In a first, IIT Madras has admitted 5 students through sports quota

NEW DELHI: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has admitted five students in its undergraduate engineering programme. Proposed in 2023, IIT Madras is the first one to introduce a sports quota in BTech admissions. Candidates still have to qualify the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced.

Mahesh Panchagnula, head and dean (emeritus), Center for Sports Science and Analytics, IIT Madras said: “As a start five students have been admitted this year. For a first year start and a revolutionary idea for the IITs, we consider this a great start.”

However, when it first announced the policy, IIT Madras had earmarked two seats per BTech branch for sports-quota admissions. It has undergraduate and integrated programmes in over a dozen branches.

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IIT Madras: ‘Olympian as alumnus’

On November 4, the institute inaugurated Sitara Sports Complex on campus. At the inauguration, V Kamakoti, director, IIT Madras stated: “The day is not far off when IIT Madras will have an Olympian as an alumnus. Five National Champions have been admitted under the ‘Sports Excellence Admission’ of IIT Madras, and sure we will be admitting many more sportspersons in this category.”

Panchgnula told Careers360 that the admission process was independently administered by IIT Madras and conducted by the Sports Authority of India (SAI) and not by Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) which usually conducts the admission counselling process for the IITs. Also, the Center for Sports Science and Analytics has signed an MoU with SAI, according to the department website.

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IIT Madras sports quota

Only candidates who qualified JEE Advanced this year were eligible for the “Sports Excellence Admission” (SEA). They had to be on the common rank list and category-wise list to be eligible. Plus, they had to have won at least one medal in the previous four years in a national or international-level competition.

The website states that a separate sports rank list (SRL) was drawn up on the basis of the total scores obtained by the candidates; their performance on any of the 13 specific sporting disciplines was also factored into this. The list of 13 includes chess, cricket, badminton, basketball, football, hockey, squash and a few others.

Panchagnula did not say which sports the students practised or which states they were from.

However, as per a report published in the Fifth Estate, official student media body of IIT Madras, the institute has introduced eight sports electives for students admitted through sports quota. It stated: “The institute has introduced eight sports electives such as ‘Mechanics of Sports’ and offers flexibility in elective choices for incoming sports students. The newly-inducted students need to opt for only 60% of fixed electives and are free to choose the remaining 40% from the sports electives.”

The idea of a sports quota was proposed by Kamakoti in the IIT Council meeting held in 2023. He later told Careers360 that sports serve as a stress relief and help students build the maturity to handle failure.