In April 2008, my family sat in front of our old family desktop computer. My mother feverishly clicked on the 'refresh button', waiting for my scores to appear. My father and sister stood behind her clutching themselves in agony. I decided that I couldn't bear to watch, went into the next room and flung myself on my bed.
And then I heard my mother scream. My family rushed into my room and hugged me fiercely. I had cleared the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) and had qualified for a place to do my undergraduate in engineering at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
From that day forward; family, teachers, friends, Quora, and everyone else who knew about the JEE, never let me forget that I belonged to the privileged One Percent.
What is the One Percent, you ask?
JEE is the admission test for the 15 IITs, ITBHU and ISM Dhanbad. The total number of seats available in all these institutions is about 10,000. Many of the IITs are new, and have come into operation recently. 5 IITs- Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Madras are well established and have about 5000 seats in all.
Approximately 24,000 candidates of the ~500,000 who write the JEE every year, meet the subject cut offs required to clear the exam. Of these 24,000, the 5000 top ranked candidates get admission in one of the old, well established IITs (~1%). The other qualified candidates who do not get a seat in one of the 17 institutions mentioned above, can get seats at other institutions which also use the JEE rank as their criterion for admission. None of these institutions are as well known as the IITs however, and are usually a candidate's second choice.
I will gloss over the problem of the scarcity of good institutions in India, which make getting admission into one of the IITs (which provide a great education at an affordable cost) so coveted; and go straight to question that I want to discuss in this article:
Was the probability of me being in the top 5000 really 1%?
This report, produced by IIT Kanpur says not. The report is an analysis of the 2012 JEE. It provides details of the background of candidates who sat for the exam, and of those who cleared the exam. The results are striking!
The assumption I will make here is that the 2012 statistics reported is representative of the general JEE result.
The following pie chart shows the percentage of General Category (GE), Scheduled Castes(SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) that registered for the exam, and the percentage that qualified in the common merit list; and with the different criterion. SCs and STs are historically disadvantaged people that are recognized by the Constitution of India. They form 16.6% and 8.6% of India's total population. OBC is a collective term used by the Government of India to classify castes which are educationally and socially disadvantaged. They form 52% of India's population according to the Mandal Commission of 1980. This number is under dispute. Seats are reserved for SCs, STs and OBCs in order to level the playing field, and make up for the injustices they have suffered in the past.
The qualifying criteria for GE candidates are at least 10% in each subject (Physics, Chemistry and Math), and a 35% in total. The qualifying criteria for OBC candidates was at least 9% in each subject and 31.5% in total. The qualifying criteria for SC/ST candidates is at least 5% in each subject and 17.5% in total.
The image clearly shows that the percentage of GE candidates giving JEE is greater than their actual demographic percentage. In addition they do much better in the exam than other candidates. The probability of a registered GE candidate appearing in the Common Merit List (CML) is 5.2% as compared to the 2.5% for OBC candidates, 0.7% for SC candidates and 0.5% candidates for STs.
The report also examined the gender demographic of the candidates who wrote the exam, and those who cleared it. The following image shows the number of male and female candidates in different categories that registered for the exam. It can be seen that percentage of OBC candidates of both genders that qualify for the exam is disproportionately smaller than the candidates that registered for the exam.
The number of female candidates that register for the exam is half that of the number of male candidates. The number of female candidates that qualify are even fewer. Defects in the primary and secondary education system for girls due to societal reasons could possibly account for these highly skewed ratios.
The report also looked at the educational qualifications of the parents of the students who wrote the exam. The following pie chart shows the percentage of registered and qualified male and female candidates whose parents belong to one of the listed professions.
It can be seen that this is also an important factor in determining the success of a candidate. This may be because of several reasons such as: Perhaps the average salary of people engaged in agriculture is less than that of people who work in law. This means that lawyers could afford to send their children to better schools and this could give them an edge over other children. In addition, studies have shown that highly educated parents set high expectations of their children. This could be another factor contributing to the success of their children.
The report also examines the parent's income of candidates that registered for the exam, and that of those that qualified.
The inverse relationship between parents income and a candidates success rate is clearly seen.
Another important factor the report considered was the type of primary schooling of candidates. The primary education system consists of several different boards with different syllabi and different exams. The following pie chart shows the number of candidates belonging to each board that registered and qualified for the exam.
A shocking result is that the number of students from State Boards that qualify is half that of students from the CBSE board in spite of more children from State boards registering for JEE. This indicates a real problem in the primary education system in India.
The final factor considered in the report is that of place of residence. The pie charts below capture the percentage of candidates from different places who registered for, and qualified for JEE.
As a girl, educated in an ICSE school in Bombay, whose parents are doctors and earn > 4.5 lakhs a year, I belong to a privileged section of society. The probability of someone like me getting into IIT is much higher than say, a girl living in a village, going to a state school whose father is a farmer. What is this probability? If I knew the number of girls from cities whose parents earned >4.5 lakhs a year, and who studied in an ICSE school, I could use Bayes Conditional Probability Theorem to come up with the actual probability of someone like me qualifying for the JEE. However, I need more rigorous breakdown of the actual numbers to make this calculation. In my opinion, the pie charts in this post already provide compelling evidence that this probability is more than 1%. This privilege needs to be recognized and spoken about. The education sector of India has to be evened out so that all children, regardless of their background have an equal shot at clearing JEE.
Nicely written!
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