We were in our 2nd year of engineering when we heard of a senior of ours scoring 2200 marks out of 2400 in an exam called GRE.
The year was early 1999 and suddenly over the next few months we were either hearing or spreading facts/rumours about people cracking GRE.
A year earlier, I had already gone through an awe of finding out a senior of ours cracking CAT. Enlightened by my close friends, of the relative ease of GRE as compared to CAT and seeing a lot of lesser mortals ( :P ) cracking it, I did half heartedly started preparation which I eneded up soon.
In our final year, when everone was cracking GRE, a boy from our batch in leather technology who was nowhere on the academic charts scored almost perfect marks in an exam called TOFFEL. But a little enquiry revealed that the exam was relatively easier than GRE and almost everyone discarded it as a one off outlier.
By the time we passed out in 2001, a good majority of the people, I knew had moved out of India through the GRE route (mind it that these were the times of the great tech bubble and then burst). I had survived not only the mania but the bursting of the tech bubble too with strong lessons entrenched in me.
But little did I knew about the short term memory of the mob. Over the next decade the GRE fad was slowly and steadily taken over by the TOFFEL and ILETS fad, the one which we had ignored not understanding that it has the ingredient of attracting the masses rather than the elite.
14 years hence, the Punjab of today is plastered with adverisements claiming to send the youth to various foreign countries either with or without these aforementioned tests.
Knowing the level of difficulty of these tests, I clearly realize why every kid today is opting for it which in turn has created a business opportunity for a little smarter guys.
The ILETS shops are encashing into this mass craze till it lasts.
For me this mania has reached to the levels of extreme irritation due to two main reasons -
1. Leaving your own country as a first citizen and settle in a foreign country as a 3rd grade citizen doing menial jobs just beats me. My anger knows no bound when I see kids of well to do families taking this route.
2. Paying up 30K for a course which is literally taught in elementary classes talks clearly about our education system.
I have been advised by many to provide training on these courses i.e to become a part of this economy system. But interestingly, what we are currently doing at Locus is attacking the root cause - create strong foundations which will help create a stronger elementary base and thus these exams will become as easy for the majority as they were for us.
Thus contrary to everyone's advice we are not working to be part of the system but are rather working to finish off the current eco system in the long run.
What happens in future is a long shot right now but when you are swimming against the current, the challenges are less obvious to the observer. Probability of success is far bleaker than failure. But what drives us today is the mere thought of creating millions of Manish in future for which we have started sowing the seeds.
