"I just wanted to get it over with," says Devika A, who appeared for the Join Entrance Examination JEE Main architecture exam in Thiruvananthapuram this week. Having taken a gap year in 2019, the 19-year-old spent a significant part of this year and the last, preparing for the national entrance test in the hope of securing admission to one of the IITs. She was gearing up for her second attempt at the JEE Main, when the pandemic gained strength. Originally scheduled for April 2019, the exam was postponed to June and later shifted to July, before the September dates were announced.

The day that Devika appeared for the exam, India had already recorded the world-s highest single-day spike in COVID-19 cases. "This was probably not the best time to write the JEE. Hundreds of students from across Kerala would be thronging at the centre to appear for the paper. I knew it was a huge risk," she admits. "But I was worried that I-d lose another year, and honestly, I was drained after all those months of studying."

Devika-s sentiments were echoed by several others who participated in a recent nationwide survey conducted by Local Circles, a community social media platform. Of the 10,600 respondents from across 244 districts, 63 per cent felt that the exams should be held in September as planned. Only 31 per cent wanted them to be postponed to December or later. Not everyone, though, is happy with the Centre-s decision to go ahead with JEE Main and the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test NEET, exams conducted by the National Testing Agency NTA, for students planning to pursue engineering, architecture and medicine.