Making It Happen

"How to prepare for engineering competitive examinations?"

This is a very common question. XII standard is a very crucial year for most of the students as their career takes a decisive turn this year. There would be pressure to do well. Though candidates themselves have to decide their interest and future, many students look for guidance in this process. Role of parents become very important as they need to carefully guide the child in either case.

Is the role of parents really so important? Yes, If one goes by the data of JEE2010 and JEE2011. It can be noted that wards of parents, who are in government services or teachers, appeared in these examinations in high numbers. The number of qualified candidates, from these categories, is also amongst the top three. The surprising part is that engineers do not seem to encourage their children to be engineers. It is likely that some of the percentage under government services category may fall under engineering service but so far as the available data is concerned, engineers do not seem to prod their children to follow their footsteps.

There is a lot that parents can do to help their children. It is important to add that every child is different and has different inherent abilities. Therefore, it would be best if the child and parents could judiciously decide the long term career goal based on interest, abilities and preferences. The decision would be easier if child has interest and inclination for a particular career. The interest can transform into motivation to perform even better for the dream career.

Choice of career after PUC level is getting broader these days. There are a number of courses offered at this level now, which are either integrated with post-graduation level (like Dual Degree) or which have become now available at undergraduate level (Law etc.). This makes career decision more important than it used to be in earlier days. That means a wrong choice would take even more time to correct, provided it is possible.

It is important to realize the capability of the child and strategize to get optimum out of his capability. There are many ways to gauge their capabilities – through teachers, performance in Olympiads, performance in class etc. The role of teachers is very crucial and parents need to interact regularly with teachers. An experienced teacher’s assessment would normally be the most significant as the child spends a lot of time in school and teachers gets the best opportunity to watch the child’s performance as compared to his peers. I would recommend participating in Olympiads to gauge one’s standing at State and National level. However, there is a word of caution- one should not blindly appear in all the Olympiads. You should be selective and choose it based on your interest and preparation level. Low scores in Olympiads may dampen your spirits, so be careful.

There is no need to worry if you have a starting trouble. If one plans and strategizes one’s study well in advance, one can attempt to recover. It is very good if one can identify one’s strengths and weakness. It would be great if you can work on your weaknesses and self-correct yourself. If there is any particular chapter/area, where you are not able to improve (despite spending enough time and attention), I would suggest focusing on your strengths instead and try to ensure good performance there. All the examinations have balanced distribution and coverage of different chapters. In competitive examinations, it is not necessary to attempt everything but it is more important that you attempt correctly, whatever you know. One needs to keep the expectations at an appropriate level. If you aim too high, you may get demotivated if you do not attain it, and if you aim low, you will end up being an under-achiever.

Parents can play a constructive role to support the child. There will be many ups and downs in this journey and it is very essential that parents make sure that the child is doing his best. Not only should they motivate him when the chips are down, they should also make sure that the child is having regular breaks. On the other hand, if the child is getting too casual with studies, they should not hesitate to give a piece of their mind to him.

It is important to prepare yourself psychologically before any examination. Please make sure that you harden yourself through mock tests thoroughly against pressure, nervousness and anxiety during the final exams. Most of the good coaching classes do a good job in preparing yourself for examination through practice tests. It is your job to take it with all seriousness and you will gain in the end. With every mock test, you should demand certain takeaways from yourself. You may want to make sure if – say, you are able to at least go through and attempt all the questions, you are able to have less than x% of unforced errors (silly mistakes), you are able to attempt chapters of your strength with at least yy% score etc. These takeaways will largely depend upon your own self-assessment, nature of mock test etc. I would want to caution that there should be proper checks and balances between the time you spend on study and on mock tests. Initially, you should focus on completing the syllabus with fewer tests. Subsequently, you need to change the gears. You should regularly check on what kind of study vs. mock test bandwidth, you need to arrive at.

Coaching institute do give better results than self-study for JEE exam as per JEE data. For other examinations, your board syllabus should be sufficient. There are certain advantages and disadvantages and one needs to evaluate one’s preferences before making a decision to join or not to join a good coaching institute. Coaching institute demands time and you might get less time for self-study and other routine work. Even school study may get compromised, which may prove costly as the new format of AIEEE/JEE have stricter minimum std. XII qualifying marks threshold from this year (BTW, BITS-Pilani have relaxed its std. XII qualifying marks threshold last year).  Please keep in mind, coaching institute cannot significantly improve your inherent abilities but can provide you proper direction. A good coaching institute provide a more competitive environment, with an advantage of interacting with your colleagues from other schools giving your broader perspective. They help you overcome your examination jinx, if any. In short, they make sure that deserving candidates do not miss out (and to some extent improve their chances of success) but they do not significantly enhance your chances of success.

This year, the exams conducted by Government funded technical institutes may get combined, but private institutes will continue to take their examinations separately. Therefore, there may not be a significant reduction in number of exams. It has been observed that government tests are more inclined towards the CBSE board syllabus. It is always better to check the syllabus of each examination and figure out the differences in syllabus and pattern early on.

