13-year-old cracks IIT exam, again:

ARA: A 13-year-old child prodigy from Bihar's Bhojpur district, who had created history by becoming the youngest student to clear the IIT-JEE entrance exam last year, had cracked the prestigious examination again with an improved ranking this year. Satyam Kumar, whose father is a farmer, secured an all India rank of 679. He had got 8,137th rank last year and took the exam again to improve his ranking. The boy had broken the record of Delhi's Sahal Kaushik last year. Kaushik had cracked the IIT-JEE exam when he was 14. Born on July 20, 1999, Satyam had shown exceptional talent since childhood. He left Patna's Central Public School to move to Kota in Rajasthan to join an IIT coaching institute. The institute's director, R K Verma, took his test and found his so talented that he helped finance his studies for one of the toughest examinations in the country. Satyam, who passed his Class X examination from a Kota school, said he wants to be a scientist to contribute to aeronautical and aerospace engineering. At a function organized to felicitate him, Satyam told students to solve difficult problems of mathematics and physics playfully through duplet method. Source: TIMES OF INDIA URL : www.examhook.com

CBSE: No more sample papers for Class 10, 12

CBSE will no longer issue sample papers for Class 10 and 12 board exams. The board made the decision after it realized that students were identifying particular areas of the syllabus from past year papers and limited their studies to those sections. CBSE has introduced a range of methods that include open book learning and application based questions to discourage rote learning. The number of students scoring wel lhas increased over the years. The CBSE is reported to believe that this has more to do with students identifying sections to study rather than students becoming smarter. The number of students scoring above90 percent has doubled from 2008 to 2013. The news may come as a surprise to students as sample papers have been available from 1993. Studying from past year papers was acommon revision technique for students across boards. Students from next year may have to study the entire syllabus. One positive aspect that may come out of CBSE’s decision is that colleges may have to lower cut-offs. Top colleges have extremely high cut-offs owing to high scores in Class 12 exams. Source: Indian Colleges URL : www.examhook.com