More on Colleges: Starting another search

Since the Junior kid is on a completely different career track than the Senior one, I have to do my college research again. I started with another excel sheet, looking up colleges and their admission process.

Has anyone of you noticed this: If you google up the name of any well-known college or entrance exam-what comes up highest in the search results are the coaching centres!

Yeah. Even AI knows that to get to a college in India, you first need to get to the right coaching centre. Some of them also have entrance tests and offer discounts to high scorers to ensure that they get the right potential candidates.
They have admission forms where the students are asked to add their photos and give full rights to the centre to use their photos in future advertisements (for life). I also know of students who did not attend coaching centres, but score well, being approached by centre reps in retrospect, and offered good incentives-in exchange of rights to their names and photos.

This is education in our country!

What is the alternative?

Compared to the cost of private education in the country, education in Canada, Europe, Australia and the old favourite U.S.A seems much more value for money, for those who can afford it. As a girl studying Computer Science in U.K (and doing an internship one break and planning to hike Kilimanjaro in the next break) explained to me: It’s too difficult to get admission in the best colleges here. And then you end up slogging all the time with no other activities. And the state of education in other colleges is just too bad.

I am glad she found an option that works for her.

Again, there is no answer for those who cannot afford this option too.