My experiences with education - Part III ( IIT-JEE coaching)

Ok before I get into trouble let me say this - "all the opinions expressed in this blog are my own and are online solely for the purpose of documenting my experiences and making it accesible to wider audiences, they are not intended to hurt people, reputation of organizations, to serve as sources of primary or secondary data, or illustrations of effective and ineffective management ".

In June, 1995 I joined Ramaiah's coaching centre(RCC). I was very happy and excited.
RCC and Ramaiah were almost legendary in Hyd then, not sure what the situation is rite now. Almost every student in Hyd and a lot of cities in AP had heard about Ramaiah and RCC ( students used to come from other cities as well to study at RCC). In terms of faculty and academic inputs, RCC was the best in the city but each faculty there, had his own set of eccentricities.Also the institute was very strict when it came to punctuality, homework, dress code etc.Nobody was allowed inside if he/she was late to the class even by 5 mins, if you miss a class you would have to get your parents to the institute to offer explanations for your absence, boys were not allowed to tuck their shirts or wear shoes, girls were only allowed to wear salwar suits, and once inside the class you were not supposed to be wearing sweaters/woollen clothing etc.There were a lot of instances were people had to shift to houses closer to the institute because the morning classes would start at 4am in the morning. In short , during the two years when students were at the institute, the students including their parents were at the mercy of the institute.Some of the students used to leave the institute because they couldnt cope with the pressure( which includes nasty comments and may be a bit of slapping as well) there.From my personal experiences I can say that a lot of what I heard was right, though not everything was right.

There are some ' interesting' things which I distinctly remember about the institute.The first thing they do is have a meeting with the parents and the students when they discuss the question paper and the performance of the students. In 1995 around 4500 students appeared for the exam and around 600 - 700 of them got zeroes in maths and physics ( that should give you some idea about the toughness of the paper).The best part about the maths paper atleast is that all the questions can be solved without using any mathematics beyond class X though the questions appear very complicated.(For those who are mathematically inclined here is a 1 mark question from the paper which I gave.. How many times does the curve y = | | x-1| -1 | cut the x - axis?).In the meeting, the parents are also told not to scold their children at home because they do that at the institute anyways and they are also urged to take good care of them and monitor their mental health regularly.The other interesting thing about the institute is the classroom experience; sometimes nasty and sometimes witty comments peppered the lecture sessions.Once in a physics class I was asleep and the prof caught me napping. He promptly woke me up(dont remeber if I was slapped though) and this is what he told the class in telugu " Vamshi gaaru theory of relativity meeda panichestunnaru andukaney raatri padukoledu" which when translated into english means "Vamshi was working on the theory of relativity and thats why he could not sleep yesterday nite" and then he asks me "Vamshi, any breakthroughs ?".
Some of the comments the lecturers used to make were quite sarcastic and you needed to be really thick skinned to take that and continue with the course.

On the whole, to be frank I didnt enjoy my experience at RCC very much but I cannot deny that I learnt a lot of stuff there and some of what I learnt I remember to this day. It was in RCC where I fell in love with Maths and Physics and I will always be grateful to the faculty there for this.I learnt what passion means from the faculty there.Also I met some amazing guys at this place.

Only when teachers are passionate, knowledgeable, good communicators and friendly can learning be fun and effective.At RCC atleast as far as my perception is concerned, the faculty satisfied the first three conditions but I think they were very students unfriendly.I dont deny the importance of discipline but I am against taking it to extremes and imposing meaningless rules like what I thought they did at RCC .Proponents of RCC's system may argue that it is very effective based on statistical facts, I agree it is effective but the effectiveness comes at a very high cost. Many students apart from the ones who are very very bright dont perform as well as their peers from coaching centres in other states once they join IITs because they are already so 'tired' studying for getting into IITs . I dont have exact numbers to support my statement but the above statement is based on my personal experiences.

The goal of coaching centres should not just be maximizing the number of students cracking JEE, but instilling in them a passion for life long learning with discipline and making the learning process enjoyable.
Cracking JEE is not an end in itself, its just a means to an end.

My experiences with education - Part II ( Pre - college )

As I have mentioned in my previous post, I did my schooling in Hyderabad- an educational hub.I doubt if there is any other city in India which produces as many engineers and doctors as Hyderabad does.I dont know whether it is good or bad but almost every guy who appears for the Engineering and medical entrance test ( EAMCET) gets a seat in some college or the other in the state.

