When Tamil Nadu government, served an order to cancel the entrance examinations for Medical/Engineering collge seats, I thought of it as a welcoming move. It was certainly one. The idea of taking the entrance exams out, was to help the rural students to be on par with the urban lot who have abundant oppurtunities of getting trained for entrance examinations. This certainly gives an upper hand for the city folks over the rural dudes. The number of Agarwal’s and Subramaniam’s are more in urban areas to teach entrance exams syllabus for a hefty sum of money. So you see this line of TVS scooties and BSA SLRs being parked in KK Nagar even from 4 am in the morning while the rural folks are still busy milking their cows.
But we have to admit, when there are different standards of education system like the CBSE, Matric and State Board in India, it’s tough to decide the right candidates for Medical/Engg colleges without having a common examination. The entrance examination which was in effect was doing this balancing very effectively. However it had these pitfalls of not enough entrance exam training centers for the rural students. What’s welcoming out of this whole hungama, is that the high court, apart from dismissing the govt’s order, has sent out a positive note to come up with a ‘third formula’ of cleansing these differences in education system/entrance examinations which would be help the ovehaul the system in the long run. Atleast, it made me believe that we have a few ‘Rules Ramanujams’, alive and kicking.
TN govt walks away with the cake for bringing this debate to life, High Court gets a applause for streamlining the debate and at the end, I only wish the winners are the students. Not trying to be cliched here but I still strongly believe in the system of government and law in country while I hate censors for films. Kind of double standards but then isn’t this a paradoxical world ?
kirukkal.com 
23 responses to “Triple E- Examining Entrance Exams”
Paradoxical world— Mos def it is. And i can so naturally visualise the bikes parked in kknagar at 4 in the morning…hehe..anyways..i have tagged you in my blog. Take a peek!
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Entrance exam was heavily loaded in favor of state board syallabus, with some problems being a straight lift from the state boards books – so i dont think the exam was balancing
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“I only wish the winners are the students” Somehow students have always been the losers. Always. One way or the other in TN. That too, with the entrance exam gone and with 3000 centums in the state and 2000 seats in the Govt. colleges (so to speak, to convey the general idea and not an exact figure) life is going to be very difficult, atleast for people who think they have no life other than being an Engineer/Doctor. And now this whole idea that in case of a tie in the ranking system, date of birth is given in a priority. ANd if that too matches, then lot will be picked. And with the number of centums in the examinations, most of the students will have to go through this tantrum. Imagine a person losing out a seat (again, if he/she was keen on Engg/Medicine) inspite of getting 599/600. No need to imagine, actually. There will be lots and lots of such cases this year. Rash move by the Govt.
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But I hope that the new syllabus for this year for XII students will be very tough and may not allow them to score as high as they are scoring now.
The move by the govt. to cancel the entrance exams are welcome, but the timing of announcing it was bad and created utter chaos among the students and parents.
And LG, I think Matric. system is available till 10th std and only CBSE/State Board/ISCE are available after that.
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I think, these are lessons that can be learnt from the USA.
There are 1 million home-taught students in the Unites States and almost 40% of them go to College. They all have to give the SAT. Similarly if all Indians have a common entrance exam, there will be parity. I am sure no-one boards syllabus is so drastically different from the rest, that the students can’t compete.
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Hey LG..out of context ,….your phrase “Rules Ramanujam”….reminds be of “Rules Rangachari”.
Remember that superb two episode special program for Deepavali by Bhagyaraj for DD? Somehow i find “Rules Rangachari” a more suitable phrase than “Rules Ramanujam”.
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Aishwarya, Thanks for tagging me. Seems like several memes are going in the round. I think I already missed Balaji and Keerthi tying me. Let’s see what this meme is about.
Hari/Kirthika, I accept the way the exam and the lottery ar conducted may not be appropriate but then I am more worried about having the exams or not. If the answer was to ahave then we should be pondering about how fool-proof we can design the exam system. But then with differing view points like this, there is always a tie.
Mutrupulli, I read somewhere that ‘Rules Ramanujam’ is Vikram’s name in anniyan. So you probably must do this debate with shankar and surprisingly, I agree with you 😉
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Well…yeah the XII syllabus will be tough…but in 5 years or so…the mom will come up with another rule ..becos the urban ppl are more trained because of tution centers…!
Whatever it is…do they really have to void this year’s results…so damn unproffesional act!
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the entire idea of just using academics to decide one’s future doesnot appeal to me…It should be done based on several other factors like personal essay of waht one wants to do, any accomplishments that the person has done towards his interests, personality, etc …
Deciding a person just what one has done in 36 hours (12 exams * 3 hours) doesnotmake sense to me ….entrance exam is adding 4-5 hours to that lot..
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Standardizing education is probably the worst mistake ever made by anyone in power. And that too even in SCHOOL?
