The Mathematician's ward

It was very heartening this morning to see the IIT-JEE results and achiever stories splashed all over the newspapers. IIT JEE is certainly one of the toughest exams to be clearing when one is 17 to get themselves in the country's premier institutions for engineering and sciences. I have been quite closely following the results data almost every year and more specifically look out for a specific piece of data for the past few years. About 5 Lakh students appeared for Joint Entrance Test (IIT-JEE) this year and competed for approximately 9000 seats in the 16 IITs (yes, even they are growing) indicating an admission rate of 2%, the most competitive in the world. It is said that major universities across the world have around 9% admission rate. This itself makes the IITs so much tougher and only 10,000 or so manage to crack the test every year. And about 30 of them are special and come from Anand Kumar's Ramanujam School of Mathematics in Patna,Bihar. The data that i am curious to see in the newspaper this morning is how Anand Kumar's wards have fared this year. As in the past, there is not much surprise as 24 of the chosen 30 managed to clear. The past two years saw all the 30 making to the elite institutions. The focused and now famous IIT grooming programme is called the Super30. For the past 7 years, Anand Kumar has relentlessly groomed hundreds of kids from the economically poor sections of our society. Every year as art of his Super 30 programme, Anand hand picks 30 brilliant and meritorious students through a qualifying test (which of late has thousands of aspirants) and takes care of their lodging, boarding and other expenses or just simply create a conducive environment for about a year. The students, on their part just need to be focused and perform to the best of their potential without having to worry about any financial constraints of their families. Much has been written about Anand and the success his innovative Super30 idea in the media. Anand has been a recipient of many a award. Anand believes in spotting the right talent and providing an environment suitable for the talent to bloom. He is now trying a newer experiment where he wants to set up such incubation schools and identify and enrol top talent from the poorer sections earlier rather than the crop of class IX. He intends to set up such schools and try innovative teaching methodologies that can shape up children to be ready for the premier institutions. It has been proven many a time now that when children develop inquisitiveness; they grow up to be better individuals.

I will certainly be following Anand train his energies and resources towards grooming smarter kids in the coming years. Hats off Anand! You are truly a change maker that this country is proud of..