26 Feb
At the outset I want to mention that I mean no disrespect for my schoolmates or teachers from Sri Aurobindo Memorial School, where I spent twelve mostly wonderful years. It is just a thought as to whether it would have helped me later on in life had I been shifted out of there when I [...]
Posted in education, personal by: skimpy
5 Comments
06 Jan
B-schools based in the US use a unique self-selecting mechanism to filter out applicants who might be a bad fit for a management job. This they achieve by making the application process more complicated, but in a way that the kind of people they hope to attract find it simple. Let me explain. Like most [...]
Posted in business, education by: skimpy
2 Comments
07 Oct
Given that I can consider it as my “specialist subject” I continue to comment on entrance exams. Glanced through an article about changes in medical entrance exams today in the newspaper, which talked about “eliminating negative marking”, and also talked about having a common entrance exams for all colleges (didn’t read in enough detail to [...]
Posted in economics, education, fundaes, IIT by: skimpy
3 Comments
19 Sep
… is correlation and concentration. Like everything else, a student’s performance in a test can be divided into two – the predictive component (which can be explained based on preparation levels, general intelligence, ability to handle pressure, etc.) and the random component (which includes and is not limited to illness on the day of the [...]
Posted in education, fundaes, randomness by: skimpy
1 Comment
18 Jul
I did my undergrad in Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras. My parents wanted me to study Electrical Engineering, but I had liked programming back in school, and my JEE rank “normally” “implied” Computer Science and Engineering. So I just went with the flow and joined the course. In the short term, I liked [...]
Posted in computer science, education, IIT, personal by: skimpy
2 Comments
12 Jul
Back when I was in school, I was a math stud. At least people around me thought so. I knew I wanted to pursue a career in science, and that in part led me to taking science in class XI, and subsequently writing JEE which led to the path I ultimately took. Around the same [...]
Posted in business, contract bridge, economics, education, IIT, randomness, science, sport, work by: skimpy
No Comments
27 Jun
I don’t need to be an insider to tell you that Wall Street employs lots of PhDs. PhDs of various denominations, but mostly those with backgrounds in Math, Physics and Engineering are employed by various Wall Street firms by the thousand. I don’t think too many of them exactly work on the kind of stuff [...]
Posted in arbit, business, education, finance, investment banking, science by: skimpy
2 Comments
17 Jun
Why does the government require colleges in India to have “objective criteria” for admissions? I understand that such criteria are necessary for government-owned or run or aided colleges where there’s scope for rent seeking. But why is it that “private” colleges are also forced to adopt “objective criteria” such as board exam marks or entrance [...]
Posted in arbit, education, fundaes, IIT by: skimpy
2 Comments
11 Jun
Recently, India has enacted this Right To Education Law, one of whose provisions dictates that schools must reserve at least 25% of seats for kids from economically backward communities. This post will be tangential and will not be trying to examine the merits and demerits of the law. So earlier this week, the Wall Street [...]
Posted in education, personal by: skimpy
No Comments
26 May
Less than a semester into my undergrad (Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras) I wanted to drop out, and start work. I didn’t want to be an “engineer”. I didn’t know why I’d to spend all my Thursday and Friday afternoons filing away at some piece of iron in the [...]
Posted in computer science, education, fundaes, IIT by: skimpy
3 Comments