutions attract many first-generation learners, rural students, non-English-medium students, and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Some may take time to adjust to the new environment. Many grow substantially during their IIT years. A fair placement process should, therefore, allow them to present what they have achieved years after obtaining their entrance scores.
Student well-being should be our top priority. If recruiting methods make ranks part of students’ identities, they become a burden for many students. When the recruitment process turns ranks into hierarchies, students can experience anxiety and comparison. IITs are places where students grow beyond the circumstances of entry. Then why can’t our placement system let students know that the work they do after admission matters, not their ranks?
This does not mean that entrance examinations are unimportant. But the selection process for admission and the selection process for recruitment are different altogether. The first decides entry into an academic programme. The second should judge current professional readiness. Confusing the two weakens both.
The decision to move away from publicising only the highest salary packages also deserves attention. Highest packages create headlines. They may lead students and parents to believe that high packages are normal, when in reality they are often outliers. Median salary is a better representative measure to get an overall sense of how the larger graduating cohort has fared. It is important to encourage a more mature public conversation on employment by emphasising median salaries.
A better signal
Together, these decisions show welcome institutional seriousness. They recognise that campus recruitment must assess students for what they have learnt and become during their time at the institution. A fair placement system should not allow an old rank to overshadow evidence of a student’s present competence and readiness for work. Other higher education institutions would do well to draw from this example.
Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, Chairman, Review Committee for NEP 2020, Ministry of Education, GoI and former Vice-Chancellor, JNU and former Chairman, UGC. Views are personal
Published - July 13, 2026 12:36 am IST
