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> The beauty of JEE Only a person who did well in JEE would say this. You talk about disadvantages for rural students. This is important, because the vast majo

> The beauty of JEE Only a person who did well in JEE would say this. You talk about disadvantages for rural students. This is important, because the vast majority of people in India live in villages or small towns, not the big cities. Tell me though, how many students from villages and small towns do well in JEE without moving to a coaching centre in a bigger town? Personal anecdotes aside, you'll find that urban students are disproportionately represented in the top engineering institutes. There are some rural students certainly, but not like the 80% you'd expect if the system was truly egalitarian. You rail against the possibility of some students getting ahead because of advantages other than academic performance, but fail to consider that the current system is also based on the lottery of birth.

alex_smart 5y ago
>Only a person who did well in JEE would say this. Please forgive me for considering, in a country fraught from top to bottom with corruption and casteism, an objective system that offers an opportunity for young, talented students, irrespective of their backgrounds, to devote two years of their lives to serious study and meaningfully transform their lives "beautiful". It MUST be because of my single-digit rank. >Tell me though, how many students from villages and small towns do well in JEE without moving to a coaching centre in a bigger town? If you count Kota, there are plenty of students from small towns who do well in JEE by moving to a coaching center in a smaller town. Why is "without moving to a different town" such an important consideration? Rural areas almost by definition don't have any scale. >There are some rural students certainly, but not like the 80% you'd expect if the system was truly egalitarian. Most rural students don't even have access to good primary schools. There is a huge information asymmetry between people from villages and big cities. That is not a problem an engineering exam can solve. You replace JEE with a less objective system, and much fewer rural/small-town students will get in.
- random314 5y ago
  > irrespective of their backgrounds, to devote two years of their lives to serious study I don't know how you can make such a statement with a single digit rank. JEE offers the middle and upper middle class an opportunity to leap into the rich class. What percentage of India is middle class? How many lower middle class and poor folks can send their kids to kota to study for JEE? How much would it cost the Indian government to develop detailed coaching videos by IIT professors and upload it for free to YouTube? Yes JEE is a good entrance exam, but let's not romanticize it as something that can cross boundaries of caste and class. If so, we can also claim that capitalism doesn't care about your caste and class either! The harrassment faced by students of lower caste who get in through affirmative action is also well known.
  - valarauko 5y ago
    > How much would it cost the Indian government to develop detailed coaching videos by IIT professors and upload it for free to YouTube? I realize this is entirely tangential to the thrust of this sub-thread, but I don't think the government really should be encouraging coaching (with some caveats). The goal of the JEE is to identify the top 1% of applicants, or more accurately the top n number of candidates. In 10 years the JEE might have to pick the top 0.5% of applicants as the population grows and the seats do not. Making the JEE more equitable doesn't change that - more seats aren't created to meet demand. The difficulty of the JEE has to scale & adapt to the level of the students who appear in the exam. Yes, coaching classes can teach tricks that exploit weak patterns within the JEE. I would much rather see the JEE continually redesigned to be resistant to coaching in general.
    - random314 5y ago
      Coaching classes actually do teach physics. It is not simply a shop teaching tricks. You cannot simply qualify for JEE by learning tricks for 2 years. I should probably have used the word "teaching" instead of "coaching". The problem is that the quality of science education in India at the high school level is really poor. To make the exam more equitable, we have to push for higher quality educational content accessible to everyone. To give an example of how poor high school science education is - I was taught ohm's law in 8th grade when I didn't know what voltage was? Voltage was actually defined 3 years later, which is super ridiculous. This causes students to believe that science is about memorizing equations and learning how to apply simple templates to solve problems derived from the same template. They are not even aware that they don't understand the terms they use. These students confuse familiarity with understanding. I have met so many electrical engineers who don't know what voltage is. They simply repeat the definition they learned in 8th grade. Voltage is potential difference. However, they don't know what potential difference is. They don't think they even need to know that. The actual definition is simply physics esoterica for them. Such a student will be completely stumped on how to solve a simple ohms law problem, if we change the wording of the question from voltage to force and distancing and electric current to the speed of charged particles.
  - alex_smart 5y ago
1024core 5y ago
I grew up in a small village and hadn't heard of JEE before I entered the 12th grade. I tried to prepare by myself and failed spectacularly. A lot of the questions rely on tricks or insights that you typically learn only in coaching classes. My neighbor's son, who actually went to school in a nearby big town, had signed up for coaching classes. He did much better than me, and from chatting with him (post-exam), I could tell he had learned these tricks in his coaching classes. So, clearly, lack of coaching classes hurt my chances. In any case, I never joined the IITs, but joined another engineering college thanks to my scoring very well in the final exam.

