[shripadk]

The difference is subtle. The difference is that you were called "smart" in the areas you showed interest in. That propelled you to improve further and always be ahead of your contemporaries. In her case (and many in China and India - where I come from) society has certain expectations from you. It doesn't matter if you are interested in something else entirely. Maybe you have a liking for arts. Or for music. These are considered "secondary". There are certain core subjects that you have to compulsorily master else you won't have any "value" in society. Now when you get labelled "smart" for something you have no interest in but you have to do because you have no choice that label doesn't really give you any satisfaction. It just so happens that you did it because the society wants you to. Not because you want to. And then you have to live up to the label now that everyone knows you are "smart". It is a vicious cycle that is hard to get out of.

That doesn't mean the society discourages you from learning arts, music or anything else. You have to make room for it in your spare time.

Also, examinations to get into prestigious universities are brutal compared to the West. Around a million students (10.43 lakhs in 2018) take up the IIT JEE exam and only around 10,000 qualify. You can take a look at how tough the exam is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h_x13xHjVs

To prepare for this, you would have to spend countless hours solving and sleepless nights studying. And even after all that, your chance at success is 1%. I am not even considering Medical (NEET), MBA (CAT) or Civil Services (UPSC) which is equally hard.

EDIT: Corrected 0.01% to 1%.

[thaumasiotes]

> Around a million students (10.43 lakhs in 2018) take up the IIT JEE exam and only around 10,000 qualify.

> To prepare for this, you would have to spend countless hours solving and sleepless nights studying. And even after all that, your chance at success is 0.01%.

Your numbers suggest 1%, not 0.01%. 0.01% of a million examinees would be 100 passing scores.

[shripadk]

Ah sorry I meant to say 1% (I was thinking 0.01 in my head). Edited it. Thanks!

[thaumasiotes]

A more niche question: how does that biased 1% figure translate into selectivity at the level of the general population?

For example, if every eligible student takes the test and 1% of examinees pass, then the threshold for passing the test is being in the top 1% of the eligible population. If 30% of the eligible population at random take the exam, and 1% pass, then the threshold for passing the test is a little more lenient than the 1% figure makes it appear. But if some people identify beforehand that they are unlikely to pass, and don't bother -- say that the top 30% of eligible students all take the test, and the bottom 70% all don't -- then the threshold is much more strict then it appears; in the example, if 1% of examinees pass, then the passing threshold would actually be top 0.3%, not top 1%.

[shripadk]

Yes you are right in a way. Lets put it into perspective: The total number of students who gave their 12th final board exams was 1.43 crore in 2017 (https://www.india.com/education/board-examinations-2017-over...). That is roughly 14.3 million students. This is an aggregation across all boards: ICSE, CBSE and various State Boards. Let us assume that the same number of students gave their board exams in 2018 as well (I am sure the number is higher but I can't find stats for it).

Now not all of these 14.3 million students appear for IIT JEE. Only 7% of these (1 million) appear for JEE. But since you talk about "eligible student", all the 14.3 million are eligible. But many don't even bother to take it because (as you mentioned) they know they don't stand a chance. Many of them are not interested in Engineering and are interested in Medical. These students take up NEET (which is equally tough). The remaining move on to do Arts, Commerce or any other stream with an aim to either do an MBA (through CAT), become a CA, LLB (for law) or pursue Civil Services (UPSC - as tough or some say even tougher than IIT JEE). The outliers are those that do not follow any of these well trodden paths: these are few and far between. So in reality only 7% of those eligible students appear for IIT JEE and then 1% of those appearing get selected.

The other fact you need to consider is that the Government of India expanded the number of IITs from the earlier 7 (as of 2001) to now 23 (as of 2018) and increased the total number of seats from 4500 to 12000. So an approx 3x jump in the number of seats keeping in mind the total number of aspirants taking the exam. So the pass percentage remains roughly the same year-on-year. I am sure if you now take 30% of the total eligible population (from your example), viz. 4.29 million students appearing for the exam, the percentage that pass will further decrease (from 1% to 0.28%). Because students are ranked and IIT seats that are fixed (around 12000) are filled rank-wise.