80,217 youngsters nationwide appeared for ISAT 2011 which will be conducted by ISRO’s Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST).
For this second edition of the ISAT entrance, IIST had announced 23 centres across the country, with two in Kerala Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode.
Hall tickets were issued to 93,300 candidates of whom 80,217 appeared on Saturday. In Thiruvananthapuram alone, 11,609 hall tickets were issued and in Kozhikode, 5,081. IIST hopes to get some of the best young minds for its three year B.Tech courses avionics, aerospace engineering and physical sciences which have a total of 157 seats.
There was one centre at Port Blair also this time. Originally, IIST had drawn its students from the IIT-JEE. From 2010, the Institute had started conducting its own entrance examination. 2011 is a big year for the IIST. The first batch of students is scheduled to pass out and join various ISRO units by June-end.
Some found the mathematics component relatively easier. “The questions were tough. But maths was easier compared to physics and chemistry.
IIST was established four years ago to address the human resources crunch faced by the space agency. The Institute which has former President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam as its Chancellor, had recently shifted to a permanent campus at Valiyamala in Thiruvananthapuram district.
The USP of the IIST is that, besides numbering among a handful of its type across the world, the students are inducted into ISRO units. Job is guaranteed by the time they graduate.
It was really nice to see good info here. Getting seat in iist is very good and one of my cousin got seat in 2011.He got all India 3