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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

IAS Coaching Centers : New players in the field

Every month new coaching centers spring up in Delhi. It is common for those who fail to make it to come to Rajendra Nagar or Mukherjee Nagar and start a coaching center. It is also common for many coaching centers to wind up when they fail to make money to pay the rent for the office and classroom. This too happens every month.

But what is not common is predatory coaching centres which are already established in other areas like IIT JEE etc, with deep pockets (very deep indeed), which are run like corporate companies making foray into the IAS coaching business. This is a dangerous development.

I am talking about Sri Chaitanya and Narayana institutions which have made the life of students and parents hell in AP, which have made education a very costly proposition to the common man of AP. Now their evil eyes have fallen on Civil Services Exam, and mark my words, they are going wipe out everyone in the field within 10-12 years and establish monopoly if the things continue as they are. As of now these two started a joint venture in Rajendra Nagar to make joint efforts towards wiping out others and fleecing the students. This came as a surprise to me as they are fierce competitors in other areas.

If you have noticed, now a days children in AP start studying from the point of view of IIT JEE from class 6 or 7 itself. You may have noticed numerous schools going by the name of 'IIT Concept Schools'. 10-12 years back it was not like this. This trend has put tremendous pressure on the children and harmed their alround growth and thinking process. If you are from AP, you may know this. All this is because of the unscrupulous organisations like Sri Chaitanya and Narayana.

Now they are trying to replicate this scheme of things in IAS coaching too. These people have started coaching for IAS for intermediate students (+1, +2). They are trying to lure gullible parents into enrolling their children in these courses saying that taking coaching from intermediate onwards helps them get through in to the services early. Program details are given here and here. TN Seshan who is upright and whom I and many like me look upto is the chief mentor of these programs. I dont know what lured him but definitely not money. There are some issues here.

It is important to remember that only 900 people get selected every year and the competition is fierce, fiercer, fiercest. What happens when the student doesnt perform well during intermediate or graduation because of the burden and focus on Civils? These coaching centers had this point in mind and to allay the fears of the students they said that they will take care of the issue of burden. It is easier said than done. It is extremely burdensome at that stage to manage even maths and sciences which are part of the syllabus, so leave aside general studies part. If you have your feet on two boats at that stage, you may not get admission into a good graduation college like IIT. At the age of 15-16 mind is not mature enough to understand the social or political issues. Trust me on this. And ideas and attitudes attained at that formative stage wont go easily.

During the graduation, focus should be completely on course subjects and not on the subjects of civil services. I did a grave mistake by neglecting my graduation subjects and studying random and general subjects only in pursuit of knowledge. Most of the time I used to read random pages in wikipedia on different subjects like history, polity, philosophy, religion, economics etc. This has increased my knowledge and understanding of social sciences tremendously but my graduation subjects(computer science) suffered a lot irreversibly. It is another matter that I had no interest in them but fact remains that I neglected them which I am repenting now. Now I cant go back to my core area incase I dont make it to the civil services.

One more issue is that preparing GS and some subjects like PubAd, Soc, etc from the exam point of view at imtermediate stage or graduation stage is useless. Reason is the 'dynamic' nature of the subjects. They change so much in a time of one year that people who excel in year may get very low marks in the next year itself. If you have observed question papers in the last 5 years, you can easily understand what I am saying. Only thing 'constant' with civil services exam is 'change'. So why waste time? Moreover UPSC is planning to eliminate the otptionals by 2014, so why study the optionals from now on?

Now what should the intermediate(11,12) students enrolled in the IAS coaching  in these institutes take up in graduation? Should they go for IITs or other engineering colleges or medical colleges? Or should they join any degree college in a BA course? These institutes havenot spoken with clarity on this one but the accent is on joining a BA course. Think and think. This will be a big blunder in case of undesired eventualities.

So, intermediate students (and their parents) who are thinking of enrolling in these institutes, please dont do that. Dont fall in the trap.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Relieved of the burden

Finally relieved of the burden that I have been carrying on my back for the last 5 years. My fourth and last mains is behind me now. From now on I can focus on something else for a change. Feeling a bit strange, afterall I spent 5 years reading for this exam and did nothing else. And suddenly all of that comes to an end and leaves behind a kind of vacuum. Once Adapa Karthik who topped in CS-2007 said that one may hate studying for so long hours everyday, but once attempts are finished one will miss that times badly. I am already feeling that.

So how were the question papers this time? Sciences and other less popular subjects are not finished yet, but most of the popular subjects save Psychology(which is today) are finished. There are quite a few surprises(in a negative sense) and heart breaks for the aspirants this time.

