Trying to secure good quality education has become very expensive business. Are we drifting into a situation, which will, in time, make good education mostly the prerogative of wealthy people? To give good education to everyone ,the government has given a significant announcement yesterday related to the education loans. Financially poor students can take the education loans without paying the interest till moratorium period. Here moratorium  period is 6 months after completing the course or when the student gets the job, Whichever happens first will trigger the loan repayment process. The new announcement by govt says that students from families with earning less than Rs 4.5 lakh per annum will be eligible for this scheme. Only those enrolled in recognized professional courses can avail of this scheme. This would include education at  institutes established by Act of Parliament, institutes recognized by relevant statutory bodies, IIMs and other institutions set up by the central government.The actual interest will be paid by the government to the bankers. It is a very good initiative by the govt to help the poor.

 Details about the interest free education loans.

1.  This subsidy loans will be available for all the technical and professional courses in India. If you are doing any courses abroad, this scheme will not be applicable.
2.  This will apply for  Courses  after class XII at institutions established by Acts of Parliament, recognized by statutory bodies, IIMs and other central government institutions.
3.  The existing education loans will be linked to this scheme.
4.  This scheme is valid only once for a student. For example if you have used this scheme for under graduate studies, then you cannot apply again for the post graduate. But, it is applicable if you are doing the combined UG and PG courses.
5.  This scheme won’t be available if you discontinue your course in the middle except if there is any medical problem.
6. Any queries regarding the documents required or the courses,just post it in the comments box....

The Graduate Record Exam(GRE), the graduate school entrance test, will be revamped and slightly lengthened.The Educational Testing Service, which administers the G.R.E., described its plans recently at the annual meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools in San Francisco, calling the changes “the largest revisions” in the history of the test.

Some of the specific changes to the GRE and it’s advantages:-

 The grading scale will range from 130 to 170, rather than from the current 200 to 800.

2)     The quantitative section will now provide an online calculator. Also its geometry component will be cut down and data analysis questions will be added.

3)     The test will be lengthened from 3 hours to 3.5 hours.

4)     The order of test questions will be scrambled every 2 hours, for increased security.

5)     The test will allow for test-takers to skip a question and return to it later. The ability to skip around from question to question within each section, is meant to make the test-taking experience more natural and more comfortable.                                                                                                                                                                                              

6)     A calculator will be provided so that mathematics answers will be based on test-takers’ comprehension of concepts and not their speed at basic calculations.

7)     The verbal section will no longer contain questions on analogies and antonyms.

The first point, of the deflated grading scale, will be to the test-takers advantage.With the current, larger range, a 10 point difference is seen as a major setback for the lower scoring test. The new system, however, will condense those 10 points into just 1 or 2, showing the more accurate representation of the significance of such a difference.

The G.R.E., required for admission to a range of graduate programs, is a “computer adaptive” test, so that a correct answer to one question leads to a more difficult subsequent question, while a wrong answer leads to a simpler one. Another change is that the computer adaptivity will no longer be question by question but section by section, so that, within a section, students can skip a question and return to it.

In short new GRE will be "much friendlier"........

With increasing number of corporate companies who need efficient, hardworking people with a pleasing personality and who are capable of managing their resources, MBA education has gained a lot of popularity in the recent years. MBA is probably one of the most sought-after professional study programmes in India. Pursuing MBA from some of the prestigious MBA colleges guarantees you a fat pay packet apart from great career advancement. India boasts of some of the best MBA Colleges in the world and Indian Institute of Management (IIMs) are among those best.The admission into these colleges is done through CAT exam.....

 Common admission test (CAT) is known to be one of the toughest exam that is been conducted in India for admissions in most prestigious management colleges of India. CAT preparations demand a lot of hard work and extensive studies. If one is planning to sit for CAT 2010, then cat 2010 preparation should be done well in advance and this is the right time for it. We can’t judge the cat exam preparation standard of any candidate with the study hours he or she devotes for it. Even the students who study 2hrs daily can do very well in CAT exams. Proper decision making skills, positive attitude and patience can help anyone to crack CAT.....I can imagine what must be going through all you MBA aspirants-a racing pulse being just one phenomenon. Year after year, few lives are made and many hearts broken based on the performance in the test. If this article can convert more non-believers into believers and help students approach the test in the right perspective, its purpose would be served. This article therefore focuses on how to handle CAT from a managerial perspective rather than just from a Maths and English perspective. The article attempts to tackle the whole issue from the various aspects that the CAT tests a student on, and therefore how to handle one's preparation.

 CAT actually uses Maths and English as tools to assess whether the aspirant has the potential to be a manager or not. One of the biggest mental hurdles while preparing for CAT is the overemphasis on learning the ropes in Maths and English and not on understanding the hidden agenda underlying the various topics.

CAT calls for a methodical approach and clear understanding of its structure. There are three aspects or stages for cracking the CAT. Each stage is as critical as the other and the second and third build on the first.
Stage 1: C oncepts
Stage 2: A pplication
Stage 3: T est Taking Techniques….