Before I talk about my experiences in College, I will describe the educational scene in Hyderabad. Hyderabad is one city where the parents know more about the syllabus of the exams than the children themselves.There are certain localities in the city which are totally dedicated to coaching institutes, in these localities coaching institutes outnumber any other kind of business or non business entities, I think they even outnumber the grocery stores in that locality. There are also some offices where people spend more time discussing coaching centres and exams than on their work. Education in Hyderabad is a very very lucarative business at every level. You have coaching centres for almost every exam in the country- school exams ( class 2 onwards), board exams ( 7th and 10th), competitive exams like olympiads, science talent search exams,JEE, EAMCET, university exams, B.Com, B.Sc and IAS exams.People here are so obsessed with careers in Engineering and Medicine that preparation for the entrance exams like ( JEE and EAMCET) starts from class 8 onwards and sometimes even earlier (I am not kidding here).There are some interesting things about IIT preparation in Hyderabad which are worth mentioning. Not only are there coaching centres for IIT-JEE which conduct their own entrance exams for selecting candidates,but also coaching centres which conduct entrance exams for selecting students whom they can coach so that they can get into the reputed IIT-JEE coaching centres.As far as I know there are also institues( am not sure whether they conduct entrance exams or not) which train students for getting into coaching centres which train students for getting into the reputed IIT-JEE coaching centres.There are also intermediate colleges which give special privileges to students who belong to some of the IIT-JEE coaching centres.These special allowances are in the form of reduced attendance requirements, special timings for Laboratory Practicals which are a part of the Intermediate curriculum, special classes for subjects like English, Sanskrit, French etc.These colleges in return get the right to publish the photos of these students later in newspapers as a part of their advertisements if these students do well in the competitive exams.

Till class IX I was undecided as to whether I want to pursue higher studies in the Medical stream or the engineering stream because I liked maths and biology equally and I was decent at both the subjects.
My mom was a post graduate in Mathematics and my dad was an engineer and together they convinced me that pusuing higher studies in engineering was 'better' than pursuing higher studies in medicine because there were more options available for engineers, it took less time to complete engineering education as compared to medicine ( with its internship, specializations and super specializations ) and because engineering was 'relatively easier' when compared to medicine. Here I must admit that my greater liking for maths as compared to Biology also played a part in me choosing to pursue higher studies in engineering. It was drilled into me that I had to get into an IIT and I was also determined to get into IIT at any cost.Incidentally 12 members of my family( including my mom and my grandfather) are from IIT, Kharagpur. I must admit that I didnt know much about engineering then( not that I know something more now) and one of the major reasons for me wanting to go to IIT was the prestige associated with it and the respect people had for IIT.

From class 9 itself I started preparation for IIT. I registered for the Brilliant 1 year correspondence IIT-JEE foundation courses. Every month I used to get booklets full of theory and problems in Maths, Physics and Chemistry. I had to solve the problems and send it to the institute before I get the next set and they would send me back the corrected answer sheets.After a couple of times I was tired and stopped sending the solutions,I would just wait for the next set which had answers to the problems of the previous sets. ( Brilliant was lenient, there are some insttitutes where they dont send the next set unless you send them your solutions of the previous set).My mom ( a post graduate in Mathematics from IIT, Kharagpur) helped me with maths and my Grandfather ( a doctorate and a Physics professor from IIT, Kharagpur) helped me with my Physics.All this preparation helped me do well in the various science talent search examinations.

After I finished my high school exams in March 1995, I had a month to prepare for the entrance exams of the various IIT-JEE coaching institutes and the entrance exam for Little Flower Junior College.During that time LFJC was one of the very few intermediate colleges which had an entrance exam and it was also considered one of the best colleges in the city. As far as the IIT-JEE coaching centres were concerned, they were two institues namely Ramaiah ( There is also a Ramaiah Fan club on Orkut) and Krishnamurthy which were considered to be the best of the lot ( these were institutes with very high percentage of succesful candidates).I was determined to get into the 2-year IIT JEE coaching program at one of these institutes.

After one month of hard work ,I successfully cleared all the three exams I appeared for; Ramaiah, Krishnamurthy and Little Flower Junior College entrance exams.