Two months after hundreds of thousands of Indian students took what many of them regard as the most important examination of their lives, the results are finally in. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) exams are a key part of the intensely competitive Indian university admissions process. High school seniors must pass the exams to graduate, but they also serve as the gateway to many Indian universities.
A total 3,573 Indian pupils sat the exams at 33 UAE schools. Students are divided into three streams - science, commerce and arts - and are tested in five subjects. The overall pass rate this year fell by one per cent. Girls outshone boys again, posting a pass rate of 85 per cent compared with 76 per cent for boys. India's rapidly growing youth population has created a crisis for higher education admissions, with tens of pupils competing for every available slot. At the apex of the Indian university system, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) - a network of 15 campuses - admission is twice as competitive as Harvard, the most selective university in the United States. In 2008, 320,000 pupils competed for just 8,000 slots at the IIT for an acceptance rate of only 2.5 per cent compared with five per cent at Harvard.
"In India, the admissions in all the courses are based on your marks on [these exams], except for in engineering and medicine," said Veena Raghwa, the student councillor at the Abu Dhabi Indian School, adding that to obtain a spot at a top university required almost perfect scores. "Even for commerce, the cut-off point for admissions into good colleges last year was 98.2 per cent marks in your CBSE board exam. So the competition is very high."
Because university admissions rely so heavily on board exams, they are extremely stressful for students and parents, who have ratcheted up the pressure on their children to perform. "They control everything and try to make the child study all the time," Ms Raghwa said. "The parents know the competition and the cut-off. From the beginning of the year, most of the good students are advised by their parents not to participate in anything else. So they will withdraw from all competitions like sports, extracurricular activities, quizzes, clubs, even the student council, because parents want them to concentrate on their studies."
For some, the pressure to succeed can overwhelm them. Amit Yeshwant Patil, 18, of Panvel, near Mumbai, committed suicide after failing his CBSE physics exam, police said yesterday. "He could not come to terms with his failure," said the assistant inspector SP Japtap, according to agencies. The competition is so fierce that many children spend their evenings and weekends with private tutors or in coaching centres.
Operations like the Abu Dhabi-based "Macademia", a test prep centre for Indian exams, have been spouting up all over the UAE and India as competition for a seat in an Indian university becomes more difficult. "They are expensive - they charge about Dh14,000 (US$3,800) per year," Ms Raghwa said of the local test prep classes. By contrast, tuition for a year at most Indian high schools in the UAE is within the same price range.
Rahul Maheshwari, a 16-year-old student at Abu Dhabi Indian, has been in coaching classes for CBSE exams and the IIT entrance exam for the last year. He has spent every weekend and school holiday at Macademia for the past 12 months. Like many of her peers, Varsha Madhavnarayan Totadri, the UAE's best student in the board exams, spent the better part of last year in private tutoring. Her score of 96.2 per cent in the science stream was the highest mark in the Emirates.
Last year, Ms Totadri, 17, attended private tutoring for two and a half hours almost every day. "Most students do that," she said. "I think every student should go for it because it's really helpful." Ms Totadri was certainly pleased with the result - but she can't rest on her laurels just yet. After taking six exams in the last six months, she's still not finished. In two weeks, she will sit one last exam - for a seat at India's premier medical school, the All India Institution of Medical Sciences. "The last two years has been pretty much a roller coaster. In 12th grade, it was continuous studies, hard work, time management, just being very organised and systematic from the beginning."
Yesterday, Ms Totadri logged on to her computer an hour before results were posted and chatted with her friend in the UAE. "I was online with my friends from around 7am and we were counting down. We were trying to calm each other down," she said. Manish Raje, 17, another graduate of the Delhi Private School-Sharjah, posted an average of 96 per cent in the science stream. He will attend the University of California at Berkeley, one of the best public universities in the US, to pursue a degree in engineering. His offer of admission was contingent on his performance on the CBSE board exams.
"I am overjoyed," he said. "I studied throughout the year. It was not a last-minute rush just before the exams." klewis@thenational.ae
More than 3,500 Indian pupils at 33 UAE schools received the results of the CBSE exams that they sat two months ago. Students were divided into three streams - science, commerce and arts. We list the top-scoring pupils in each stream and their examination marks. Some schools were unable to provide their results by the time The National went to press. Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi Indian School Science Vishnuroshan Sathianathan 95.4% Commerce Syed Tasmiya 94.8% St Joseph's Science Lamiza Abdu Salam 91.2% Commerce Karishma Jaikshen Sherwani 91.6% Indian Islahi Islamic School Science Munni Shahana 92 % Commerce Nihala Fathima 90.6 % Sunrise English Private School Science Sherin Elizabeth John 92.2 Commerce Liya Santhosh Jacob 88.8 Dubai The Indian High School Science Arun Asokan Nair 95.2 Commerce Vidya Keertana Shanmugasundaram 93.2 Arts Rasheeda Shabbir Rashid 94.8 Our Own Indian School Science Kumaraswamy Rakesh 93 Commerce Sabreena K.M 93.2 Our Own English High School - Al Warqa'a Science Atif Saleem 94.8 Commerce Muhammed Najeeb 89.8 Our Own English High School (Dubai) Commerce Rajeshwari 94.6 Science Shaziya Kalan 93.6 Arts Varsha Nair 92.4 New Indian Model School Girls Branch Science Catherine Anto 89.6 Commerce Nazrin Abdul Assis 87.8 New Indian Model School Boys Branch Science Zaheer Mohammed AR 82.2 Commerce Subin Sainudeen AK 84.6 Delhi Private School (Dubai) Science Nishant Raymond D'Souza 92.2 Commerce Pankaj Ramachandran 91 The Millennium School Science Taniya Ittan 95.6 Commerce Khadija Shabbir 93.4 Al Ain Our Own English High School - Al Ain Boys Branch Commerce Akshya Kannan 95.6 Science Nishant Panigrahi 92.6 Al Ain Juniors School Science Nayan Gupta 89.2 Commerce Natasha D'Souza 89 Sharjah Our Own English High School - Boys Science Dishan Ali Nambidiveetil 94 Commerce Eby Nattakam Philip 84.6 Delhi Private School Science Varsha Madhavnarayan Totadri 96.2 Commerce Sneha Elsa Raji 93.2 Sharjah Indian School Science Nirmal Ghata Manish Kumar 94.6 Commerce Wasim Mohamed Shamsudeen 87.8 Fujairah Our Own English High School Fujairah Science Astha Arya 93.2 Commerce Rimsha Anjum Beg 88.6 Ajman Indian School Ajman Science Mavadha Abdul Kadar Kakkidi 91 Commerce Aiswarya Muraleedharan 89 Ras al Khaimah Indian School Ras al Khaimah Science Shashank Gururaj Rao 94.4 Commerce Abhilash Sasidharan 91.6 Scholars Indian School Science Milad Sulaiman 91.4 Commerce Fathimath Nahida 86.8 Indian Public High School Science Aishwarya Pradeep 89.8 Commerce Nandini Alagappan 89