The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : His childhood dream comes true

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 28, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

His childhood dream comes true

M.Gunasekaran and Ramya Kannan

G.K.Ashwin Kumar

POLLACHI: Three years after he passed Plus-Two, G.K.Ashwin Kumar’s childhood dream of studying medicine has come true.

Though he cleared his board exams with good marks in 2004, Ashwin’s performance in the Common Entrance Test was not good enough to get him a medical seat.

This year, with the Tamil Nadu Government scrapping the CET, Ashwin has finally gotten what he always wanted.

Coincidence

His name figured in the merit list released on Wednesday by Health Minister KKSSR Ramachandran, seventh in the list of students who had scored 200/200.

A happy coincidence that such good news should come on his birthday.

In 2004, the boy passed with flying colours in the Plus-Two examinations, scoring centum in physics, chemistry and biology and a total of 1,169 marks. That year and the next, he could not get a seat in any government medical college, as his score in the entrance exams did not measure up.

Belonging to the Backward Class, Ashwin lost his chance for a seat by three marks in the first year and two marks the next year.

He did not take the CET last year, he says, because of the uncertainty over the entrance examinations.

An alumnus of Bharathiya Vidya Manthir Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Pollachi, Ashwin says: “I started dreaming when I completed Standard V.”

Inspiration

His inspiration was at home itself: his father N. Gopalakrishnan works as a medical officer at the Primary Health Centre at Pethanaikenpudur. “I have a great passion for the profession because of its nobility. The kind of respect it enjoys among the public also appealed to me,” he told The Hindu.

Ashwin joined BE at a college at Sathyamangalam. His father is glad that the decision to scrap the CET had benefited his son, who found it difficult to answer questions in the mathematics paper fast enough and hopes that it will also help other students with similar problems.

One man’s nectar is another man’s poison.

This very aspect of the 2007 admission process has raised the hackles of many parents. Apparently a number of students who cleared the Plus-Two exams before 2007 have found a place in the merit list this year.

Officials of the Selection Committee admitted that it was true, though the actual number of such students were as yet unavailable.

Education consultant Jeyaprakash Gandhi claimed that even those students who completed a degree course, B.Sc or B.Ed. or three years of an engineering degree, have been accommodated on the merit list.

Fear

Parents of students who passed out this year pointed out that they feared that allowing older students to participate in the admission process would deny their wards of a seat.

This fear was proved right now. Some parents have also decided to go to court and contest the decision to allow such candidates, praying that a fair age limit be set for admission.

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