Tyranny of admissions
Children of today have many advantages; technology has meant that they are better prepared to take on the world. They are much smarter than us and have a more rounded life (leave aside lack of physical activities). However, they face one huge downside; they live in a fiercely competitive world; much more than what we faced.
My family had the first hand experience over the last 2 years, once Sidhu completed his class X exams. We had to take a tough decision of uprooting the family from a well settled housing complex and the children from a much loved school. The move was necessitated by the need to put Sidhu in a well established school, Sankara School at Adyar. Though Sidhu was pissed of then, today he says that was the best thing we did for him.
The two following years were a blur. A few days he was up at 4:45 to attend IIT JEE training, hop to the school and study in the evening. A few days a week he would go to class in the evening and return at 9:45. In class XI he would juggle with guitar classes and even managed a concert performance. Class XI saw him fighting regularly with grand parents and sometimes with both Lakshmi and myself for taking part in culturals and playing football.
Class XII was worse; more mornings and nights, more tests, less culturals, even lesser sports and more stress. The school exams were very tough, he struggled to reach 90%, leaving him and us frustrated, angry and worried. Lakshmi took an year's sabbatical to help him. Tension peaked in March and the exams were completed. He came out with flying colors - Top 1% in CBSE.
We then had the tyranny of the colleges. I am not sure if Kapil Sibal is correct, but we certainly need to reduce the number of entrance exams; he took 7 of those. I am not sure if kids can maintain motivation to do all these tests.
Finally, everything is done and dusted. Sidhu got good scores in all the entrance tests and chose Manipal over others. He still awaits results from BITS Pilani, which is expected the end of the month. To top it all CBSE sent a letter informing that he is eligible for a 80000/yr scholarship for 5 years if he took up a pure science course. We are now hoping he will get admission to Dual degree program at BITS Pilani MSc - Physics, Maths or Economics that will make him eligible for the scholarship.
We wait for 4 years when we need to go through the same with Nandu!
My family had the first hand experience over the last 2 years, once Sidhu completed his class X exams. We had to take a tough decision of uprooting the family from a well settled housing complex and the children from a much loved school. The move was necessitated by the need to put Sidhu in a well established school, Sankara School at Adyar. Though Sidhu was pissed of then, today he says that was the best thing we did for him.
The two following years were a blur. A few days he was up at 4:45 to attend IIT JEE training, hop to the school and study in the evening. A few days a week he would go to class in the evening and return at 9:45. In class XI he would juggle with guitar classes and even managed a concert performance. Class XI saw him fighting regularly with grand parents and sometimes with both Lakshmi and myself for taking part in culturals and playing football.
Class XII was worse; more mornings and nights, more tests, less culturals, even lesser sports and more stress. The school exams were very tough, he struggled to reach 90%, leaving him and us frustrated, angry and worried. Lakshmi took an year's sabbatical to help him. Tension peaked in March and the exams were completed. He came out with flying colors - Top 1% in CBSE.
We then had the tyranny of the colleges. I am not sure if Kapil Sibal is correct, but we certainly need to reduce the number of entrance exams; he took 7 of those. I am not sure if kids can maintain motivation to do all these tests.
Finally, everything is done and dusted. Sidhu got good scores in all the entrance tests and chose Manipal over others. He still awaits results from BITS Pilani, which is expected the end of the month. To top it all CBSE sent a letter informing that he is eligible for a 80000/yr scholarship for 5 years if he took up a pure science course. We are now hoping he will get admission to Dual degree program at BITS Pilani MSc - Physics, Maths or Economics that will make him eligible for the scholarship.
We wait for 4 years when we need to go through the same with Nandu!
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