CHAPTER ONE - THE EXAM

If you are a science student living in India, you have probably heard of these examinations. JEE, also known as the Joint Entrance Examination comes in 2 flavors namely, Mains (a bit on the easier side) and Advanced (the harder one). It's a competitive examination that aims to select or rather should I say, filter students on the basis of the marks scored by them across 3 main subjects, Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics the syllabus of which is roughly equivalent to the prescribed syllabus of CBSE for 11th and 12th. Students sitting in these examinations can choose for themselves, different colleges and different branches according to the rank achieved by them. Interestingly, the most sought after branch amongst the competitors is CSE. Even students, who had opted for physical education and sports sciences instead of CS/AI/IT during their high school years as a means of avoiding time-invested hard work that otherwise would have caused hindrance in the preparation of JEE want CSE in Indian colleges.

Although the syllabus covered in JEE is the same as the one taught for CBSE and state boards, the level of questions asked goes well beyond what's usually taught in Indian schools. The result? a large number of students opting for these coaching classes, which takes anywhere from 4hrs to 13hrs! of a student's day, messing up with the metabolism of these students, inducing anxiety and stress in the minds of these coaching-takers and diminishing any effort of building one's personality through extracurricular(s). These coaching classes are also notorious for their ways of promoting themselves via students who apparently took their classes to succeed in these exams. Some coaching institutes have even been accused of paying the top rankers high amounts of money just to get them to promote their classes. This creates an ecosystem in India that is not just toxic and detrimental to the mental and physical health of the students but is also a hazard for the education sector. These institutes aren't really concerned about the development of the students since all they care about is profit.

Imagine you are in 10th standard. You have just received your results and you scored a good 94%. Your family is extremely happy about your results and now all eyes are on you as you, will be choosing a stream that will decide your entire career. "I will study Physics!" you say. You always had an interest in physics and math. You had heard stories of scientists like Einstein and C V Raman and how they revolutionized their respective fields in physics. You were envisioning something similar for you and hence decided to choose PCM. But someone in your family sees an ad in the local newspaper about an institute that had 70% selection ratio in IIT. Thinking about your career, your family enrolls you into a similar coaching as well. You study in your school and then in the coaching day by day, week by week. You do decent in your exams and in JEE but through all of this, you realize that you have somehow lost the ability to stay curious in your interested subjects. You don't get the same amount of joy studying these subjects as you did before you had gone for JEE. You are now scared of attempting questions and usually avoid them in fear of getting them wrong. Finally it's time to choose a branch and you, as have been repeatedly told by the coaching teachers, your friends, your relatives, choose a branch completely outside of your interest. And this is how the world loses yet another Raman and Ramanujan. You realize it was all because of that single ad in that newspaper that led to all this. This is how the coaching ecosystem works; they create demand even when there isn't any. The more the demand, the more services they will be able to provide and more the profit they will make. In all of this, the people who suffer are nobody but students...students who cleared these exams but now will have to live with the trauma of going through the rigorous phase of preparation for 2 years and students who weren't able to clear these examinations not because they weren't equally deservable, but maybe because they were exploring things outside of the domain of what JEE asks.

The consequences of this coaching culture are obvious but severe. Almost everyone I knew wanted CSE in IIT(s) bar one (she wanted chemical eng for some reason). I don't think students are the ones to be put to blame in all of this; no 17-18 year old can definitely say what they will find interesting in the next 4 years of their life. The only entity that should be put to blame in this whole fiasco is the one that is profiting off of these exams and this culture, the coaching institutes. Even a country as authoritarian as China, has recognized this problem in regards to their standardized exam, the GAOKAO (basically....their JEE adv) and therefore banned all private coaching institutes(1). Even though this decision has been criticized for its hastiness, the intention behind this decision is pretty clear, to stop over-burdening the assets of their country, the students, us.

In conclusion, the Indian society and the government of India will really have to view the students of this country as, not merely human figures, but young, powerful assets who have the potential to take the nation forward. It's the duty of the government to take some interest in the current education scenario and implement policies that results in the overall development of its students, making sure that streams like arts and humanities are not sidelined by the streams that most people tend to opt for. The fact that we, as science students in India, have to quarrel amongst each other just to save ourselves a seat in an institute that's not even as premier as most people tend to make it out to be, is a rather shameful one. We should not be proud of the fact that the acceptance rate in IIT(s) is lower than that of MIT but we should be ashamed of the fact that we are not even able to accommodate 25% of the whole population that registers for this examination into colleges that offers education which is at least at par with what the IIT(s) have to offer even when the IIT(s) themselves are not the best houses down the lane when the lane in question is universal.