I think there is too much importance given to school education in India. It is idiotic that someone would know more and others would know less even if you are at the top of the respective ‘boards’ you have followed.
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what they have to do is to change the existing reservation system for any education related initiative to bear fruit.
katz
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Guru, Keerthi and Deepak (ttgiant.blogspot.com) had also posted about this. In fact, I made a comment on Deepak’s post echoing your sentiments on this and even going a step further saying do away with the exams as they currently stand since they only test “stored knowledge” which is not a very reliable indicator of actual performance.
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Good point Lazy,
I too hope students are the final winners.
Will a system like BITS pilani work? They give admission to the toppers of CBSE/State/ICS and no compromise on that.
Rules Ramanujam is Vikrams name in Anniyan, I have seen the movie..no comments on that!
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I am not sure whether the intention was political or with a great heart as the change was requested by the state goverment after the exams were conducted. If they wanted to really do this, they should have done it before the parents spent money sending their kids to tutions, the kids spent valuable time studying for something which could potentially become wasted and in the end result is that everyone except the ones who did badly in the exams are happy. The motive might have been worthy but the timing is very suspicious.
I have some questions. Do we have a common entrance exam because of the following
1. we feel that our current education (State Board) rewards people who just study for studying sake – in other words mug
2. we feel that we need to be fair to all boards eg. CBSE
For the past 15 years, any one who has gone through the state board shall probably agree that the state board and its form of education for the +2s have a lot to be desired. They are not of standard of the CBSE and othe board.
What might be the solution would be a standard board across all states and education becoming a central goverment role and not a state goverment or standardise the test by having a central test and expect everyone to be graded against that.
The first is difficult as we need to do two things one train our teachers and second change our standards of education. Some states shall probably cope better than others
The second is also easier but unless the state improves its standards and teachers, the end result will be the same where teachers do not teach in classes but in tution and also there shall be a new expenditure for most parents called send your kids after school to study.
In the end the kids are the sufferers.
Making noises like our kids are good or we are very good in comparison to the rest of the world is not right while the average student in our country is not better than others. We only beat our chest by saying how good indians are in math and science and in creativity but that is only the cream of the society. Only if the wave bring up the average joe up does the others on the top also rise.
srini
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Off Topic…
“It’s my life’s purpose”
The count down begins….
7 days….
168 hours….
10080 minutes….
for the Magnum Opus!!!
Check this link http://www.hindu.com/fr/2005/06/24/stories/2005062400480400.htm
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Hi Ghuru,
I am a very regular visitor to your site. I have never posted comments before. Wanted to tell you all your posts are really interesting especially about technology and tamil cinema.Keep up the good work.
Happy Blogging
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when i took the entrance test,it was highly biased towards state board syllabus.Besdies more % ppl in state board get above 90% than CBSE. So unless u r either rich or extremely brialliant to get into IITs, RECs and select few univs,state board have always had the edge. Ofcourse most also feels the CBSe hones better overall skills over stateboard. But the numbers are dwindling as the college entrance becomes more competetive each year.
We need major changes to actually level the playing field but i doubt thats gonna happen anytime in this century.
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Ofcourse there has to be an entrance exam. Agree, coaching institutions take advantage of that, but nevertheless, atleast there was someway of filtering out the applications. Admissions will be chaotic. On what basis is the college to select the student otherwise?
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Reservations are a secondary problem, but standardizing something other than History is pretty idiotic.
History cannot be standardized because it is bound to get religious flavours.
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Nice write-up but if entrance is spelt as enterance, then the world is surely going to the dogs. Best of indiblog ? Ogwd !!!!
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Netrik Kannu, Thanks. That’s a typo and that too in a single place. If only you say, because of typo, the world goes to dogs, then I had to underline the same in your comments too !! BTW, throw that dirty middle eye and live in the real world. BOI is a myth 😉
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Ashwini, I am sure of the system at BITS. But if its acceptable for the people studying already, there’s no harm in trying it out. Interestingly, first person to have not commented on Anniyan. Hmm..
Kirthika, Thats a valid point to which I am looking out for answers. If no entrance exams, everyone will want to join Anna Univ.
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Even with the Entrance exams, everyone wants to join Anna Univ. If there are no ways of filtering such as an Entrance Exam, there’s a good chance of those who have the aptitude for Engg. (the ones who really deserve) will be left out in this erroneous selection process. Rural and urban classification for an Engg examination is just so ridiculous. Already there were enough loop-holes namely reservation policies in the state for admission. The end result is just this: merit goes unrewarded. Instead of making the engg. exam tougher, they removed the whole system which was atleast 40% efficient. CBSE folks, who possess good problem solving skills have to shell out money joining a private engg college, where there are no proper teachers, there are no campus placement facilities, and the college has no ‘recognition’ outside its own campus. Why should they suffer. Abolishing the entrance is not an end to all the problems. Rather it’s the beginning. On a long run, this state will churn out run of the mill and incompetent Engineers.
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