According to the Toppers of IIT JEE Advanced 2016, success was a by-product of the positive influence of the stress that they were under while prepping for IIT JEE. But this view is medically not consistent according to a few psychologists and counselors. Aman Bansal, the topper of the JEE advanced exam was quoted saying that getting habituated to stress is a necessary because it will always be there, and that he feels it is in the way how one deals with it. He claims that taking it positively and not losing heart can go a long way in the process. Same was explained and reiterated by his fellow toppers Kunal Goyal and Gaurav Didwania , ranked 3rd and 9th respectively. All of them unanimously agreed that “stress helps produce better results” and that using pressure to concentrate more can do more good than harm. All of them are from Allen coaching institute and were also part of a Special Rankers group comprising of 18 students. They explained how peer pressure and peer-peer learning helped them keep a good check on their progress and also provided solutions to many difficulties.
However, on a different note, Lalit Batra, professor of Psychiatry at the Sawai Man Singh Medical College said that it is more a student’s individual caliber to answer a question rather than stress or pressure. Building on his point, another psychiatrist at a public hospital in Pune and council member of the Indian Psychiatric Society, Kishor Gujar said that it is reverse indeed, that is, a low level anxiety is better or yields more positive effect. He however said that stress can only act as a motivating force at times, that too for a select group of students as most of them are intrigued by excess stress.
Ashish Arora, academic head of Allen Jaipur , informed that the SRG was typically trained by 12 teachers over a span of 2 years and was deliberately kept under tremendous stress, which is kind of a religion in Allen it seems. He informed that students were kept under stress in 3 ways:
- Firstly, a constant threat was there of getting demoted from this elite group if their performance deteriorated.
- Secondly, Every Friday there was 4 hour classes at a stretch followed by tests on Sunday.
- The last mode comprised of instant calculation of results and a temporary ejection from the group for those who didn’t perform up to the mark.
However he did mention that the three toppers never got demoted to a lower group. However, the way the trio dealt with pressure, need not be the universal or general big picture. It has often been seen that under stress, students have become frustrated or lose heart. In fact, a bit more turbulence could be added by the recent comment by Smriti Irani , who wants the JEE advanced to be made in lieu with the Class XII level and not the graduation level. However a few people have pointed out that , the entrance tests are deliberately made difficult to eliminate as many students as possible. The current number of students appearing for the JEE Mains is nearly 13-14 Lakhs, and only the top 2 Lakh students are allowed to sit for the JEE Advanced. The current number of B-Tech seats in the IIT’s combined is nearly 10,500 students. So this huge reduction of students would need a entrance of top notch. Also tough questions eliminated students who are rote learners. But proponents of the ‘class XII standard entrance papers’ say that the toughness has made the coaching classes so crucial thereby, leaving the rural and students of vernacular languages at great disadvantage. A few people have also pointed out that stress management can utilize measures such as Yoga, meditation and a day-off after a regular interval.
Source: http://goo.gl/D9tOKO
