The Textbook That Unleashed Ramanujan's Genius

The goal isn't for the exam to be hard for the sake of being hard: it's to increase the discriminative power of the exam, increasing the gap between the top student and the bottom student to be selected. The fact that 13 students this year have the top score tells me the test cannot meaningfully discriminate between them, and that is likely true of raw score as well - probably hundreds or thousands of students share the same raw score, with the need to break ties. We're talking about a total point score spread of 375 to pick ~ 50K students, and that's not even including the requirements for minimum qualifying scores. If 13 students are able to get the same raw score, and still can't be meaningfully separated based on the established tie breaking criteria (presumably even more students got the same raw score but could be assigned a lower percentile based on tie breaking), then the issue is likely many magnitudes larger at lower raw scores where the distribution is much more crowded. I'm advocating a system where perhaps 10 points separates even the students at the very top. Of course, this system has its own problems, but that's besides the point: no system is perfect, and I think its still better than the current system.

Sure, the very top students are likely to be both talented & hard working, and would perhaps have still gotten on the list without coaching (though perhaps not high enough to have their pick). It's in the minutiae of small differences in raw scores where the benefits of coaching likely help. If coaching gives me an additional 10 points, that could mean the difference between getting a seat vs not for a bright student.

I think you're suggesting that joining a coaching centre is a strong signal of seriousness, rather than a material benefit from the actual classes. Possible, but as others in this subthread have pointed out, access to coaching is something out of reach for many students, irregardless of their seriousness. To pose the question another way: how many of the 50K people who got a seat would not if coaching (in its current form) did not exist? Perhaps the top 100 names would be redistributed within the top 5000, but they'd still have a seat. There's likely a lot more students in the long tail whose fortunes were determined by access to coaching. My concern is less with the top 100 and more with students at the precarious end.

Raw scores! (Btw what are the un-raw scores called? cooked?!)

13 students getting top scores!!

My God, it has been a while since I wrote the exam, has the situation changed that much since then? At my time, there was a 25 marks difference between the top two ranks.

Is there any chance you are talking about JEE Mains and not the JEE Advanced? JEE Mains is supposed to be the easier test that serves as a "prelims" to the more difficult Advanced exam. For Mains itself, it is not all that important to distinguish between the top students.

>I think you're suggesting that joining a coaching centre is a strong signal of seriousness, rather than a material benefit from the actual classes

I am also suggesting that there are other benefits from joining coaching that are probably more important than the much hyped "tricks" for solving problems. For one, joining a coaching class means that you are part of a community of other students with similar goals and aptitude.

Otherwise, I agree with your overall argument (although not in its entirety). Yes, at the lower end of the ladder, small difference in scores can result in big jumps in ranks and yes, coaching would definitely have a significant impact on the prospects of these students.

The point I do not agree with is lack of access to coaching. Even middle class families of Bihar, the poorest state of India, find the resources to send their kid to Kota for a couple of years. So, it is not that inaccessible. Plus there is apparently free material available on youtube now, created by the IITs itself.

I would also argue that people much below this threshold have bigger worries in life. We as a society definitely need to ask ourselves why it is not possible to have a dignified, livable wage for the majority of people in our country when many other countries seem to have solved this problem. Solving such hard socio-economic problems is a ridiculous expectation from a measly entrance exam.

Well, besides errata, over time more elegant proofs are developed.

You probably wouldn't recognize early Newton's calculus notation, and the early Maxwell's equations were re-written into the clearer and more regular Heaviside vector calculus notation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notation_for_differentiation#N...

You're still thinking of it in one big sort. That's the centralized method. That relies on metrics.

You want several gradual sorts from the bottom up where each sortation relies on personal accountability between the different teachers and administrations. It would probably look much closer to the European football leagues. You would have gradual promotions and relegations every year.

> I don't quite follow why having a single digit rank should stop me from having an opinion on the subject.

Rather, I expected someone with a single digit JEE rank to have a better, more rational perspective on JEE; instead of over the top romanticism. I know a few folks with a similar JEE ranks and their perspective is different.

> A lot more than you think. Kota is probably at least 30% students from UP and Bihar, the most backward states of the country.

Introspect on what I said and what your reply was. Families that are able to send their kids away to a different state for lodging and coaching for 2 years are at the very minimum middle class, if not rich or upper middle class. In fact, most American families can't do this at all. The fact that there are a lot of poor people in Bihar or India in general does not invalidate what I am saying.

My dad earned 500$ per month as an engineer in India. I am not going to pretend that I rose up via some extremely objective and meritocratic system inspite of tremendous economic disadvantage. The simple fact is that my dad was an engineer, while most of the kids in India at the time had illiterate parents.

> It crosses boundaries of caste and class by a, being objective

There are several exams of these kind in India, all entrance exams can be considered objective by default by this narrow definition. The exception of the JEE, UPSC etc. is the high bar. However, the amount of parental support, financial and otherwise - clearly shuts out the vast majority of India - the lower middle and the poor (SC/ST and some OBCs). With politicians expanding the scope of OBC, going beyond Shudras to include Vaishyas, OBC has been quite diluted. Significant population of OBCs also belong to the creamy layer.

I reiterate that, the JEE is a vehicle for the middle and upper middle to move to the rich class. For the vast majority of Indians, it is not an option. Better than the American system, but not some magic elixir.

> It is also more exaggerated than real. A few bad cases should not be taken to represent the system in its entirety.

It was quite common to bring up the affirmative action boost of these kids in newsgroups. The DASA students were also not spared. Posts like "Apna Mahesh problem solve kar diya. Aaj galati se tube light jal gaya :D". AIR was in the lifeblood of these students. You brought it up as well, while it was quite unnecessary.

> My father was the first in my family to receive a university education

Same here. No surprise.