May 31 The admission madness of the last week has got me thinking back to my student days. There are two things about my education that I am — in retrospect — pleased about. The first is that I went to school (till I took my ISC) in India. Partly, this is because I was lucky enough to go to what was then the country’s best school (Mayo College in Ajmer); but mainly, it is because I went to school in India. Call me old-fashioned but I firmly believe that nobody who goes to school abroad ever really fits into life in India again. The school years are the formative ones and if you spend them abroad, then India will never really seem like home.
Which brings me to the second thing I’m glad about: I’m pleased that I went to college in England — and not in India.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Indian educational institutions. The global computer revolution of the last decade is based largely on the work of the IITs. I am on the board of governor of BITS, Pilani — and an outstanding institution it is too. Many Indian colleges —St. Stephen’s in Delhi, St. Xavier’s and Elphinstone in Bombay, for instance — are probably world class.
But the principal reason I’m glad I went to college in England is this: I missed the admission madness.
Nowhere in the world does a student’s career depend so completely on an admission system that is so unfair, arbitrary and maddening. Nowhere else in the world is the process so totally based on book learning. Nowhere else is it so traumatic for the students and their parents. And nowhere else is so much effort expended for so little.

The problem begins with the examinations themselves. More often than not, they test a student’s ability to memorise the prescribed texts, not aptitude or intelligence. Then, the marking is generally regarded as arbitrary. Every year students are shocked by what they perceive as the unfairness of the results.

And yet these results — unfair or not — determine everything. When a student applies for admission to a college, the only thing that matters is the percentage. (This is not true of places like the IITs which have their own entrance exam, which may explain the difference in educational quality). Some colleges have a limited sports or extra-curricular quota but this is used mainly to secure back-door entry for favoured candidates. So, in the end, it comes down to the results of a single examination.

Once these results are declared, students have just two weeks to secure admission to college. They have to rush to the university, collect admission forms and start frantically to fill them out — one for each college. Some students end up filling up to 80 forms to be sure of getting admission to any college at all.

Once the forms are filled, the ordeal begins anew. Students go to colleges to hand them in. Staff are routinely rude or dismissive. Adequate information is rarely provided. Wrong information is frequently offered. Everybody gets the run-around.

Even assuming a student manages to get his or her forms accepted at several colleges, this means nothing. Each college then announces its “cut-off” percentage for each course — usually some absurdly high figure.

Students who have not reached these academic heights, then scramble to find other colleges where the cut-off percentages are lower. All this has to be done in a week or so — the time between the announcement of cut-off percentages and the closing of admissions. If you don’t scour the university looking for a college whose “cut-off” percentage matches your own results, then too bad — you won’t go to college.

Small wonder then that the kids are traumatised. Small wonder too that the parents get heartburn or blood-pressure. A single fortnight determines a child’s future.

And at the end of it all, how many of them get the education they deserve?

I wonder. If you exclude the top colleges, then the record is a sorry one: of missed attendances, of bored lecturers and of students who leave college no more enlightened than they were when they joined up.

Contrast our admission madness with the system in any advanced country.

Take my own example. After I finished with Mayo, I went to a school in London because in those days, you needed to do two years of A levels after ISC to get into an English university.

In my second year of A levels, my school asked me to fill up a university admission form where I listed the five universities I wanted to join, in order of preference. The school added its own recommendations as well as comments about my extra-curricular activities. This form went to a central body which forwarded copies to the universities.

After that, each university communicated directly with me. Some (Kent and Sussex, for instance) asked to interview me. Some (the London School of Economics) made me a conditional offer saying that they would admit me if I got a certain minimum grade. Some (Kent) said that they would admit me (on the basis of the interview) no matter what grade I got.

By the time I took my A levels, I had five conditional acceptances. The system required me to hold on to two of those — ideally one with a high offer (the LSE) and one with a low entry requirement (Sussex), so that even if I did badly, I still had a university place.

When my results came, I had qualified for a place at the LSE but told them that I wanted to take the exam for entrance to Oxford. Fine, they said, we’ll wait a year. If you don’t get into Oxford, we’ll hold your place.

Today, the mechanics of the British system have changed somewhat but the principle is the same — by the time you leave school, you are more or less guaranteed a place at university. And if you want to defer admission by a year, they’ll wait for you.

There is no fortnight of madness, no 80 forms to fill out, no blood pressure problems for parents, no tension and no worry.

In America, the system depends on Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) which grade your intelligence and aptitudes rather than your ability to mug up textbooks. But here too, there’s no tension. You take your SAT in the XI grade and spend your XII grade applying to universities. By the time you leave school, you’ll already have university admission, secured on the basis of SAT and your extra-curricular activities.

Only in India do we find it necessary to torment our children and traumatise their parents.

It is no surprise then that more and more students are opting to go abroad. Sadly, this is not an option that is available to most people, given the high cost of school fees in the US and the UK. And the old British welfare state which not only gave me a free college education but also handed me a generous maintenance grant (arranged by the local council of the area where my aunt lived) was dismantled by Margaret Thatcher. If I had finished school this year, then I too would be part of the admission madness.

And yet, it staggers me that though we go through this madness year after year, nobody in a position of influence in India bothers to change this system. It isn’t difficult to do: the model can simply be borrowed from abroad.

Instead, we rewrite our textbooks, sanitise our history, muck around with the syllabus and waste crores of rupees in taxpayers’ funds in unproductive activities. The admission system remains broadly the same, no matter who is in power.

Surely, some Education Minister will have the humanity to recognise what a crime it is to put our children though this ordeal year after year?

And surely, some government will have the imagination to overhaul this system!

Or is that too much to ask?