alex_smart 5y ago

>Only a person who did well in JEE would say this. Please forgive me for considering, in a country fraught from top to bottom with corruption and casteism, an objective system that offers an opportunity for young, talented students, irrespective of their backgrounds, to devote two years of their lives to serious study and meaningfully transform their lives "beautiful". It MUST be because of my single-digit rank. >Tell me though, how many students from villages and small towns do well in JEE without moving to a coaching centre in a bigger town? If you count Kota, there are plenty of students from small towns who do well in JEE by moving to a coaching center in a smaller town. Why is "without moving to a different town" such an important consideration? Rural areas almost by definition don't have any scale. >There are some rural students certainly, but not like the 80% you'd expect if the system was truly egalitarian. Most rural students don't even have access to good primary schools. There is a huge information asymmetry between people from villages and big cities. That is not a problem an engineering exam can solve. You replace JEE with a less objective system, and much fewer rural/small-town students will get in.

random314 5y ago
> irrespective of their backgrounds, to devote two years of their lives to serious study I don't know how you can make such a statement with a single digit rank. JEE offers the middle and upper middle class an opportunity to leap into the rich class. What percentage of India is middle class? How many lower middle class and poor folks can send their kids to kota to study for JEE? How much would it cost the Indian government to develop detailed coaching videos by IIT professors and upload it for free to YouTube? Yes JEE is a good entrance exam, but let's not romanticize it as something that can cross boundaries of caste and class. If so, we can also claim that capitalism doesn't care about your caste and class either! The harrassment faced by students of lower caste who get in through affirmative action is also well known.
- valarauko 5y ago
  > How much would it cost the Indian government to develop detailed coaching videos by IIT professors and upload it for free to YouTube? I realize this is entirely tangential to the thrust of this sub-thread, but I don't think the government really should be encouraging coaching (with some caveats). The goal of the JEE is to identify the top 1% of applicants, or more accurately the top n number of candidates. In 10 years the JEE might have to pick the top 0.5% of applicants as the population grows and the seats do not. Making the JEE more equitable doesn't change that - more seats aren't created to meet demand. The difficulty of the JEE has to scale & adapt to the level of the students who appear in the exam. Yes, coaching classes can teach tricks that exploit weak patterns within the JEE. I would much rather see the JEE continually redesigned to be resistant to coaching in general.
  - random314 5y ago
    Coaching classes actually do teach physics. It is not simply a shop teaching tricks. You cannot simply qualify for JEE by learning tricks for 2 years. I should probably have used the word "teaching" instead of "coaching". The problem is that the quality of science education in India at the high school level is really poor. To make the exam more equitable, we have to push for higher quality educational content accessible to everyone. To give an example of how poor high school science education is - I was taught ohm's law in 8th grade when I didn't know what voltage was? Voltage was actually defined 3 years later, which is super ridiculous. This causes students to believe that science is about memorizing equations and learning how to apply simple templates to solve problems derived from the same template. They are not even aware that they don't understand the terms they use. These students confuse familiarity with understanding. I have met so many electrical engineers who don't know what voltage is. They simply repeat the definition they learned in 8th grade. Voltage is potential difference. However, they don't know what potential difference is. They don't think they even need to know that. The actual definition is simply physics esoterica for them. Such a student will be completely stumped on how to solve a simple ohms law problem, if we change the wording of the question from voltage to force and distancing and electric current to the speed of charged particles.
- alex_smart 5y ago

1024core 5y ago

I grew up in a small village and hadn't heard of JEE before I entered the 12th grade. I tried to prepare by myself and failed spectacularly. A lot of the questions rely on tricks or insights that you typically learn only in coaching classes. My neighbor's son, who actually went to school in a nearby big town, had signed up for coaching classes. He did much better than me, and from chatting with him (post-exam), I could tell he had learned these tricks in his coaching classes. So, clearly, lack of coaching classes hurt my chances. In any case, I never joined the IITs, but joined another engineering college thanks to my scoring very well in the final exam.