Thats a very insightful comment, especially for someone who doesn't stay in India :-) Just to give an example, as to why its important to get really good score

Thats a very insightful comment, especially for someone who doesn't stay in India :-) Just to give an example, as to why its important to get really good scores in school and college. I and my (now) wife graduated from a reasonably well known college of engineering as classmates. I had decent marks so I got a job during campus placement. It was a good pay for a fresh grad from industry wide perspective. My wife didn't have the greatest scores (but the scores weren't too bad either). She didn't get a job for ~8 months. After that she did get a job in a tiny company (~5-10 people) that took her in as a trainee for zero pay. 3-4 months after working there, she could use that experience to get a job that paid her about USD 60 (INR 3000) per month, which is quite low (I pay my cook that much now a days for an hours work, this was about 10 years ago). And then over time she worked in different companies and is now has a good job with in a well know cellphone provided. As for me, I comfortably worked for about 8 years in different companies, following which I dabbled in a startup with an ex-colleague and now taking a breaking to work on a few hobby projects. The point being, that in India, getting good scores required to having a comfortable life. There may be exceptions, but if you don't get a good score you will pretty much be struggling for the first few years irrespective of how good you are.