Jealousy

One of the virtues that we were taught at school is honesty. Why? Because it was the best policy ofcourse. Or so we were forced to believe. Hence it's perfectly justified that the only emotion that surfaced when I saw this tweet is jealousy. And the only word that escaped my mouth: "Dai-um".

Rants

Disappointment. The word is apt to describe my frame of mind.

Quizzing at Rendezvous 2k8 was a disaster. No, this isn’t a post about how good I felt about the quizzing culture here at BITS, Pilani (which I did), but rather how sorry I felt for the state of things at IITD.

The fest boasts of huge sponsors and mega events and a cracking rock show, then why oh why is the organization of the quizzes so bad? I’m sure the teams that came were pretty good. Teams from Stephen’s, NSIT with whom I had quizzed earlier were there and they simply sighed, saying that it’s nothing new.

Of the many inferences that I made after returning from the fest with regards to quizzing, one of them was that the eliminations and finals had to be made by different people.

A lot of questions in the finals were “lifted” from Wikipedia. How do I know this? I spotted a [2] after a sentence on numerous occasions. Also, someone should get these gentlemen acquainted to the concept of using a PowerPoint presentation to host their quizzes rather presenting us with a compilation of notepad files, each containing one question. It’s never too late to shift, you know. Another suggestion from my end would be to rename the audio clip that you are playing rather than put the clip in a folder named "question 12-do not open", it just tests the audience's patience. And please for Christ's sake dont put in some 85 x 123 size pics and then try to zoom in, instead use larger pics, and if you can't find larger pictures then don't put the question in an AVQ.

We made it past the elims for both the quizzes; one whose name I don’t quite remember and Kombat, the open quiz. In the finals, we were leading for a major portion of the time in the first quiz but ultimately messed ourselves up when we didn’t go for the theme and that resulted in us coming fourth. In the second quiz, we just didn’t hit the right opportunities but oh well, congrats to Vivek, Aravind and King for winning that one.

And then came the blow. Zoom in. The Audio Visual Quiz. Which was about 95% VQ, since there was one audio clip in the whole quiz. Now for the questions, they show us a picture of the Google Chrome comic and didn’t ask us to identify the comic, but instead to identify the creator. WTF?

On another topic: I like the new improved zemanta.

Are IIT toppers models?

IIT-JEE!
For many, it spells terror, anxiety and even the ones who dismiss the competition(because they beat it) rather saying that it was fun or interesting would agree that it did give them goose bumps, at least as the days inched closer.

Today the IIT industry has become a huge investment ground with new coaching academies springing up in every nook and corner. There are areas entirely dedicated to the IIT coaching industry and the whole neighborhood thrives on it. The roads are covered with pamphlets and brochures of various coaching institutes.

It’s almost taken for granted that to get into IIT, you have to have coaching. And in many places (AP being the foremost here), it starts from an early age. Sometime it is even before the kid has reached puberty.

Every year, the IIT-JEE topper becomes a national celebrity. His photo comes on the front page of every news paper. He gives countless interviews to various media agencies. And thus the drama starts.

It’s a known fact that many toppers accept money from institutes that haven’t been affiliated to, just so that they can advertise for them. Now the question that needs to be answered is that is this right? This has been talked about on various blogs. Vivek addresses the problem on his blog.

What he's basically asking is that are JEE toppers models for any academy that can be hired? We might say that it seems ethically wrong. At least that’s what our gut feeling says at first instinct.
But then he also says what about a Dhoni who says that a 7 UP made him the brilliant cricketer that he is now, or Roberto Carlos attributing his football skills to the sports-drink Gatorade?
Aren’t these people lying too? So then why should the education industry be singled out? It’s a business after all. The coaching institutes are factories that need ranks because only then will they get more and more students and there never seems to be a plethora of them for newer buildings (branches) keep springing up.


In JEE
2005 2004 Priya Gupta of Delhi secured AIR 2. She was overwhelmed. Smart she was and had joined FIITJEE, a prestigious IITJEE training institute with branches all over India. However a rival institute in the mean time offered jobs to those teachers at FIITJEE who had trained Ms Gupta. When the results were declared, the rival institute claimed that they too were responsible for her success since those teachers now belong to them.

Are IITJEE toppers models?

The problem here according to me is that, since these IITJEE toppers are normal guys and girls next door, their word is taken more seriously than say a Milind Soman advertising for Nivea cold cream or the sorts.
Also in the case of celebrities like actors and sportsperson, the public has seen them grow from rookies to superstars where as in the case of an IIT topper only the final outcome is presented.
Another problem is after tenth grade the student is rather gullible and well in most cases so are his/her parents and doesn’t know which institution to join, seeing AIR hailing from a particular institution will make him/her want to join it.
Another major reason why it feels wrong is because in the case of a sports-person, celebrity you know that its like a lottery, as in only 15 people make it to the squad, or only 3-4 movies are successful each year, the point I am trying to make is that, whether Sachin drinks Boost to improve his performance or smells Agarwal incense sticks, it doesn’t matter to the common because he doesn’t want to be a cricket. But as opposed to becoming a cricketer or an actor, IIT is very much reachable, with 12000 people being called this year (including all the lists, Ok I've included reservation seats, that’s not the context here).

Do ponder over it…

First and foremost let me apologize for the small picture, this is the maximum it would stretch, so for those who dont have a 6/6 or something close, its going to be a struggle.

Right, coming to the point!

INDIA-TODAY has done it again! Time and time it manages to piss people off with its surveys which has the opinions of 400 teachers(atleast it was the last time I checked). Their tiff with BITS hasnt yet been resolved and well their rankings without a doubt are pretty fucked up.

What is surprising is the inclusion of VIT at the number 14th spot, thus making it(as they claim on their website), the best private engineering college in India. Being a Bitsian, I would love to give the VIT publicity dept. a piece of my mind, if the authorities decided to step up to me.

What is also surprising is by how much the Outlook and India Today Survey differ, every year. I remember last year Thapar College(TIET), Patiala crept through every ranking onto a coveted 8-9th position and this year its name hasnt even been mentioned in the top 25. Can a college really fare that badly in just one year? And can VIT which was at 35 something last year become the best Private college of this nation of a billion?

IIIT-A ahead of IIIT-H? Seriously? IT-BHU at 18? And since when was IIIT-A's reputation better than that of DCE or NIT-W and other biggies?

Are the chaps at India Today(and AC Nielson) really putting in effort while coming up with the rankings? Year after year, we see the rankings where the top 5-6 spots are taken by the IITs arranged in a random order, and the other spots keep shuffling like a deck of cards. Its been 5 years and seriously they cannot take the public for granted anymore. Many people tend to swear by the ratings because they feel that since INDIA TODAY is a credible magazine, the rankings will also adhere to those standards. I havnt seen this years Nasscom Survey which appears in the OUTLOOK magazine yet, so I guess the cussing regarding that should take some time.

P.S: If you notice all the categorial ranks you'll see that they form a nice pattern, at least in the case of IIT's and also NIT-T etc.