A reportedly circulated message from the Career Development Centre (CDC) at an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) has triggered a lively debate on social media after it advised students to remove JEE and GATE ranks, marks, scores and percentiles from their resumes ahead of the upcoming placement and internship season.The advisory, which is said to be based on guidelines issued by the All IIT Placement Committee (AIPC), calls the move an “important compliance requirement” aimed at maintaining uniformity across IITs. While some have welcomed the reported decision as a step towards fairer, skill-based hiring, others argue that students should be free to showcase achievements they earned through years of hard work.What does the reported advisory say?According to the message being widely shared online, students have been asked not to include JEE Rank, GATE Rank, marks, scores, percentile or similar examination ranking details in their resumes or CVs.The reported communication reads:“Dear Students,Greetings from CDCAs per the guidelines issued by the All IIT Placement Committee (AIPC), students are advised not to include JEE Rank, GATE Rank, marks, scores, percentile, or similar examination ranking details in their resumes/CVS.All IITs are expected to comply with these guidelines to maintain uniformity from the upcoming placement and internship cycle. Therefore, students are requested to review their resumes and ensure that such details are removed before submitting them for any placement or internship-related activities.Kindly treat this as an important compliance requirement and update your resumes accordingly.For any clarification, please contact the CDC team through your respective student coordinators.”The authenticity of the message has not been independently verified by TOI Education, and there has been no official public statement from the AIPC on the matter at the time of writing.Viral X post questions the moveThe discussion gained traction after X user Garvit Sethi (@garvit_sethii) shared the reported advisory and questioned the rationale behind it.In his post, he wrote: “IITs are telling students to remove JEE ranks, GATE ranks, percentiles and scores from resumes in the name of ‘uniformity.’Why should hard earned achievements be hidden? If a student worked for years to secure a top rank, that accomplishment is part of their merit and profile.Placements should reward competence, not suppress evidence of it. Uniformity should not come at the cost of transparency.General Category students should oppose this move and demand the freedom to showcase their academic achievements. Merit deserves recognition, not censorship!”The post quickly attracted thousands of views and prompted users to weigh in with sharply differing opinions.Social media divided over ‘uniformity’ vs ‘merit’Many users questioned why entrance examination performance should be omitted from resumes at institutions where admission itself is based on highly competitive examinations.One user, Soumyadeep P. (@investwithpaul), wrote: “Why should there be ‘uniformity’ in one of the most competitive colleges in the country after clearing one of the most competitive exams? ‘Uniformity’ is bullshit.Also what they’re trying to achieve will not work. Good companies and recruiters are not stupid. The skill difference between the people that they’re trying to hide will be clearly visible in the GPA, hiring online assessments, interviews, etc.”Another user, Someone somewhere (@thakursameers), argued: “Not at all justified. You have earned your marks through sheer hard work and no one can take away your right to show it with pride.”Similarly, Rajarshi Guha (@onlyrajarshi) said: “The rank and percentile is one of the achievements of the student, it’s not correct to remove them.”However, several users felt the reported guideline was neither unusual nor detrimental to placements.An IIT alumnus, Samar Singh (@samarknowsit), remarked: “I graduated from an IIT in 2003 and back then also we didnt include all this crap, companies had that info anyways.”Another user, logical Thoughts (@theabhinavkumar), echoed a similar sentiment: “Usually company test in there own merit, in my mba college also it was same so nothing new. Its helps college in placement. If you are good you will anyway standout. Life is beyond mugging up books and getting marks. You need prove now with words.”Some users also argued that resumes should highlight present-day skills rather than past examination scores. One post read: “Judge me on what I built in college, not how I scored in school. Real merit is who you are today, not who you were at seventeen.”Others viewed the reported move as a way to make resumes more focused.As user Sitabhra Ghosh (@SitabhraG) put it:b”Won’t this rather improve a CV? Like mentioning only the Required Skills for the Job? or am I looking at something wrongly?”At the same time, the debate also veered into broader discussions around merit, reservation policies and hiring practices, with several users expressing contrasting and often strongly worded opinions.For now, the reported advisory has reignited an old question that surfaces every placement season: Should recruiters evaluate students primarily on their entrance examination performance, or should resumes focus on skills, projects, internships and achievements earned during college? Until an official clarification is issued, the conversation continues to gather momentum across social media.
