Tapas is a project by the Rashtrotthana Parishat to enable students from socially and economically backward classes to get proper guidance to crack IIT JEE exams. Boys whose family income is below 2 LPA, are in class 10th at the moment, and had secured at least 80% in class 9th are eligible for the TAPAS entrance exam 2019-2020 which will be held to admission to the program.
TAPAS entrance exam 2019-2020 registrations are now open. Students can apply online until December 20, 2019. The exam will be held on December 25, 2019. Result of the entrance exam shall be announced in January 14, 2020. After which, the authorities will carry out background verification from February to March.
Then the selection list will be published on March 20, 2020. Students who are in the said list will attend selection camp just after the class 10th state board exams. After which, the final result will be announced at the end of the camp.
Selected students will get 2 years pre university education along with IIT JEE coaching, free accommodation, and food. PU education will be provided in CBSE syllabus. Coaching will be done by experienced teachers from BASE coaching, which is a reputed coaching institute in the state.
Interested and eligible students can apply through the official website of TAPAS Karnataka that is tapasedu.org. Besides, brochures related to the scheme are sent to most high schools in the state, and concerned authorities can be contacted by students for more information.
As soon as one fills the online form, hall ticket is generated. Students need to print the same in order to appear in the exam. The website further provides sample question papers, which, students can refer before appearing for the exam. As per one of the papers, the selection test comprises of a single question paper with two parts. The sample paper has 13 MCQs in paper I, on quantitative abilities, and part II has 39 questions from PCM.
The program in itself is free of cost. The whole idea behind it is to help students who are bright and meritorious but cannot afford tuition and coaching, to get the same for free and compete with other students who are getting them. By enabling such meritorious students crack the JEE exams, their future career prospects get duly enhanced.
Initiated in 2012, the program selects around 30 to 40 students every year. In the year 2017, Shashwath Bhandary secured rank 37 in the Karnataka Common Entrance Test. In the same year Basavaraj H D bagged the 67th rank in CET, also from TAPAS program. Two others, namely Aanjinappa and Balaji G R secured 119th and 256th positions respectively.
This year, M Sudeep Gowda from the program got 99.88 percentile in JEE Main, and Niranjan Mahabaleshwara Hegde got 99.7 percentile.
At the moment, the program is only for boys. However in future, steps will be taken to equip the same for girls as well.