First of the surprises was the statistics part of the General Studies 2. It was tougher this time. I always did well in statistics in my last three attempts, used to leave only around 3-8 marks out of 30-36 marks. But this time I did extremely badly, I attempted only for 10 marks. The questions were different from what used to be asked since 1979. They were asked from different topics which we dont study, which coaching centers dont teach. More over the calculations were lengthy. One question which carried 3 marks required us to draw two ogives and find median! Quite ridiculous. Because of wrong time management as a result of my habit of giving importance to statistics, I had to leave questions worth 25 marks. Other than that I felt GS paper 2 was easy. I just hope other questions which I wrote well, better than last year will fetch me good marks. GS-1 was lot easier than last year. Others too felt the same. I just hope I score very well in that paper.

In Essay, people mostly wrote on Public-Private-Partnership and Working women. There is not much difference between last year and this year in the difficulty levels. After a good 20-25 minutes of dilly dallying on the two, I decided to write on PPP. I wrote well and expect good marks too.

Then came the dreaded part, optionals. Public Administration is fucked severely this time. PA-1 was both lengthy and tough like hell. We had to write 5 sub-questions of 150 words in each of the questions 1 and 5 instead of the usual 3 each of 200 words. So 400 words extra. This came as a surprise for some of us and all the planning into time managment strategies before the exam have gone wasted. Till this time my handwriting was too good in GS, and excellent in Essay. But in PA-1 it was as bad as last year which can cost me dear. I just hope the evaluator reads what I wrote instead of going on face value.

The questions in PA-1were a lot tougher than what used to be asked till last year. I can say with conviction that this paper may be the toughest paper since PA was introduced in late 1980s as an optional. Believe me I am not exaggerating. I attempted all but I feel I wrote good to average answers only for 264 marks. Remaining 36 marks may fetch me not more than 5-7 marks I suppose. I expect average marks in this paper with out scaling. But I think normalisation will benefit us in this paper.

PA-2 is easier and I wrote well. More questions in 1 and 5 was not a surprise as we tasted that in the PA-1. So I manged well from the beginning itself with good pace. My handwriting for most part of the time was good save last 30 minutes or so. I expect good marks.

My other optional History had more surprises in store. I dont know what has bitten the question paper setter in the case of H-1. Boy, he has gone bonkers. Other wise why would he change the pattern of questions on MAP which is flawed and has loopholes. Earlier location names used to be given and we had to mark on the map given to us. But this time locations were already marked on the map and a hint (in only two words). We have to identify the location and write 40 words about eac (not the usual 20 words).

There are two flaws in this scheme. One, the locations were not marked correctly in 2 or 3 cases and they dont match with the hints given. For example, the hint for that site in AP which is located just east of Hyderabad is that it is an art center. We dont know whether he is talking about Nagarjunakonda or Hyderabad itself. But Nagarjunakonda is further south east of Hyderabad and not just east of Hyderabad. Another mistake may be that capital town in Bihar which is located around Gaya. Two, there are some locations on the map for which there are 2 or more candidates equally good. For example, for that prehistoric site in Kashmir, both Burzahom and Gufkral are equally good. And for that port near Mumbai, there are atleast 3 candidates - Sopara, Kalyana, Salsette.

One more change is 5 sub questions in 5th question (each of 150 words) instead of usual 3 of 200 words each. So 400 words extra including map question. There is one 12 marks question on Jaina paintings, Pothi format etc which is compulsory question. I read this topic a long time ago and I couldnt recall anything. Everyone whom I interacted with could not write anything on this. One more question on Acharyas' contribution to Bhakti movement was togher too. Thankfully I got it correct. Other questions were normal. I was disappointed that I couldnt perform to my satisfaction. I am expecting above average marks without scaling.

History-2 was better than H-1. In this too, there are 1 or 2 difficult questions like that one on interlocking management agencies (1.d). Thank God, it carried only 12 marks. My handwriting in H-1 was not good at all., just like last year. But in H-2 it was good enough for most of the time. On the whole, both H-1 and H-2 are very lengthy. I heard from many that they left atleast one 12 marks question in each paper. Overall I am satisfied with my performance in it. I am excpecting good marks in it without scaling.

From what I heard, Sociology paper was very easy. Most of the people wrote well. Even the Literature papers inlcuding Pali are easier it seems. Geography was difficult. This makes it necessary for scaling (normalisation) in all subjects as PA, History, Geography were difficult and Soc, Lit were easier. I hope better sense prevails among those who run UPSC and do this scaling. Otherwise there is no hope for me.

And I hope God doesnt cause me more heartbreaks. Let the worthy get selected, not those stupids who dont even deserve to qualify prelims, and not those perverts whose sole aim is to make my money by getting into the services.