You’re probably familiar with Japan’s tradition of “cram schools” for college-entrance exams. Korea has the same thing. Perhaps you haven’t heard of India's Cram-School Capital, the town of Kota:
More than 40,000 students show up in the arid state of Rajasthan every year, looking to attend one of the 100-plus coaching schools here. These intensive programs, which are separate from regular high school, prepare students for college-entrance exams. In Kota, most of the schools focus on the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology.The seven IITs nationwide are statistically tougher to get into than Harvard or Cambridge. While around 310,000 students took the entrance exam this April, only the top 8,600 were accepted. A whopping one-third of those winners in the current academic year passed through Kota’s cramming regimen.
“If we stayed at home, we just wouldn’t be able to study enough,” says Mr. Agarwal as he takes a break from lessons. “If you don’t study hard, you won’t get admission.”
Today, he starts studying at 7 a.m., works on practice problems until noon. After lunch, he goes to class, where he gets the answers to the problems, gets home around 8 p.m. and does homework until midnight.