HSEE 2008

Nearly 1500 boys and girls will be appearing for the third edition of the Humanities and Social Sciences Entrance Examination (HSEE 2008). They will be competing for just 34 seats in the five-year integrated Master of Arts degree course offered at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Madras).The courses were introduced in 2006. IIT Madras has restricted the student intake to just 30 seats – 10 each in the specialisations of Development Studies, Economics and English Studies.With the Supreme Court clearing the union government's proposal to introduce reservation for the Other Backward Classes, IIT Madras has gone ahead and increased the number of seats by four this year taking the tally of the number of seats to 34.The aspirants will be required to answer 180 questions in as many minutes. The examination will test the reading, grammar and vocabulary skills of candidates in the English language section, which constitutes 25% of the question paper.The analytical and quantitative ability section constitutes another 25%. The remaining 50% of the questions are from the General Studies, which encompasses Indian Economics, Indian Society, Contemporary World Affairs in the Post-World War II period, Environment and Ecology.IIT Madras had introduced the course in order to cater to the manpower requirements of the academia, the government and NGOs. In these sectors, the demand for well-trained postgraduates in humanities and social sciences far exceeded the supply.A distinctive feature of this programme is that for the first two years the students are given a wide exposure to the various aspects of humanities and social sciences.The students will be introduced to a variety of common subjects related to all the three major disciplines offered from the third year.Students who get selected also get an opportunity to learn along with their counterparts in the fields of engineering and technological science.IIT Delhi is in the process of starting a two-year MA programme, which should begin in the next year or two.IIT Madras started a five-year integrated MA programme in economics, English and development studies in 2006.IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur have had a five-year integrated MSc programme in economics for the last few years. Admission is through the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE). Both the institutes offer 25 seats and economics, as a subject at the senior secondary level, is not a prerequisite.IIT Kharagpur recently set up a law school (Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law), which focuses on intellectual property rights and law related to technology.The school offers a three-year LLB degree with specialisation in intellectual property rights and also conducts PhD programmes. It is the only IIT to have such a programme. mangement courses are also offered at all the IITs, except Guwahati, as well as at Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore.The Joint Management Entrance Test (JMET) is the common admissions test for the two-year post-graduate management programmes at these institutes.