Empty Nest or Vanathy goes to college - 2

 Here it is customary to say something about the Indian education system. But I am so stumped that I do not know where to start. 

When raising the kids, I've always told them that I will be ready to pay any tuition for them as long as they get the admission on their own effort and merit. That I will not pay any capitation or management fees or whatever the donation is called. But when the actual admission time came, I kept thinking whether this is the right thing to do with my kid. That's what the education system here does to your morals. 

The entrance exams conducted by the NTA are centred in some obscure private college outside the city. This is true for both JEE and CUET we applied. While the city has numerous government colleges, what is the need to let everyone go 20-30 kilometres to write the exam? You get the answer on the exam day. All the parents are herded into an auditorium and given a heavy dose of why that college is the best in the country.(Also why your kid will need more marks in JEE). Then they are taken to the 'Admission office' where you can pre-book seats at a cheaper price (of course, only cash is accepted). The price goes up after results are announced. This repeats in all the colleges across the city. The pressure for the parents is subtly raised till they end up 'booking' their seats. This is true of the Chennai parents who seem to think the worst of their kids and are ready to pay up and then talk about all the corruption in the government. Strange species of people!

We dont want to look at the gap between what we aspire and what our kid wants. What happens when your kid does not score enough marks to get that seat? As a parent, are you going to pay or let the kid get into a place which fits his/her marks? The parents always seem to answer these questions based on their aspirations (and a certain status it bestows by saying you paid 6 lakhs for that seat!). I can only watch in amusement all this drama. However, my wife was fully supporting me on this. Otherwise, it would've made life difficult (for me). And Vanathy understand what we are trying to do and never once complained. I am grateful for that as well. 

However, it is necessary to point how the government helps this entire process. Till today (July 15), the results of the CUET exams are not announced. That is 2 months after the 12th results and one and half months after the exams are conducted. Even if it is announced today, the individual universities counselling will take another month. This is true for the TN engineering counselling as well. Rank list was published last week and counselling is supposed to start next week. Why so much delay? No valid reasons. These factors also push the parents to panic and start paying up.  

For Vanathy, we started applying in all the colleges in the city and also some in Coimbatore as well. And she did get seats in all the colleges we applied (except a couple). She was shortlisted for the PSG tech's BSc program as well. However when a management fee was hinted at, we decided not to pursue. 

As per her wish to be a hostelier, she got admission in a reputed institution and we were happy to let her go. After paying the fees and going through the orientation, we happily dropped her in the hostel last week. 

Having two kids in college means the house feels empty for the first time since we moved in here 18 years back. 

Empty Nest or Vanathy goes to college - 1

 Often we think the second child will not grow up. We wish they remain the cute little kids they are and never reach adulthood. But those are wishes. So it is with mixed emotions that we dropped off our second kid, Vanathy in her college dorms last week. It was as usual a roller coaster ride to college with last-minute changes and trying to ensure that she gets into a place she likes and wants. 

When Sibi started college five years back, we also started planning for Vanathy's college. Like her brother, she did not wish to study engineering or medicine but was unsure about what else to study. However, we wanted to plan her studies abroad for her bachelor's, just like we did for Sibi. After a bit of research, we zeroed in on France. It was affordable, has some world-class public universities and Europe is, well, Europe. 

However, doing undergraduate studies in France means learning the French language and the requirement is to have at least a CEFR B2 level to apply in the universities. And it means getting through the A1, A2, B1 levels. We approached Alliance Francaise - Madras (AFM) for the courses. AFM has regular French classes only for kids above the age of 16. For 11+ they have teens courses which are longer and every level is split into two courses for easy learning. It means we were already behind the schedule and every level has to be cleared in the first attempt. There is no margin for error. We also started enrollment when Vanathy was almost 13 and that means we may not be able to do B2 on time for the applications. We pushed on anyway and for most of the past 5 years, she had 2-3 hours of French classes on both Saturdays and Sundays. 

June 2023. Vanathy cleared her B1 certification in her first attempt. But that was not enough as the applications will be open by October and the B2 classes and exams are another year away. It was a bummer. However, we started writing to the university admission offices directly and we had encouraging answers from a few. There is an org called 'Campus France' which is supposed to help with the candidature and admission-related questions. But they are helpful only after the application is submitted and before that, we have to do it ourselves. When the applications opened in October, we started writing again to the universities asking for exemptions from the pre-requisites, we did not get a lor of positive replies. But there are courses listed which had the B1 level as the pre-requisite and we started compiling them imto a list and identify the universities to apply. The applications need to be sent through 'Campus France' and only three applications are accepted. That means the margin of error is very low and need to identify the right universities to get through. 

After a lot of mistakes and hundreds of emails to the universities and Campus France, we had the application submitted. And Vanathy got her acceptance into Universite Lumiere - Lyon 2 in April 2024 (The other two universities rejected). We celebrated and thought that's the end of it. But it was not. 

Vanathy's 12th results came in May 2024. And within a week of that, she changed her decision about France. She wanted to study BS - Computer science and in India. While we made her write the necessary entrance exams into the deemed universities as plan B, we never seriously pursued applying for colleges in India thinking she will be going to France. I know that the travel will never work, if she did not buy into it or doing it half-heartedly. Though it was a bit of a heart break for me, we decided to back her up and decided to apply for colleges wherever the applications were open.