The Plight of a Kid Who Likes Computers

2024-04-17

I'm a person who likes computers. I really liked tinkering around with our old family laptop since I was 12, and had an RPi ¹ which further drove me learn more about this stuff. That is how I decided that I will study CS as my major in degree.

There is a very true stereotype in the middle class families of India that boys should be engineers and girls should be doctors (or nurses²). Anything less will be considered as a dent to the family's status. So if their child has atleast above average intelligence, every single parent pushes them into the most cut throat competitive and stupidly expensive Entrance Coaching Centres. Well of course, as a kid who genuinly likes computers, all these other unpassionate people as my competition is not good for me.

State of Entrance Coaching

In the olden days, these used to be just weekend classes, and you could still get a pretty good rank just studying on your own without going for classes. As more people caught onto the false stereotype of doctor/engineer, the amount of parents forcing their children to these coaching centres. Some of these coaching centres started tying up with private schools to form the so called Residential Batches. These residentially batches are very expensive (costing upwards of 500,000 INR), and only admit students who pass their own entrance exam (usually taken in 10th STD). And get this, most of these coaching instituitions have Foundation Classes for kids starting from 6th STD. And in its current state, most of the kids who get admitted to the residential batches are former Foundation class students.

So, in summery, to get into a good collage, a child needs to sacrifice his childhood and start learning to do the questions in Collage entrance examinations as soon as they turn 12!³

Think about that for a moment.

Admission to collages should not a be a thing that a 12 year old kid should worry about. Heck, I think that at that age, most kids dont even know what they want to do after school. You should not give up your free time as a child for something you are not even sure if you want.

Continuing, suppose you follow the stereotypes, and finally write JEE (The primary exam for collage admissions), gets qualified for JEE Advanced (which usually requires >93 percentile), and get AIR 1.

What will you choose?

Computer-frkin-Science.

Even if for the past 6 years of your life you devoted to learn Physics, Chemistry and Maths, and genuinly liked learning them, you prolly would've gone to be a scientist or an aerspace engineering or something. Computer Science is not an enjoyable thing if you dont like it. And if you have no prior experience with it (eg programming), chances are you probably wouldn't like it. It is not a classical engineering stream where physics and chemistry plays a role, it is different even the math is weird compared to other courses.

But, people will still flock to it. Why? Because money. CS has been the sole reason for the rise of the most highly valued companies in existence (Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, etc). And Tech companies are good with generating cash, and are very very profitable.

So practically every high person with a good rank will try to get CS first, then looking on to other courses like Electronics, Mechanical, etc. The filling of seats occur according to the most common preference order, IITs > NITs > IIITs > State Government Collages > Private Collages.

My Case

One thing you need to know about me is that I am not a hard worker. Sure I might spent 4 consecutive days grinding competitive programming problems, spent 2 weeks trying to make a full on 3D animated short film ⁴, etc but I only did those things because they were interesting to me, not because someone told me to, or because it'll help me get a better job. One of my all time favourite quotes is "Work Smart, not Hard". Now this might seem like a perfect reason to ignore me as another lazy kid who dont want to study, but I am not a kid who dont like studying. I like learning, I just dont like it when there are like a list of things I HAVE to learn. I belieave there are a lot of people who share the same ideology as me.

So, Like many smart kids at 6th standered, I too had to make the choice of whether go for the Foundational Classes of Entrance Coaching. Most other smart kids I knew went for it, and hearing their experiences and pointless ⁵ sacrifice of free time, I started doubt if that was a wise choice. I'm a person who values my free time.

So, my normal life continued, COVID-19 came and went, and lo and behold I reached 10th std. The entrance test for admission to the so called Residential Batches came. Since I was still recovering from the brainrot that quarentine left me, I ofcourse lost to the kids who went to the Foundation Classes.

Welp, there goes my chance at IIT. "Dont worry" I said to myself, "You could still go to the weekend coaching classes! You'll atleaset get into an NIT!".

Well, that was a lie. The current weekend coaching classes offered by these coaching instituitions are trash compared to the amount of classes, resources tests recieved by the students in Residential Batches.

JEE first attempt came and went, answer keys were published, and I checked my score. 36/300.

I was flabbergasted.

Like, sure I was getting sub 100 scores in the model tests, but this was the lowest I ever got. Do mind that usually you need above 150 to get into some collage. Well, turns out my particular shift was super hard and after normalisation, my result was 80.2%. Still not good. In the current system, 8% and 80% are all worth the same, ie no admission.

Only ~5 people in my coaching class of ~50 people, got anything above 90 percentile in the first session. Non of them had 98+ percentiles. This proved that weekend coaching classes are a scam.

After that the board exams came. I think I messed that up too. Overall moral was down very much. My aspirations started to seem more and more like an unattainable dream.

As of the writing of this article, JEE is over and results have not come in. Private Collage examinations are currently being held. There is also a dim ray of light from the exam KEAM (the entrance test for admission to the Kerala State owned collages), but I'm highly sceptical as they consider our 12 School Board exam marks as 50% of the ranking, because there is a high chance I have not enough marks there.

So, as of April 2024, I have zero idea as to where I am gonna be next year. And I fully blame it on the current system.

Cons of the Current System.

As you might expect, forcefully pushing every child to the science field and pressing every last child with a hint of genius to give up their social life to grind for acceptence in IIT's, turned out to be about as well as you expect. More then half of the people currently studying CS in the top collages in India, have no interest or enthusiasm for studying it. 90% of them have no prior experience nor passion for the subject.

And it is causing major issues. The quality of the graduates of IIT's have been steadily decreasing for years now. A comment made by the Chariman of Infosys sparked a discussion a while ago. Recently another case of a Startup Founder revealing that an IIT graduate faked his resume with skils he did not know became another heated issue.

These are just two of the most prominent events which stuck in my mind, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Another news story which made a lot of noice was that 36% of IIT Graduates did not get placements

Now, avoiding the case of IIT's and looking at the whole engineering sphere of India, it is very evident that the quality of the average Indian Engineer has decreased. I fully and utterly attribute this to the single cause ie the over competitiveness and rise of coaching instituitions and the stereotype mentality of parents and kids.

TLDR;

Current system is bad. Passionate people can't get into good collages. Good collages have unpassionate people who graduate to be bad engineers. They become unemployed. This system is bad, and need to be changed.

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