KVPY Exam is cancelled by DST: Now What’s Next?

KVPY stands for Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojna is a national-level fellowship exam conducted by the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bangalore. Funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, the exam’s goal is to discover students with research skills and aptitude, assist them in realizing their academic potential, encourage them to pursue research careers in Science, and ensure the enhancement of the country’s top scientific brains for research and development.

Is the KVPY Exam cancelled?

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) has decided to cancel the KVPY exam. From 2022 onwards, KVPY will be subsumed with the INSPIRE fellowship scheme. The cancellation of the exam will not affect the ongoing fellowship. The current KVPY fellows will continue to receive their scholarships till the end of their respective tenure, as established by DST.

Students from class 11th to 1st year of any undergraduate program in Basic Sciences namely B.Sc./B.S./B.Stat./B.Math./Int. M.Sc./M.S. in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Biology are eligible to apply and selected students are awarded scholarships till pre-PhD levels. The aptitude test was conducted followed by an interview to select the deserving candidates for scholarship.

In addition to fellowships, the test was utilized by several elite institutes, such as the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), for admission to UG and UG, PG integrated courses until the last year.

From 2022 onwards, the KVPY test will be integrated with INSPIRE and administered by the Department of Science and Technology on behalf of the Government of India.

Reason for cancelling KVPY:

As pointed out by the officials “The June 1 review revealed that the exam’s operational costs were too high. The exam really cost us more than the value of the fellowships that were being awarded. So we decided to cancel the exam and use the saved money to grant more scholarships. As a result, we will begin awarding more than 300 such fellowships in the future.”

Moreover, The Madurai High Court has directed the DST to conduct the exam in all of the Constitution’s scheduled languages, which would further increase the operational cost. Also, students were taking the examination to rehearse for JEE or NEET rather than to study basic sciences. As a result, the exam’s purpose was not fulfilled.

“This exam is unnecessary because it will be a duplicate of other exams that students take. So we decided to cancel the exam and incorporate the programme into INSPIRE.” further explained by the officials.

What is INSPIRE?

The Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (or INSPIRE) is another fellowship scheme managed by the DST. Established in 2007, and merged with KVPY from 2022 onwards, the program aims to encourage students to pursue science careers by providing fellowships and scholarships.

However, the government does not hold an exam to recognize INSPIRE talent. It is predicated on the “effectiveness of the present educational structure,” which includes success in…

• Class 12 Board examinations,
• Entrance exams such as JEE (Main) and NEET.
• Talent search Olympiads such as NTSE

As declared by the officials “Meritorious students who have performed well in other national entrance examinations, such as JEE (Main) and NEET, and are ranked among the top 10,000 are now eligible for this fellowship. The eligibility criteria will be the same as for the INSPIRE Scholarship for Higher Education (or SHE), which students can check online from its official website https://online-inspire.gov.in/“

Fellowships and scholarships are awarded through the SHE component of the INSPIRE programme in two ways.

1. Direct Mode: Students in the top 1% of the Class XII Board exam can get scholarships from the SHE component directly.
2. Institute Mode: Students enrolled in IITs, IISERs, NIISERs, among others, are eligible to apply for this scholarship if they are in the top 10,000 ranks of the entrance test they qualified.

The KVPY programme, which has been merged with INSPIRE, will be delivered through the institute mode.