The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : How State Board students face competitive exams

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Wednesday, Apr 15, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

How State Board students face competitive exams

Meera Srinivasan

What they learn in school is nowhere near what is tested in AIEEE and JEE, feel students

— File Photo

Testing times: Is there a disparity between State Board and CBSE students while attempting competitive examinations? A group of students taking a mock AIEEE in Chennai.

CHENNAI: For class XII students in the State Board stream, preparations for competitive examinations such as the Joint Entrance Examination conducted by the IITs or the All India Engineering Entrance Examination conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education could be quite a deviation from preparations for their school examination.

With the Common Entrance Test (CET) having been abolished in the State a few years ago, admissions to a large number of professional colleges in Tamil Nadu are based solely on the scores obtained in Class XII.

For those students considering more options, however, the JEE and the AIEEE become important. Preparing for these examinations could be rather challenging for many State Board students. “What we learn in school is nowhere near what is tested in competitive examinations such as AIEEE and JEE. When I see CBSE students answering questions quickly in our coaching class, it makes me a little nervous,” says R. Suman, who has just taken his Class XII board examinations in the State Board stream.

C.Abhijit’s experience explains this. A class XII student of the CBSE stream, he enrolled for additional coaching for the JEE and the AIEEE. “Almost all that is tested in these examinations are what we have learnt in school in eleventh and twelfth,” he says. “However, since more practice will help acquire speed and accuracy, I enrolled for this [coaching class]. While the JEE demands a very deep understanding of concepts learnt in school, the AIEEE requires us to cover a wide range of questions.”

There are also students who decide well in advance. V. Vivek Kumar, a final year student of engineering at a private college in the city, switched to State Board after class X in CBSE. “After the CET was abolished, I thought it would be wiser to go to a State Board school since your scores in class XII matter most here,” he says.

He feels that enrolling for coaching is more a question of choice regarding studying in Tamil Nadu, rather than of whether one came from a CBSE or a State Board school.

Even institutes that train students for competitive examinations acknowledge this disparity. Aspire, which is training over 6,000 students for the AIEEE this year, follows “adaptive training methods” for students, altering teaching methods to suit a particular batch.

According to its managing director M.A.John, nearly 65 per cent of the students enrolled for AIEEE coaching with it this year are from State Board schools. The CBSE curriculum gives rigorous training in problem solving and application of principles. Therefore, it is common to find more students from the State Board opting for intensive training. “For batches with more State Board students, the concepts are taught in greater detail.”

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