We met Shiv during our March trip at Agra. He studied in the same school where Divya was a teacher earlier and she brought him along as he wanted to study in IIT. Shiv’s father is a milkman in one of the many villages around Agra. In the pre-board 12th exam, Shiv had topped the class and scored a 99 in Chemistry. He never watches TV, doesn’t go see movies, or read Newspapers … Doesn’t have an email id and doesn’t carry a cellphone !! Yes, he is a young boy who lives in the tourist city of Agra :):).

He was planning on writing the IIT JEE and had never seen a single previous year question paper. So I told him to buy some of the old question papers and practise. His father was able to afford the 12th std fees so ShikshaDaan would come into the picture as soon as he got his IIT admission. Since we knew Prabhat had lots of experience in getting students through the IIT entrance, we told Shiv about Prabhat and Aravalli Scholars and said, depending on the results he gets, we can speak again in May and get him connected to Prabhat.

We got a call from Divya a few days back and heard that Shiv had got an aggregate of 94% and has done really well. Here is his mark sheet … Just look at the 99% in Physics.

Shiv has also given his JEE and advanced JEE but feels he won’t get a good rank to get into IIT. We spoke to his father and then got Prabhat and his father connected. Prabhat’s advice was to wait till June 5th for the JEE results to come out and then decide on the next course of action. Shiv in the meantime was pressurising his father that he wanted to go to Kota and study there for a year. Kota has coaching centres for cracking the IIT entrance. They are expensive …nearly ₹98,000 for just the coaching fees, boarding and lodging is additional.

And interestingly, the Kota coaching classes start on June 1st while the results come a few days later. So either you just don’t attempt the entrance exam or when you are unsure, you join the classes – and it’s nearly a year of coaching. Most of Shiv’s classmates have already joined the coaching classes at Kota and Shiv wanted to as well.

Here’s the dilemma – Shiv is a brilliant student who will probably get through the IIT entrance on his own steam, but may need some time to prepare himself well… While his friends get coached by the folks at Kota and he doesn’t go through the same coaching he feels he is missing out. ShikshaDaan does not fund coaching fees so we told Shiv’s father that we would like to wait till the results come out and then go with Prabhat’s suggestion that Shiv can probably join NIT and then attempt the IIT next year. But Shiv is impatient and that’s what peer pressure does. We certainly won’t let Shiv’s dream of studying in an IIT die … All we are saying is to wait and take the less expensive option. Hope we can help him in the right way…

Also a deeper question …. IIT entrance needs coaching, nearly all students from their 9th standard are going for tuitions, then you have Lakhs being paid for a medical seat – isn’t something fundamentally wrong with our education system ??.