CHENNAI: The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) on Friday announced that it has become the first IIT in the country to introduce admissions for sportspersons in its undergraduate programmes.
"The Institute will be introducing the 'Sports Excellence Admission' (SEA) from the academic year 2024-2025, under which it will offer two supernumerary seats, of which one will be exclusively for female students, in each of its undergraduate programs for Indian Nationals. This initiative is to recognize and reward talented students who have excelled in sports. This program encourages deserving students to pursue higher education while continuing to excel in their sports, " a release from IIT-Madras read.
Announcing the program, Director of IIT-M, V Kamakoti said, "This is a very progressive step to ensure holistic education as envisaged in the National Education Policy 2020. This step is to acknowledge achievements in sports by young children and also, give them an opportunity to further understand their respective sports from an engineering and technology perspective. IIT Madras has added many sports-related electives and is also having many state-of-the-art facilities."
"In addition, we will also be launching a Sports Complex with advanced equipment in the near future. We are extremely happy that the 'Sports Excellence Admission' is happening, starting July 2024. We wish that our alumni will become world-renowned sportspersons, " he noted.
The admission process through SEA will require a student to qualify JEE (Advanced) but would not be through Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) portal rather through a separate portal operated by IIT Madras (https://jeeadv.iitm.ac.in/sea/).
To be eligible for admission through this program, candidates must have secured a position in the Common Rank List (CRL) or category-wise rank list in the JEE (Advanced), and must have won at least one medal in any National/International-level sports competition in the last four years.
A separate 'Sports Rank List' (SRL) will be prepared based on the total score obtained by the candidates based on their performance in a specific list of sports. The seat allotment will be done based on this list.