INDIA vs THE WEST: The Psychology Driving Two Education Systems

The last time I was in school physically, I was in 10th grade. And now, almost magically, I find myself searching for universities to apply to! The phrase "time flies" is universal but I think we have a consensus on the fact that time has definitely been flying ten times faster during the pandemic! However, as much as I want to go on and on complaining about these lost years, this piece is not about that. Considering our ever-decreasing attention spans, I better give you readers what you came here for after reading the title.

Lately I have been pondering and researching about what I should do after 12th. 4 years ago, I never would have thought that this time would come, but yes, I have been planning my career these past few months. While looking at universities both abroad and domestic, I realised that there is one major difference between them. Before I dive into that, I want to explain something I learnt in a psychology lesson which is worth noting in this context.

Alfred Binet, born in 1857 in Nice, France, was one of the earliest psychologists to work on the concept of intelligence. Not taking his era into consideration, one might say that his work was rather too simple. He defined intelligence as a specific set of abilities that were needed to perform almost all kinds of tasks. Persons who had these abilities in higher concentrations were considered very intelligent and those who displayed less amounts of these specific abilities were seen as not-so-intelligent individuals. This theory was soon challenged by a new perception of intelligence shown by a number of psychologists. They argued that every individual is unique and classifying their brightness using such an inflexible judgement criteria was not fair. Gradually the idea started to spread that people may be intelligent in different fields and in their own ways. There might be a set of abilities that are common to most intelligent people, but these abilities are just not enough to label individuals as intelligent or otherwise.

Now, let us look at universities in most developed nations. They seem to have understood the message that the psychologists studying intelligence after Binet wanted to send across. Most of these universities don't just look at academic scores, they also pay a lot of attention to the personality of the candidate, which, for them, is defined by many factors. One of the most important factors is the extra-curricular activities that the student has taken part in. It's worth noting that there is no set list of activities which impress these universities. It depends more on how seriously one pursues these activities. It can be anything ranging from music to social work to writing. Another thing that matters a lot to these institutions is the essay or statement of purpose. This is basically a 500-word essay that talks about who you are and why you think you deserve a seat in that particular university. An admissions officer at the University of Stanford said that they are looking for someone they would actually want to have lunch with or be roommates with.

Now let us come to Indian colleges. The admission departments of most public universities in India seem to believe very strongly in Binet's theory of classifying intelligence. This is clear from their acceptance criteria. A student needs one thing to get into most universities. This one, extremely powerful factor practically decides the future of students in the Indian system. This factor is, (drum roll) marks! The only thing that matters In admission system is how well the student does in tests, that's it. It doesn't seem to care about what the students do and who they are outside the classroom. They do reserve a few seats for students who are exceptionally good in art or music, but that is just not enough.

Like many other things in my country, I really hope this changes soon. Come on, it's 2021, it's high time we stop looking at the competence of students through the eyes of an ancient psychologist!