Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Inspiring nothing

I felt awefully distressed to see what I have seen. I don't know why I read it. The best way to tackle any problem is to not know the problem. It was IIM A s PGP shortlisting criteria. I lost my composure and was almost crying for those who appeared for CAT with full of their preparation, pertinence and patience. I do not need to explain anything.

See this:

"A total of 280 seats are available for admission to the Post-Graduate Programme 2007-09 of IIM Ahmedabad. The break-up of 280 seats for various categories of students is given under:
General - 192, OBC (6%) - 17, SC (15%) - 42, ST (7.5%)- 21, PWD (3%) - 8."

Cutoffs:

“Please note that the cut off for short listing SC/ST/PWD candidates for group discussion and personal interview would not be less than 17% score in each of the three sections of CAT-2006 and no less than 25% score in aggregate. For other categories, it would be no less than 25% in each of the three sections and no less than 33% in aggregate. The actual cut-offs used for shortlisting, however, may be higher than the above mentioned percentage scores and would depend upon the performance of candidates in CAT-2006.”



Category-wise, the number of candidates, who met these criteria in CAT 2006, is as under:

General : 3431
OBC : 174
SC : 168
ST : 20
PWD :14

Please note that there are only 20 candidates in ST who are qualified.

Now : Category-wise Short-listing Criteria and Number of Candidates called for Group Discussions and Personal Interviews
1. General Category candidates: Out of qualifying candidates, who applied for PGP of IIMA, 608 General category candidates were short-listed. Candidates, whose percentile in each section was above 95.33 and who have an overall percentile above 98.3, have been called for the GD&PI.
2....
3....
4. ST Category Candidates: Out of candidates, who applied for PGP of IIMA, all 20 ST category candidates, who met minimum cutoff requirement, were short-listed for the GD&PI.

After qualifying through a minimum criteria of 33% or so, a general category student have to pass criteria of 98.3 percentile to get a call for GD PI. In the same place an ST candidate will get call for GD PI with only 25%.

So my one friend from general category with 99% is not getting call from IIM and another friend from ST category with 25% is getting call. Wah!!!! Is that the future we are looking for? Where are we heading for? How one can grow bigger by pulling others down? Where is the system in it? How does it justify conducting a so called COMMON admission test if people are going to be judged by their caste instead of score?

If somebody is going to get hurt after reading this, oops!!! I really do not care.

Reference: See this

13 Comments:

At 6:20 AM, Blogger Joy Forever said...

Beautiful write-up. It is really a very very sad thing to see. Another thing that you might have noticed is that there are 21 seats for ST students but only 20 students cleared the cut-off. Does that mean they will keep one seat vacant?
And then everyone will crib about brain drain...

 
At 9:42 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hmmmmmmmmm...it's a serious issue! But that wouldn't be India if the issues are not serious, eh!:-)
Very well written article!
Keep it up....

regards,
मल्हारी...

 
At 9:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The General Category friend that Abhijit has talked about is me. I feel terrible that for their own selfish ends the politicians of this darn nation ruined my chances at the best b-school here. I wish born elsewhere. I don't identify myself with this country anymore. With the first opportunity I'll kick this country in its ass.

 
At 9:03 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I came to this blog as suggested by my friend Joy Forever.

@Abhijit: I think that this issue of reservation has lost its fervor because the students being adversely affected for this policy are a floating one. If the media and we, the educated citizens could have put up resistance like the way we did for Mattoo case and Lal case then I think things would have been different.

@anon from general category: If I say that I truly understand your feelings; then I would be wrong – no one does but you and fellows like you. We can only comprehend a minuscule of your feelings. But all I can say right now is that it is very hard to put people like you down for long – you will do very well in your life notwithstanding this unfairness. If you look around, you will find that life is not fair for a whole lot of people. But people with intelligence and will power like you will always be successful in life. Two years down the line, when you will meet success, you will remember that some anon said this.

 
At 10:40 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

@ anon(10:33 PM).. I have reconciled to the lot I belong. Thank you. You have left me with a lot of passion to excel, in fact, you have opened up for me a whole new window through which I can see that these shackles imposed by my fellow mortal beings are but temporary and if I can, I should be able to carve out the niche I dream to, nonetheless..

 
At 3:40 AM, Blogger Vaibhav said...

Good post and nice comments. Perhaps only silver lining in the episode is the implementation of Right to Info act. Although all this had been happening for years now atleast we have data to argue our case. I do remember many of the MPs claiming in a TV Program that normally the difference between General and Reserved Category candidates is abt 5 %. Now the data clearly proves them wrong.

