[gnufied]

The problems of entrance exams are obvious, but you are not being fair - when you say, why did I had to mug organic formulae? Isn't that kinda, how everywhere? If all I want is to do - MS in CS from some top US university, why do I have to mug that word list for GRE?

> was very miserable because I had no real interest in any of the subjects

You had no interest in Physics & Mathematics? You can hardly blame people who set JEE questions, you don't expect them to ask to write C programs for the entrance exams, do you? Given, myriad subjects that are being taught at +2 level, only physics, chemistry & mathematics are universally taught across India. And the way I see it, It makes sense to ask questions from those subjects.

>When I went back to India to do an internship (and enjoy the vacation) a couple of years back, I was appalled by how little enthusiasm most people have about the work they'd end up doing.

Again, even in US, "most" people have very little enthusiasm towards work they are doing. But I believe, your story is little anecdotal too. Every one of my friend whom I know socially in Bangalore today, are programming their ass off. They work on weekends, on side projects, start up ideas or open source stuff. I understand, my experience is anecdotal too. But again, if you are willing to look beyond IT services, there are people who genuinely love programming, I guess thats how the case everywhere, pretty much.

[magic_haze]

yes, I agree. I understand why the JEE people decided to go that route, but all the same, it is completely unfair to the thousands of students and parents who are forced to go through this mess. The system of incentives is just so perverse.

This is not relevant to the discussion, but I was very interested in Mathematics: I would have loved to learn more (I even applied to the Indian Statistical Institute, but with all the effort required for the other exams, I simply didn't have the time to prepare well for its entrance test). But the whole experience turned me off. Seriously, how would you feel when your entire experience with geometry is limited to high school level, and suddenly someone comes up to you and asks you to prove Napoleon's Theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon%27s_theorem) in under four minutes? My Math tutor did that.) I was completely burned out at the end of it all. Goddamn shame it had to happen that way.

> Again, even in US, "most" people have very little enthusiasm towards work they are doing. But I believe, your story is little anecdotal too.

Again, true. I was just speaking from my experience and how my high school batch (also in Bangalore) turned out. It would be silly of me to claim that with a 1 billion+ population, none are genuinely interested in programming.