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Comment by gooftop | Hacker News Reader

Whoa.. talk about disrupting the IIT-prep cottage industry!

Of course, I haven't seen the details of whether it's an effective tool or not, but as a free service that can only improve and scale over time .. should be a gamechanger.

(For those outside India who are not aware of the exam that the academy is targeted at, its for admission to a collection of premier Engineering schools in the country. The exam is taken by over 1 million students annually, with a ~ 1% acceptance rate. There is a huge cottage industry of paid 'tutorial classes' and online programs to help students succeed in the exam.)

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> IIT-prep cottage industry

I'm not sure "cottage" industry is the right characterisation. It's worth over 2B$ [1], and has existed for over a decade. There are behemoths like Byjus, Kota, FIITJEE, etc. and innumerable informal options.

1. https://inc42.com/datalab/with-the-largest-share-of-funding-...

> I'm not sure "cottage" industry is the right characterisation.

GP's comment is more about mushrooming of tutorials/tuition centers on every nook and corner for IIT JEE prep, similar to any cottage industry.

Byjus is irrelevant in the IIT cottage industry. They are newer, and only online. And no company can convince Indian parents that online is better that 8am-8pm classroom coaching.

Does "no company" include Amazon?

I'm going through this with my (young) children and coronavirus. Having seen the varied abilities of their elementary school teachers makes me think a top-flight online course could do much better than some of the actual people working at their school.

There's no question the best teachers will outperform the best online content. But what are your odds of hiring the best teachers?

> Does "no company" include Amazon?

Yes.

> I'm going through this with my (young) children and coronavirus. Having seen...

No. Trust me. You will regret putting your child(ren) through online education. It sucks. I've tried it partially for 2 years. My friend is doing it now, preparing for JEE.

Preparing for JEE is not easy. I had hopes of getting in after getting a good score in the 1st Mains attempt, but just gave up during covid lockdown.

Social interaction is very very important.

Just trust me. I have nothing else to say. Not really interested in going through my 2 year ordeal in this comment.

Don't put your child in online edu in India. especially not JEE prep

You obviously aren't an average Indian parent (uses HN). So you might choose online for your kid. I'm just warning you.

> The exam is taken by over 1 million students annually, with a ~ 1% acceptance rate.

Maybe india needs more "premier engineering schools" if the acceptance rate is so low. Harvard and MIT have acceptance rates near 5%.

Definitely agree, for a country with close to 2B population, it is absurd how their education system is divided into "a couple exceptional schools and the rest are really bad"

As an Indian who didn't make it into the IITs (and instead attended a different school)"The rest are really bad" isn't entirely accurate: - Facilities aren't that much worse than the IITs - Student quality varies - there's smart/motivated and dumb/demotivated/burnt-out kids - unlike the IITs that has a much higher quality bar - but you have both kinds - Faculty is the real difference.. since faculty in India (esp Engineering) isn't geared to research the quality can really vary wildly - Basically - if you're great at what you do - academics isn't a great track in India unlike the US

That's a strange way to put it. More accurate is - "a handful of exceptional schools, plenty of good ones and plenty of bad ones".

It is not ever a 1% acceptance rate. 15,00,000 students take the exam and only 10,000 qualify. From that, only 3000 get into the ''premier'' IITs

The real question is how many serious applicant to they get?

I assume there are a lot of kids who simply won't bother applying to MIT and Harvard just because they know they aren't going to be competitive. But it sounds like the IIT entrance exam is almost mandatory (and used by other colleges?).

> Maybe india needs more "premier engineering schools" if the acceptance rate is so low. Harvard and MIT have acceptance rates near 5%.

The acceptance rate is not a "real" metric in the way that, say, the acceleration due to gravity is a quantity you can measure. Harvard and MIT do not have acceptance rates near 5%. They have an admission quota. If fewer people apply, more of those people are accepted. If more people apply, fewer of those people are accepted.

The reason for high acceptance numbers is that people perceive they are not Harvard/MIT material, and act on that knowledge by not applying to Harvard/MIT. Applicants need to clear a threshold well above the 95th percentile; the selectivity number is an illusion.

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