Test their skills but don’t torture them

Whoever frames educational policies should have concern for the health and well-being of schoolchildren. Too many entrance tests after the board exams and great expectations by parents are driving them mad. The mental agony and stress they face for over a month of tests is immense. On the positive side, some still prefer entrance tests as they test their aptitude and not just knowledge. Others seek a new model which allows them to appear for the exam multiple times, taking the best score into consideration. DNA met a few candidates preparing for their entrance exams to seek their views on the subject.        

Abhishek Joshi
This is unfair
Over the past decade, outbreak of a new kind of fever seems to be plaguing students: not the deadly H1N1, but the exam fever. With B-schools, including several IIMs, mushrooming over the same period, it seems only natural that each one has its own selection procedure. And all have entrance exams. Oh, and rest assured, there are plenty of them to take up: CAT, XAT, SNAP, NMAT, IBSAT, JMET, CET, Mh-CET...  are some of the more-preferred ones taken up by students each year. What do these exams test? Logical thinking, Mathematics, English, and some of them even test you on your general knowledge. Having said that, here’s my opinion on the exams: I believe that it is quite impractical to judge a person’s proclivity towards doing an MBA or his ability to carry out business studies on the basis of examinations that test students on things that are far remote from business realities. Being able to answer permutation and combination or probability questions or rearranging sentences to make sense is not really what a manager would encounter every day. Whether he/she can work in groups and take decisions under pressure is what really decides his/her success in any organisation and there is no real way to test this. Getting a chance to appear for an IIM or XLRI interview simply by scoring on the 99percentile on one Sunday is, in my opinion, unfair on the person who couldn’t take the exam because of an accident or some other reason. Ultimately, he might still turn out to be a better manager. I don’t know any way that can change the entire process, but the best that we can do for now is to put in place a system similar to the GMAT, since at least it allows candidates to take exams at their convenience.

Rajat S Bongale
Too much burden
Gone are the days when +2 exam marks were important. Entrance exams have been in the scene for years and in a competitive world like the one we now live in, a good score in these exams is a must. Entrances are just additional burden. Fairing just well in +2 exams is more than sufficient to choose a course but preparing for the entrance exam for the same is a task on its own. A book weighing more than 3 kilos has to be digested in less than a month. That does not seem an easy task for many a student. The entrance exams should be made easier to attempt. Please relieve students, who have scored well in +2, of  this burden of writing these sundry entrance exams.

Janani Hari
Is stress worth it?
Being a student who just completed her Board exams and writing a series of entrances, I feel the latter provides choices and helps students to select the kind of college they want. I don’t think one exam can cater to all the institutions. At the same time, this creates a lot of stress among us. I am writing nine entrance exams stretching over a month and a half, and this is more than the number of subjects I had to write for my Board exam. Colleges offer limited seats. Different exams cater to different syllabus. Negative marking, coaching classes, travel and the expenses involved are a few drawbacks of these exams. Another question in our minds is: What about the Board exams we write? What is the significance of the Boards if most of the institutions do not consider it for admission? I feel there should be a common syllabus catering to all exams. Board marks should also be considered to a great extent. The number of seats should be increased and the marking and ranking system need reforms.

Anupam Sardesai
Do-or-die situation
An entrance examination becomes sort of a do-or-die situation, more so when parents have high expectations on their children. At least, in my case, it is so. I have been preparing for medical entrance tests right from my school days. My parents forced me into more than six tutorials so that I get the best training on how to fare well in the entrance exams. This is the reason why I sleep less and have no recreation at all to keep me relaxed before the exams. One more problem is that the Board exams get hampered because we have to concentrate on both simultaneously. While our parents understand that Board exams are more important and we can’t afford to ignore them, they keep reminding us to give equal importance to Board and entrance for medical or engineering. I am fine with the current system of entrance exams, although many parents need to be counselled over the issue, so that they don’t send their children into a tizzy during this stressful time

Vaishali Movva & Amita Ajith Kamath
Entrance or exit?
After the recent confusion over AIEEE and AFMC entrance tests, many students said the pressure they faced was terrible. The issue here does not merely revolve around the leaking of question papers. The question we should ask ourselves is: Are entrance tests really necessary? That too, so many! Undoubtedly, they do put enormous amount of pressure on students like us and our parents as well. As each student takes up several entrance exams, poor performance in one of the tests can have an adverse effect on the subsequent exams. Moreover, many don’t find it fair that their  academic abilities are tested within the span of a few hours. Any sort of illness or nervous breakdown on that day may ruin their entire career. India’s diverse syllabi also make it difficult for students from different backgrounds to compete on the same level when it comes to entrance exams. The students then feel the need to take up coaching classes, which further add to the pressure they are under. On the other hand, entrance exams provide a basis for top universities to determine whether a student is able to cope with their curriculum. Also, a single common entrance exam wouldn’t be feasible in a country like India, because of the difference in syllabi, making separate entrance exams for a state or college necessary. The introduction of statewide and nationwide exams such as AIPMT, CLAT and AIEEE has improved the current situation greatly, although the students still need to take multiple tests, and so are stressed. But sometimes, the pressure is good. It teaches students to handle such situations and of course, isn’t it said that competition brings out the best in you! So at the end of the day, competitive exams may be highly taxing, but they are an essential component of the education system in India.

Sriram S
The foreign model
Thoughts about entrance exams instill fear in the minds of young aspiring engineers and doctors. The joy of having completed the Class 12 Board exams, these days, is overshadowed by the thought of having to sit for multiple entrance tests that follow. A student who is not clear in his mind as to which field to take up in his future is forced to sit for a dozen entrance exams. The mental agony and stress a student has to face for about one to one-and-a-half months is immense, driving him to almost commit suicide. The only way of overcoming this problem is to have a single entrance exam for each field as proposed by the Medical Council of India, but this would again bring about the debate of the future of a student who fails to perform well on that given day though he might have been an excellent student throughout his academic career. Hence, the best way forward, according to me, would be to follow the method of SAT (the entrance exam for students seeking admission in foreign universities) which allows the student to appear for the exam multiple times, taking the best score into consideration.

Madhavi Shivaprasad
Test of true ability
Entrance exams are preferable. First, it tests the aptitude of the student and not just knowledge. Moreover, entrance exams, I think, work more on the basis of logic and analysis rather than rote learning of predictable question that you usually have during the board exams. Second, the institution is able to understand the students’ skills easily as the test has been prepared according to their standards, so that they’ll know what more might have to be done to teach the students they accept. Marks in the final exams hardly indicate your true abilities. One needs to test candidates’ skills and not memory power in order to select the right kind of students which is exactly what entrances do, according to me.