IIT AND KOTA

Rajasthan’s Kota continues its winning streak in training students for success in pre-engineering and pre-medical college entrance tests Getting into an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is harder than admission to America’s Ivy League: each year more than a million students take the entrance examination for a meagre 8,622 seats in the 16 IITs. It is equally difficult to get into country’s premier medical school: All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi has only 72 undergraduate seats and more than 500,000 students vie for it. Of course, there are more engineering and medical seats in the country, but IITs and AIIMS Delhi remain the most sought after. Almost one in every three youths who make it to these premier technical and medical schools are students from cram schools in Kota, a riverbank town 256 kilometres south of Jaipur in the western Indian state of Rajasthan. Kota’s success in these entrance exams has been stuff of legend as the coaching bu

A story from Bharat Jakati....... This was during Mood Indigo 2008, the cultural festival of IIT Bombay. I was standing outside the main gate, on the other side of the road. Next to me were two very good looking girls. One of them looked at me, then turned to the other girl, and whispered something; both of them glanced back at me, smirked and turned away. The traffic signal, which had been red all this while, turned green and they started walking towards the gate. I followed suit. They glanced back at me with derision as we entered the gate, as if to suggest that I had followed them without knowing where I was headed. The guard at the main gate asked them where they were going and who they were. They flashed - as in, their college I cards - and told the guard that they were going back to their contingent. The guard then asked me for identification. I calmly said, "Student", produced my IIT B I card, simply walked in (you can do that at the IIT B Main Gate; in

A Story from Nitish Krishna...hear it from him.... So this is a story from my first year (2008) . I was living in Diamond and around the time of the first semester exams we had had pretty heavy rains for about 4 or 5 days. The grounds in front of Diamond and around campus were completely covered with water and unfortunately for the cows in campus, this took away their primary source of food. So after the Chemistry exam, one of my absent minded friends returned to his room. I call him absent-minded because he had forgotten to lock his room door before going to the exam hall. When he returned after his exam he casually looked around the room : Bed, Cupboard, Cow, Clothes, Books....wait what? Yes, there was a huge cow sitting peacefully in a corner of his room. Not only that, it was munching away at a PW Atkins Physical Chemistry text book. Now this cow actually knew how to eat a book, it was eating it page by page starting from the cover. It had gotten to page number 176

It’s controversial. The Central Board of Secondary Education or CBSE has issued a circular which is asking schools affiliated to it to provide mobile numbers and e-mail address to students from class IX to XII. This circular has created topsy-turvy in all the CBSE schools! CBSE said the move is aimed at making use of information communication technology tools to improve communication among its various stakeholders, but some organisations have objected to the circular very strongly. The schools were asked to submit the information by August 25 th for the same. A few schools in Rajasthan, feared that personal information of students could be used for non-academic activities, and thus they objected the order. CBSE has put forth, in the same circular that having mobile number and email details will not only facilitate the candidate to have timely and latest updates, but also will help the board also in advance planning and estimation relating to examinations. Offi