India Shining ??

Is India shining ?? Well the famous/infamous term was coined by BJP in its campaign for the national elections. The votes werent cast in their favour and this made it amply clear that the "real" India wasnt quite shining. After nearly 4 years since one first came to hear of this term, I am trying to put forth my views about it...

Consider India to be a vessel of gold and the policies that the government and various bodies are implementing for the "progress" of India as the ray of light. When the ray of light strikes the gold vessel, it shines and that too very brightly. Now consider that the vessel is divided into 3 parts as shown in the figure above.

The parts belong to the rich, the middle class and the poor section of the population. The government for its survival had to implement the policies, this can be thought as analogous to someone holding the source of the ray of light such that it throws the light on the vessel. What the government succeeded in doing was implementing the policies in such a way that the ray of light was straight and horizontal and from the side of the rich. This indeed resulted in the vessel shining brightly and misled the government in thinking that India was shining brightly. What actually was happening was that only a part of India was progressing, the other part which consisted of the majority of the population wasnt progressing. The BJP couldnt see this, maybe because its leaders didnt take enough pains to go and see how the poor were doing. They were busy implementing huge projects costing inordinate amount of money, which would affect the poor in anyway. The elections came and the feelings of the majority of the people were cast into their votes and the BJP lost power.

For 4 years, the Congress has been in power and they too dont seem to understand that it is not the rich who will keep them in power, but the poor. They too are doing the same fundamental mistake of not doing much for the 'aam admi' contrary to what they promised. I believe what the government ought to do, is to increase the width of the rays which fall on the vessel. This they can do by, not making policies with a narrow mind, but with a wide open mind taking into consideration the real demographics of this country. This will increase the area of the vessel on which the light falls and in return the vessel will shine more brightly. The government should also consider the angle at which they hold the source of light.This can be done by using the private industry to implement some good pro-poor corporate policies. This may result in another source of light from another direction and make our vessel shine more and shine really brightly.

The elections are due next year and going by the current situation, I think a coalition government is in the offing. The Congress will have its tally of seats reduced taking into consideration the anti-incumbency factor and its performance for the last few years. It doesnt seem that the BJP will do any better than the last time as it has failed miserably as the opposition party and doesnt have any issue on which it can contest the election. I will put my hat in the fray and say that leaders like Mayawati and "Saheb" a.k.a Pawar will have a big hand to play in forming the next government. It will not surprise me if any one of the two is the next PM of India ! What do you say ??

TOEFL

Well today i will be writing about my TOEFL iBT experience. First things first, registering for the test was a difficult task. Each time i tried to register the site would take my credit card details and start making the transaction and then just hang up. A message saying that I should not press the refresh button was also displayed stating that doing so would result in two transactions !! Poor me , as if getting peanuts as salary wasnt enough....

The site finally worked well and I was able to register for the test after trying for 3-4 days. I would suggest all test takers to register for the test as soon as possible. In my case i gave GRE in May and went in my procrastinating mode and didnt take up TOEFL until mid-September !! This delayed my application process further and caused a lot of unwanted problems which I will write about in my further posts.

The iBT exam is a relatively easy exam compared to GRE. I didnt prepare that much for this exam. Didnt even buy a book to study. Just got the Toefl Ibt barrons mock tests and solved them. Believe me this is all it takes to give TOEFL ibt. As most of the international students even I was worried about the speaking section. But when I happened to hear the sample responses provided by ETS I was relieved. It wasnt going to be that difficult after all. The principle of dont think what is going to happen to you but think what is going to happen to people who are taking the exam alonngwith you (namely people from countries which were not known to have English as their third language) saw me through. This was the section for which I practiced the most. For those who are not confident about their communication skills I would suggest that they practice a lot. This helps in increasing self confidence and surely helps while giving the test.

I got 113 in the actual test (reading, listening -30 writing- 29 speaking- 24 :(). In hindsight i would like people to prepare more for the speaking section and score good marks in it as well. All in all if you prepared well for your GRE you will sail through TOEFL. (only exception being the speaking section for which you need to prepare.)

In my next post i will jump to the actual application process :) the best part in the whole procedure to get admission in a US university.

GRE prep

Well i have decided that after procrastinating for a long time i will finally start maintaining a blog. What will I write about ? The first few posts will be about the reason why I was delayed in starting a blog. Mainly the GRE experience and the whole application process which is known to make people go insane.

I got my engineering degree from University of Pune and was offered a job after completing it. Unaware of the nature of the job or the skills it would not need I gladly accepted it. Started working for the company and after about 3-4 months was bored enough, to decide that higher education it would be for me. So having decided this I registered for the GRE. [Graduate Record Exam]

GRE is an adaptive test with 800 marks for quantitative and 800 for verbal ability. Oh yes dont forget the analytical writing section for 6 pts. I prepared using the Barron's book [Used the old version... for those who have the old version I would say there is no need to buy the new version as it has some new questions and words but most of the things are same]. I guess it gives you a good idea about the type of questions which you will see on the exam. Although the quant questions which i came across on the exam were definitely tougher than those in the book. The wordlists i believe, cant be mugged up over a period of time. Rather if you start reading various newspaper editorials or novels you start identifying the words in the wordlist and start understanding the meaning of most words. I believe that even if you dont know the exact meaning of the word you can understand the context in which it is being used and this helps a lot while giving the exam as you have the context and four options from which you can eliminate some and then guess. But this atleast helps in increasing your chances of getting the correct answer. It is all a game of percentages.

Also one important thing to concentrate on is the initial questions in each section. GRE is an adaptive test and hence if you answer the initial few questions correctly you start getting questions which fetch you more marks and are of course more difficult to solve.

One important aspect i would like to emphasize in the preparation for this test is the mock exams which should be taken. There are many exams which are there in the market. I would recommend the following:1. Kaplan: Tough tests. Prepare you well for the exam, in terms of the questions asked and the time per question which is available. 2. PowerPrep: Distributed by ETS. Questions are a bit easier than what you will get on the actual exam.3. Barrons test: All the test questions are from the book. So if you have worked hard enough (solved most of the questions in the book) then you would find them easy. Some quant questions are difficult though.
I took all the three exams (Kaplan-5 Powerprep-2 and barrons-3) and am of the opinion that they were of great help in preparing me for the exam in terms of the time distribution. I would certainly recommend that all exam takers give the mocks before taking the actual exam as it will help them in preparing for the D day.

I didnt prepare much for the analytical writing section. Did just two writing tasks present in powerprep and went through some sample responses. I think that people who are accustomed to writing need not take much pains for this section but those who are totally new should practice atleast a few writing tasks else they would be for a surprise in the actual tests.

Finally I would like to tell you my score in GRE. After all the preparation which I did, I got 1540
(Q-780 VA-760 AW- 4.5) If you have any doubts you can get in touch with me. I would be glad to help. Tomorrow i will write about the TOEFL iBT test which I had to take as the part of applying to the universities.