Cancellation of Entrance Exams in Tamil Nadu..

~~~~What happens to the quality of Engineers ?? 

With the general counselling for Professional Courses in Tamil Nadu concluded few days before, this little article might be of timely help to people, just to give a minor idea as to how the after-effects have been, after the cancellation of Entrance Exams in Tamil Nadu last year.

    The Abolishment of Entrance Exams:

  The Entrance exams for admission to Professional courses were cancelled last year owing to various reasons best known to everyone in this state. Though the cancellation of exams has made life easier for students among the rural community to get into Professional courses, the quality of students getting into top Professional colleges has taken a severe beating. This was reminiscent from the admissions which took place last year, and is a fact which is well known to the aspiring students themselves and their mentors.

           

Now, the situation in the state is this: Students from top schools, instead of learning subjects with importance to technicality, are made to memorize the text books from top to bottom and reproduce the same in the examinations. Students are now better focused at memorizing every letter in the textbooks, and from all kinds of guides available in the market, without letting their minds to concentrate upon the conceptual points of the subjects.   

 

This kind of activity has certainly increased the overall percentage of students clearing the board examinations and has significantly increased the marks of toppers too, as seen in the results last year and this year, just because the workload on students tend to be less.  But, the grim reality behind this fact is that the students, who are conceptually better equipped in all the technical subjects, but unable to memorize the stuff as effective as the other students do, fail to make it to their dream institutions. Situation has actually worsened to such a case, that students with better memory power stand a good chance of making it to top colleges like Anna University, PSG Tech, etc., thus spoiling the chances of other deserving students.  There can be many detractors to this above-stated point, but there are proofs which can be suggested.  The results of students who topped the entrance examinations till its abolishment can be analyzed, and a significant percentage can be seen as those students who have lower percentage in board exams, but with higher percentage in the entrance exams. 

       Why this situation?:

  The main reason has been the lack of adequate training facilities in the rural sectors of Tamil Nadu.  Students pursuing education in the Government schools aren’t provided with similar quality of education as provided by the private schools.  The main reason behind the problem is the high degree of negligence towards providing quality education to the students in the rural areas.  Also coupled to this fact, there are private Entrance Coaching centers where the poor students are not able to afford to spend additional money for the specialized coaching. The root cause lies in the inefficient transfer of financial assistance to students. 

           Remedy: 

 Solutions to the problems can be achieved easily, if a subtle amount of time is dedicated for the problem and timely assistance, in terms of money and proper advice is furnished to the people concerned. Teachers who are well equipped to handle subjects in a practical point of view must be filtered out, at any cost, so that students in the rural sector are trained for the entrance exams without additional expenses. Care should be taken that the selected teachers should be committed enough to make the students imbibe the subjects along with its technical details, so that they alter their thinking pattern to a Practical perspective. This activity can make the students acclimatize themselves to the world of Engineering Education.

 Only such efforts can churn out the best candidates into limelight.  Only if these students get into the colleges they prefer, they can be groomed into high-quality engineers.  So, finally, it’s a cycle in which one aspect is partially/entirely dependent on the other. Tamil Nadu has been producing quality engineers till date, and this trend should not break out because of such minor inabilities.