The last All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) was marred by lack of amenities at the centres located in Guntur, Warangal and Tirupati. While some of the centres had no power supply during the examination, others did not have enough space to accommodate all students. The B Tech paper also had some mistakes. From next year on AIEEE along with IIT-Joint Entrance Examination will be replaced by Indian Science Engineering Eligibility Test (ISEET).

This was the first time that the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) conducted the examination in small cities instead of major ones. The intention was to draw students from Tier-1 cities to take the newly introduced online examinations which will be conducted on weekends starting May 7 and ending with May 24. However, analysts said that most students who registered for the examination would have opted for AIEEE's pen and paper test.

A total of 35,320 students appeared for examination from Warangal while 30,700 appeared from Guntur. According to parents, most students based in Hyderabad had taken the examination from Warangal centres which lacked basic amenities. Students from Vizag and Vijayawada would have opted for centres in Guntur. The number of students who wrote the examination from centres in Tirupati stood at 14,500, a figure lesser than districts. "Most students from Tirupati opted for centres in Tamil Nadu as they had better facilities," an education official said. "The students who stuck to centres in the state, however, faced major issues with regard to basic amenities. Also, students who went to the districts before the examination had to face problems in finding accommodation," said V Kumar, dean, Chaitanya Group of Institutions.

Meanwhile, officials accepted that there were errors in the B Tech section of the examination. In chemistry section, Code C, question number 11 and 24, had more than one answers. In mathematics, code C, question number 36 was ambiguous with no answers. Also, in math question number 51 the given data was not sufficient to get an answer. B Arch question paper was comparatively easy with math section throwing up little surprises.

AIEEE, the offline version of which was conducted here on Sunday, proved to be a simple paper when compared to the previous year. "Students had to answer a total of 90 questions having 360 marks. The pattern was similar to last year. While math and chemistry papers were easy, physics paper had some lengthy questions," said Uma Shanker, AIEEE and IIT-JEE coordinator, Chaitanya Group.