A lot of students under the pressure of pushing up their scores often spend less-than-desired time on concepts and try to solve problems based on mere speed and guesswork rather than through attaining conceptual clarity. It doesn't matter just how smart a student is, he or she cannot succeed at the cost of concepts. Late starters especially try to catch up with their fellow aspirants by sacrificing accuracy for speed. Let's understand that speed feeds on accuracy and not the other way round. What makes a Bullet Train fascinating is not speed, but the accuracy with which it runs at that speed.

Once you start taking section tests and comprehensive tests, it becomes important to analyse each of the tests that you take. This will help identify the areas/topics that you are weak at and still need brushing up before you take the next test.

Here are some topics,where you are supposed to concentrate for cracking the CAT…

Quantitative ability:-

For cracking Quantative Ability in CAT you do not have to be a Mathematician. Maths is a tool to test whether the student has the willingness to analyse a situation through logic and reasoning. It is not a test of one's subject knowledge, but of one's aptitude to be a corporate manager. Thus, one of the most critical qualities needed to crack the CAT is strong fundamentals and a commonsensical approach..

For QA preparation you  are supposed to concentrate on NUMBERS and GEOMETRY,because QA consists  40% of questions from these two topics.After these two,Profit & Loss is the other topic for which importance has to be given.Being perfect in these three topics and having strong fundamentals in other topics,would fetch you cutoff marks in QA.

Verbal Ability:-

The important compenent of VA is Reading Comprehension.Almost 50% of the paper consists of RC’s because
RC is a test of

-Comprehending ability
-Strategy (to answer the questions in the minimum possible time requires strategy, which is nothing but a plan)
-Communication
-Selection, discretion and decision making
-Managing limited time for maximum results (Accuracy and Speed)
-Ability to handle pressure (the sheer length of the passages can be intimidating)
-Analytical ability
-Common sense and getting the fundamentals right-the most critical quality in an effective manager.

So for dealing RC’s one has to go through news papers everyday.Terrific reading ability only fetches you marks in RC’s..

Apart from RC’s one has to be thorough with vocabulary and grammar…One can become thorough in vocabulary through roots.From tomorrow onwards,everyday you can find five new roots in www.ezucate.com.

There will be one thing that would always remain constant that CAT is testing your managerial aptitude. Do not worry and stop speculating. Whether CAT is difficult or easy, all students will face the same rigour. CAT is a percentile game. This means that for you to qualify, your relative performance has to be better than other contenders. Last, but not the least, nothing is difficult, if you are prepared.

On Monday March 15, 2010 , the Union cabinet cleared the tabling of the much-awaited Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operation, Maintenance of Quality and Prevention of Commercialisation) Bill, 2010. If the bill becomes law, foreign universities will be able to set up their campuses in India and offer degrees independently. “This is a milestone which will enhance choices and increase competition and benchmark quality,” said human resources minister Kapil Sibal.

A foreign hand for education   March 24, 2010

The cabinet has reportedly passed a version of the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill, and this modified version of a draft bill is to be soon tabled in Parliament. More..

India has joined a group of few countries in the world, with a historic law making education a fundamental right of every child coming into force. Making elementary education an entitlement for children in the 6-14 age group, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 will directly benefit close to one crore children who do not go to school at present.

The bill was approved by the cabinet on 2 July 2009. Rajya Sabha passed the bill on 20 July 2009 and the Lok Sabha on 4 August 2009. It received Presidential assent and was notified as law on 3 Sept 2009 as The Children's Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act. The law came into effect in the whole of India except the state of Jammu and Kashmir from 1 April 2010, the first time in the history of India a law was brought into force by a speech by the Prime Minister. In his speech, Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India stated that, "We are committed to ensuring that all children, irrespective of gender and social category, have access to education. An education that enables them to acquire the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes necessary to become responsible and active citizens of India.

The Act makes education a fundamental right of every child between the ages of 6 to 14 and specifies minimum norms in government schools. It requires the reservation of 25% of places in private schools for children from poor families, prohibits unrecognized schools from practice, and makes provisions for no donation or capitation fees and no interview of the child or parent for admission. The Act also provides that no child shall be held back, expelled, or required to pass a board examination until the completion of elementary education. There is also a provision for special training of school drop-outs to bring them up to par with students of the same age. The Right to Education of persons with disabilities until 18 years of age has also been made a fundamental right. The Act provides for the establishment of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, and State Commissions for supervising proper implementation of the act, looking after complaints and protection of Child Rights. Other provisions regarding improvement of school infrastructure, teacher-student ratio and faculty are made in the Act.

A committee set up to study the funds requirement and funding estimated that Rs 1.71 trillion (US$38.2 billion) would be required in the next five years to implement the Act, and the government agreed to sharing the funding for implementing the law in the ratio of 65 to 35 between the Central Government and the states, and a ratio of 90 to 10 for the north-eastern states.

Links to Read:

• RTE funding pattern should be decided by NDC: panel