 
At 8:13 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

@anon from general category: You sure will come out of this and will definitely 'carve out the niche you have dreamt of'. At the same time you will come out of this situation as a much stronger person.When you feel sad then think of all the unfairness that is happening in this whole wide world - i.e. you are not alone in your pain.
Best wishes
I am the same anon.

 
At 8:43 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

aren't you confusing the numbers ?
where does it say that the percentile required for an SC/ST to qualify for gd/pi is 25 ? Please note that 98.3 percentile has been specified for General category candidates but nothing of this sort has been mentioned for SC/STs... it is 25% score that is being talked about versus the 33% for General Category candidates...
i think the assertions you have made are factually incorrect.... u have mixed up the 25% with the 98.3 percentile...
i just hope it isn't deliberate... and everyone seems inclined to agree with you without even a proper reading of the article u have shown...

 
At 9:25 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think the main point being made out was missed. Only 20 candidates from SC category made the cut... what does that tell you?
Many would argue that this is exactly the case for reservations... Because SC candidates are not getting the right opportunities, they are not able to make it to iim's. But consider this:

IIM's are offering a Post Graduate Course. That means that SC candidates who go there have already had the access to good education in the graduate course through reservations (since all colleges at graduate level have the policy in place). That means that the level of these candidates has still not improved!

(Believe me, the SC candidates who go to iim's are mostly the ones from iit's and nit's. If people who have spent 4 years in an iit can still not compete with gen category students who did'nt get there, then something must be wrong)

In my view, any policy that aims to improve the status of SC candidates in the country should be focused on making these candidates equal to the gen category ones... not providing crutches throughout their life.

Reservations has failed on this count and that is what the argument is all about.. no one is against SC candidates per se.... as long as they are of the same caliber as others. Just giving away seats for free simply does'nt work.. and that's what these statistics are proving.

Something else needs to be done... perhaps at the primary education level. But as of now, the cost of keeping reservations is too high. We are sending unqualified people to our best colleges, the places which are supposed to be producing the intelligentsia that will guide this country in its climb towards the top. It is only hurting the country in the long run.

 
At 2:20 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

To hell with reservations!
To hell with SCs, STs and OBCs!
To hell with Indian Politicians!
To hell with the Govt of India (whichever motherfucking party it belongs to)!

Yes, I used the word "motherfucking" because they are actually fucking their motherland upside down and inside out by doing these.

I don't intend to sympathize with sufferers of reservation (like gen. category annon) because I know they don't need it. Eventually, in the long run, they will definitely make the cut while these "categorized bastards" (SCs, STs and OBCs) will lag behind.
I won't w\even wish the sufferers luck because I know they won't need it.

My comment may seem uncivilized to some of the readers so please bear with it....actually I couldn't think of any other suitable adjectives....


In the end, TO HELL WITH INDIAN EDUCATION MINISTRY!
FUCK INDIAN EDUCATION MINISTRY!

 
At 1:00 AM, Blogger abhijit said...

@10:13 PM, "Anonymous said...
aren't you confusing the numbers ?"

I am not confusing the numbers. My point was the 20 ST candidates qualified for the GD and PI are those candidates who passed the minimum criteria of 25% for STs. There is no separate criteria for STs to qualify for GD and PI as the no. of candidates qualified are less than number of seat. :-). While a general category student will first clear 33% criteria and still have to have more than 98.3% to get a call for GD-PI. So out of all the candi_s who will appear for GD-PI, General category students will be of score more than 98.3% and ST students will be having score > 25%. I think now you have got the point. I haven't explained it in deep in main post as I just wanted to diffuse my anger and we are already discussing it in comments section.

@all others: THANKS FOR YOUR COMMENTS.

 
At 11:09 AM, Blogger Monsieur K said...

You seem to have indeed stirred a hornet's nest here.
All said n done, reservations exist because of political appeasement.
To be honest, I remember what one of my MBA profs told us on our first day,
"Life is unfair - the sooner you accept it, it is better for you."
Now, the thing is that I can perfectly accept this statement when things are going good for me. The problem starts when things go bad or worse.

Well written!

 
At 7:45 AM, Blogger Oracle said...

Please do refrain from writing such things on blog which is open for public. I feel things are not right but then we need to give chance for all the sections of society to become compitative and reservation is one of them. Some section of SC and ST got benefited and there is still bottom of pirymid janta who need these reservations to get uplifted. Just pass on to any major taluka place and see the condition of backward classes there. It is still the it was 20 or 50 yrs back.

 

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