With the IITs lowering the admission criterion to 75 per cent in the school-leaving exam, a long chapter in the ping-pong game between the IIT admission council and aspirants has hopefully come to an end. Last year the criterion was the top 20 percentile in the school-leaving examination which, for the CBSE, translated to 78 per cent. That had left about 200 students high and dry. That was, however, only the latest in a series of changes that the IITs have recommended apropos their entrance procedure over the years. With several lakh students appearing for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), the importance of entry requirements cannot be emphasized enough. The question assumes special significance in light of the massive coaching industry that rides on JEE, and whose fortunes are closely aligned to what the IITs decide their admission procedure should be.

One might wonder how someone who can crack those tough questions on the JEE can, simultaneously, manage not to achieve even 78 per cent in the Board exam.The truth is, serious aspirants for IIT-JEE start preparing for the exam right from Class IX. At the coaching centre I work for (which specializes in MBA training), one SAT aspirant, currently in Class XII, is in the fourth year of his IIT-JEE training. The entire economy of Kota today is predicated on schools and coaching institutes that have built a symbiotic relationship around the JEE. There are few, if any, admission requirements to these schools, and absence from classes is ignored. Students then become masters at the learning methodology needed to crack IIT-JEE, which is objective in nature. The school process, on the other hand, stresses on subjective answers, which these aspirants have spent no time learning. No wonder they achieve high ranks in the JEE but don’t perform half as well in their school-leaving exam.

To be sure, a theorem is a theorem, and if one knows it, one should be able to either apply it (objective) or explain it (subjective). But to be able to clear a subjective exam requires skills in language, which the IIT aspirant has no time for. Such is the competition at IIT-JEE coaching institutes, and such the race to be faster and better, that mastering “tricks” and beating the next person to the answer is preferred to figuring out how concepts may dovetail together to produce an idea. (And let’s not even talk about the complete lack of awareness vis–à–vis social sciences.)

The admission preparation industry, meanwhile, gets bigger and bigger. There are institutes that help with English-speaking and general etiquette. Every exam under the sun is now covered by coaching institutes. The thrust, naturally, is on clearing the test, not on building well-rounded individuals. This is not to attribute any ill will to those who run such institutes. The competition to survive is intense and there is no time to think of the student’s overall development.

After passing Class XII, like all good Indian children I too took the IIT entrance exam. This was back in the day when they had a screening test followed by a main exam. I cleared the screening test but did not make it through the main. Which is when it was decided that I would study at an IIT coaching centre in Delhi.

Bags packed, goodbyes said, tears shed, I arrived in Delhi and promptly found myself in a slum called Begumpur behind SarvapriyaVihar in south Delhi. The coaching centre had rented a building there which housed some 30 of us guinea pigs. It was a proper slum, with drains that ran next to the houses, and a potent smell of cowdung in the air. Yet, boys – all boys, there were no girls – from all over the country lived there and prepared to unlock the Holy Grail. There were no coolers in what was May in Delhi, so we slept on the terrace. The giant steel container in which we kept our dirty plates was used to cook the Sunday lunch.

From 9 to 5 we walked the little distance to the institute’s premises and attended classes that discussed questions which were several notches more complex than what I had been used to. There was a burly gentleman from Haryana who looked less Math teacher and more wrestler. He stressed endlessly on how he had sent several successive batches to IITs, and as proof, did sums mentally and recited uncalled-for tables. The Physics teacher was a paan-chewing man from Benares, hair slick with flowery oil, a generous teeka crossing his forehead, warm puris sitting tender in his stomach. He always entered class visibly suspicious of what the students might spring on him. He started his sessions with the toughest problems, and spent the rest of the time confusing students with likely approaches to solving them. I do not remember learning a single thing in his class.

I was miserable there. I could not understand how no one from my family had seen that it was impossible to live, let alone study, in a place like Begumpur. Our next-door neighbour was a butcher whose hen shrieked for dear life every morning. I had never lived away from home until then and the hellishness of my surroundings made the experience worse.

I am told the scenario is much-changed today. That there are proper hostels in cities like Kota and Coimbatore that provide both comfort and privacy to JEE aspirants. However, one can’t help but marvel at the entire enterprise. What does it say about our education system if we need to send our wards away for four-odd years to crack a national exam? What does it say about the quality of our schools and teachers? Worse, what does it say about our system which has, over the years, produced such few centres of excellence, that one must literally overturn one’s life to secure admission to one of them?

For now, let’s just thank God that aspirants can at least look forward to a lower admission criterion!