MUMBAI: If you've made it to an Indian Institute of Technology, you no longer need to travel to the campus to book your seat. The tech schools have decided to take the counselling process online, thus allowing students to submit their preferences a mix of streams and IITs from home.

Currently, students from across the country travel to the closest IIT after they make their mark in the Joint Entrance Exam. "Now, all general category students will be allowed to submit their preferences online. However, all other candidates will have to travel to the nearest IIT campus for the same as they have to submit their certificates to us,'' said IIT-Guwahati director Gautam Barua.

The decision to conduct the counselling online was taken when the directors recently met in Chennai to discuss plans for the upcoming JEE in April 2010. In another key decision, the IIT directors agreed to centrally conduct two or more rounds of seat allocation, to ensure that seats don't go abegging.

While this year, the IITs for the first time conducted a second round of seat allotments, it was held at the institute level. Students who took admission were offered internal betterment before the second allotment had taken place. So, if a student with a ranking of 1,104 in JEE-2009 did not take the seat allotted to him in IIT-B, another candidate with a lower ranking got his place (if he had opted for that subject and IIT-B in his preference form).

Also, if a candidate signed up at IIT-Delhi in the first round, she were not allowed to move to say IIT-Madras or IIT-Bombay even if a slot opened there and these institutes were listed in his/her choices. "Now, we want to remove that barrier. A student will be allowed to move out of one IIT and join another, if he prefers to do so in the later rounds of seat allotment,'' added Barua. In another relief to students, the IITs have decided to put out the answer key of the entrance exam, soon after the exam ends.

source: TOI