In short, proper choice of career, hard work with proper planning & strategy and mental preparedness play a key role in success. This article is primarily from parents' perspective- the next article will cover the story from a student's perpective, who has been there and done that.

Stay tuned- Study hard and study smart. All the best.

- Sandeep

Re-discovery of India-Part II: 2012 - A year of “short term“ turbulence or “long term” turnaround?

There have been many queries on my previous blog titled “ Re-discovery of India”. The questions vary from long term implications of this trend to the branch wise distribution of closing ranks. There were specific queries on whether any specific branch was being preferred or not.

I tried to dig more into IIT JEE data from previous years to get these answers. The current analysis is specific to IIT JEE only.

I found that the year 2012 has been the most disruptive year, as far as choices of branches are concerned. It is not clear if this disruption will transform into a turnaround for years to come or will only be a local turbulence for this year.

The following table lists down closing ranks for major branches from IITs for the last four years.

(Closing ranks for a particular branch have been averaged across identified IITs for that year. There could be loss of some micro level local factors but trends, in general remain same)

 Following observations can be deduced from the table:

·         Computer science has gained a lot this year and is clearly racing ahead.

·     Mechanical and EE+ are holding onto the positive trend.

·         Civil and Engg. Physics have been affected marginally. It would be interesting to watch their trend in coming years.

·         There is a dip in demand this year for Metallurgy+, Aerospace, Biotech+ and Naval Architecture.

·         Civil engineering had been moving up slowly but steadily till last year, but this year it has been swayed away by a upswing in the demand of Computer Science. The same has been the case with Chemical and Metallurgy.

What does this mean?

It appears that candidates are turning away from branches which have less employability and have less growth opportunities in India.  They prefer to go for employable branches in BITS, NITs, IIIT and other institutions. This also shows lack of interest by candidates into higher studies in India. The change is very disturbing this year and this widens the gap between the different branches in IIT. I do believe that this trend would be there in other engineering institutions but with a different magnitude. IITs would need to take a note of it, before it is too late.

Are the IITs doing anything wrong?

Not really. IITs are imparting quality education on various engineering disciplines needed for the growth of the country. Government and Industry have not kept pace to provide ample opportunities in India for all round industrial growth. This has resulted in skewed growth heavily dependent on IT sector. The industrial growth in other sectors have been sluggish. The essential ingredients of all-round Industrial growth like good governance, industrial climate, infrastructure, law and order etc. have been lacking in most parts of the country.

A number of students used to take admission in IITs to get brand value for higher education and employment abroad. The actual undergraduate branch did not matter much. Recent trends suggest that number of applicants for student visas abroad have been slowing down from India. This is mostly related to return on investment through foreign study, which has come down due to growth of IT sector in India. But this in turn has affected “Non-IT” branches, that have always been more closely linked with R & D/higher studies abroad. Students now do not prefer these branches in IITs, it appears.

What can the IITs do?

The flexibilities in course choice/change have worked well to lower the entry barrier for admissions. Students would hesitate to lock their choices for discipline of lower preferences, but if institutes offer flexibilities and provide opportunities for wider choice later, it might work well.

IITians  have been the most sought-after creatures by the industries. Industries have been vying for campus interviews and IITs are not required to do much to attract industries. This has not worked well for branches which have lower in-take by Financial and IT companies. Even if there are good “Non –IT sector” MNCs coming to IITs, the students are more keen on lucrative Bank & IT sector jobs due to higher ROI (Return on investment).

Besides having closer industry relationship, IITs should also be more actively involved in entrepreneurship opportunities for their students in Indian industries. Indian industries have been growing mostly on off-shoring of IT jobs, while new product designs/innovations have been low. This area is a strength of IITs and they could lead the industry.

But, why should IIT care about drop in closing ranks?

Very valid point. How does it matter if closing ranks are dropping down? IITs have already supposedly taken care that all its seats are filled, through multiple rounds of counseling and also by announcing a larger list of qualifying candidates (more than double of what it can accommodate). This means that most of its seats should have been occupied and this gives opportunities to lower ranked, but genuinely interested, students to get admission into IITs. Though, it is not established if these measures have helped to reduce number of vacant seats in IITs, which stood at a whopping 8% couple of years back.  But if it has, drop in closing ranks can well be justified.

On the contrary, if it is not the case,  there are couple of points to ponder over

·         Large number of vacant seats are not only criminal waste but it deprives deserving candidates their due. There have been many ways these seats can be filled more judiciously. Please refer  to the blog for more details - http://dsanghi.blogspot.in/2011/06/high-court-directs-jee-to-find-ways-to.html

·         IITs have gained reputation primarily due to the fact that top brains join the institute and this gives IITs a solid edge over others. It is known by quality of its students, though other factors such as faculty, infrastructure, placements etc. cannot be ignored. Therefore, any dilution on this front could have long term impact.

The merging of competitive examinations, without proper analysis, will further complicate it and pose greater challenge for IITs.