Two months after hundreds of thousands of Indian students took what many of them regard as the most important examination of their lives, the results are finally in.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) exams are a key part of the intensely competitive Indian university admissions process. High school seniors must pass the exams to graduate, but they also serve as the gateway to many Indian universities.
A total 3,573 Indian pupils sat the exams at 33 UAE schools.
Students are divided into three streams - science, commerce and arts - and are tested in five subjects. The overall pass rate this year fell by one per cent. Girls outshone boys again, posting a pass rate of 85 per cent compared with 76 per cent for boys.
India's rapidly growing youth population has created a crisis for higher education admissions, with tens of pupils competing for every available slot. At the apex of the Indian university system, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) - a network of 15 campuses - admission is twice as competitive as Harvard, the most selective university in the United States. In 2008, 320,000 pupils competed for just 8,000 slots at the IIT for an acceptance rate of only 2.5 per cent compared with five per cent at Harvard.
"In India, the admissions in all the courses are based on your marks on [these exams], except for in engineering and medicine," said Veena Raghwa, the student councillor at the Abu Dhabi Indian School, adding that to obtain a spot at a top university required almost perfect scores.
"Even for commerce, the cut-off point for admissions into good colleges last year was 98.2 per cent marks in your CBSE board exam. So the competition is very high."
Because university admissions rely so heavily on board exams, they are extremely stressful for students and parents, who have ratcheted up the pressure on their children to perform.
"They control everything and try to make the child study all the time," Ms Raghwa said.
"The parents know the competition and the cut-off. From the beginning of the year, most of the good students are advised by their parents not to participate in anything else. So they will withdraw from all competitions like sports, extracurricular activities, quizzes, clubs, even the student council, because parents want them to concentrate on their studies."
For some, the pressure to succeed can overwhelm them. Amit Yeshwant Patil, 18, of Panvel, near Mumbai, committed suicide after failing his CBSE physics exam, police said yesterday. "He could not come to terms with his failure," said the assistant inspector SP Japtap, according to agencies.
The competition is so fierce that many children spend their evenings and weekends with private tutors or in coaching centres.
Operations like the Abu Dhabi-based "Macademia", a test prep centre for Indian exams, have been spouting up all over the UAE and India as competition for a seat in an Indian university becomes more difficult.
"They are expensive - they charge about Dh14,000 (US$3,800) per year," Ms Raghwa said of the local test prep classes. By contrast, tuition for a year at most Indian high schools in the UAE is within the same price range.
Rahul Maheshwari, a 16-year-old student at Abu Dhabi Indian, has been in coaching classes for CBSE exams and the IIT entrance exam for the last year. He has spent every weekend and school holiday at Macademia for the past 12 months.
Like many of her peers, Varsha Madhavnarayan Totadri, the UAE's best student in the board exams, spent the better part of last year in private tutoring. Her score of 96.2 per cent in the science stream was the highest mark in the Emirates.
Last year, Ms Totadri, 17, attended private tutoring for two and a half hours almost every day. "Most students do that," she said.
"I think every student should go for it because it's really helpful."
Ms Totadri was certainly pleased with the result - but she can't rest on her laurels just yet. After taking six exams in the last six months, she's still not finished.
In two weeks, she will sit one last exam - for a seat at India's premier medical school, the All India Institution of Medical Sciences. "The last two years has been pretty much a roller coaster. In 12th grade, it was continuous studies, hard work, time management, just being very organised and systematic from the beginning."
Yesterday, Ms Totadri logged on to her computer an hour before results were posted and chatted with her friend in the UAE. "I was online with my friends from around 7am and we were counting down. We were trying to calm each other down," she said.
Manish Raje, 17, another graduate of the Delhi Private School-Sharjah, posted an average of 96 per cent in the science stream. He will attend the University of California at Berkeley, one of the best public universities in the US, to pursue a degree in engineering. His offer of admission was contingent on his performance on the CBSE board exams.
"I am overjoyed," he said. "I studied throughout the year. It was not a last-minute rush just before the exams."
klewis@thenational.ae
More than 3,500 Indian pupils at 33 UAE schools received the results of the CBSE exams that they sat two months ago. Students were divided into three streams - science, commerce and arts. We list the top-scoring pupils in each stream and their examination marks. Some schools were unable to provide their results by the time The National went to press.
Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi Indian School
Science Vishnuroshan Sathianathan 95.4%
Commerce Syed Tasmiya 94.8%
St Joseph's
Science Lamiza Abdu Salam 91.2%
Commerce Karishma Jaikshen Sherwani 91.6%
Indian Islahi Islamic School
Science Munni Shahana 92 %
Commerce Nihala Fathima 90.6 %
Sunrise English Private School
Science Sherin Elizabeth John 92.2
Commerce Liya Santhosh Jacob 88.8
Dubai
The Indian High School
Science Arun Asokan Nair 95.2
Commerce Vidya Keertana Shanmugasundaram 93.2
Arts Rasheeda Shabbir Rashid 94.8
Our Own Indian School
Science Kumaraswamy Rakesh 93
Commerce Sabreena K.M 93.2
Our Own English High School - Al Warqa'a
Science Atif Saleem 94.8
Commerce Muhammed Najeeb 89.8
Our Own English High School (Dubai)
Commerce Rajeshwari 94.6
Science Shaziya Kalan 93.6
Arts Varsha Nair 92.4
New Indian Model School Girls Branch
Science Catherine Anto 89.6
Commerce Nazrin Abdul Assis 87.8
New Indian Model School Boys Branch
Science Zaheer Mohammed AR 82.2
Commerce Subin Sainudeen AK 84.6
Delhi Private School (Dubai)
Science Nishant Raymond D'Souza 92.2
Commerce Pankaj Ramachandran 91
The Millennium School
Science Taniya Ittan 95.6
Commerce Khadija Shabbir 93.4
Al Ain
Our Own English High School - Al Ain Boys Branch
Commerce Akshya Kannan 95.6
Science Nishant Panigrahi 92.6
Al Ain Juniors School
Science Nayan Gupta 89.2
Commerce Natasha D'Souza 89
Sharjah
Our Own English High School - Boys
Science Dishan Ali Nambidiveetil 94
Commerce Eby Nattakam Philip 84.6
Delhi Private School
Science Varsha Madhavnarayan Totadri 96.2
Commerce Sneha Elsa Raji 93.2
Sharjah Indian School
Science Nirmal Ghata Manish Kumar 94.6
Commerce Wasim Mohamed Shamsudeen 87.8
Fujairah
Our Own English High School Fujairah
Science Astha Arya 93.2
Commerce Rimsha Anjum Beg 88.6
Ajman
Indian School Ajman
Science Mavadha Abdul Kadar Kakkidi 91
Commerce Aiswarya Muraleedharan 89
Ras al Khaimah
Indian School Ras al Khaimah
Science Shashank Gururaj Rao 94.4
Commerce Abhilash Sasidharan 91.6
Scholars Indian School
Science Milad Sulaiman 91.4
Commerce Fathimath Nahida 86.8
Indian Public High School
Science Aishwarya Pradeep 89.8
Commerce Nandini Alagappan 89
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Indoor cricket in a nutshell
Indoor Cricket World Cup - Sept 16-20, Insportz, Dubai
16 Indoor cricket matches are 16 overs per side
8 There are eight players per team
9 There have been nine Indoor Cricket World Cups for men. Australia have won every one.
5 Five runs are deducted from the score when a wickets falls
4 Batsmen bat in pairs, facing four overs per partnership
Scoring In indoor cricket, runs are scored by way of both physical and bonus runs. Physical runs are scored by both batsmen completing a run from one crease to the other. Bonus runs are scored when the ball hits a net in different zones, but only when at least one physical run is score.
Zones
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
THE BIO
Born: Mukalla, Yemen, 1979
Education: UAE University, Al Ain
Family: Married with two daughters: Asayel, 7, and Sara, 6
Favourite piece of music: Horse Dance by Naseer Shamma
Favourite book: Science and geology
Favourite place to travel to: Washington DC
Best advice you’ve ever been given: If you have a dream, you have to believe it, then you will see it.
The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
THE SPECS
Engine: 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine
Power: 420kW
Torque: 780Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh1,350,000
On sale: Available for preorder now
