The IIT's Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Sunday threw a number ofsurprises, including a change in the question pattern, as nearly 400,000students appeared for admission into the country's premier engineeringinstitutes.

"In JEE 2009, the major changes were disappearance of assertion reasoningtype of questions, subjective questions were back in the paper, and negativemarking in (multiple) choice types," according to an analysis of theIIT-JEE 2009 examination by Career Launcher, a counselling firm.

"There was a qualitative shift in the kind of questions asked - these donot require a lot of rigorous problem solving, but rather a fairly goodunderstanding of the concepts and the ability to comprehend and analyse,"it added.

Saurabh Kumar, who is the National Academic Head of Career Launcher, said therewas a change in the pattern that "was slightly difficult as compared tolast year's paper."

"Overall, the number of questions were reduced from 135 last year to 117this year," Kumar added. "Inall, there were 24 subjective questions. Mathematics was the most difficultfollowed by physics and chemistry," he said.

The paper evoked a mixed response from the students as well. While some termedit as very difficult, others said anyone with clear concepts would not havefaced much difficulty.

"The main problem was negative marking and subjective questions that tooso many. They were not expected at all. Overall, the paper was verydifficult," Class XII student Arpit Gupta, who is a student of Bal BhavanPublic School, told IANS.

"Definitely, the diffculty level was high as compared to the last year.But the questions were concept based and required a clear understanding,"said Rakshit Aggarwal, a student of Sachdeva Public School, Rohini.

But Aditya Bindal, a Class XII student of St.Xaviers School, said he "enjoyed"writing the exam.
"We were prepared for the pattern change. So, tackling it was not much ofa difficulty. The questions were concept based. But I was a bit surprised withnegative marking," Bindal said.