Acing a competitive exam, be it JEE, NEET or any other, can change your life in India. And teachers at Allen Career Institute, based in Rajasthan's Kota, have been helping students crack these tests since 1988. It's been half a decade since Allen Institute opened their first centre in Bengaluru and now, they have centres in Chennai, Kochi and Puducherry as well, continuing their good run in the south of India. Karnataka's Kevin Martin's JEE Mains All-India Rank is proof of that — he secured an All-India Rank of 2. Kevin was a student at Allen's Bengaluru centre.
Mahesh Yadav, the Academic Head of the institute and the man in charge of the centres in these four south cities, says that they do not want to compromise on the quality of teaching and that's why they chose Bengaluru. "We had no plans of coming to the south initially. But parents, whose children had gone all the way from the south to Kota to study, complained that their kids had problems with the language, climate, food and other things. This is when we thought of coming to Bengaluru. We brought our staff and teachers down from Kota. We wanted to maintain the quality of education we were providing there. Bengaluru's climate, we thought, would be the easiest to acclimatise to," he adds, "When the results started confirming that we are doing well here, we opened two centres in Kochi, one in Puducherry and four in Chennai. And students started pouring in — more than 3,800 in our very first year in Chennai."
The students in the new centres have excelled in Regional Mathematical Olympiad, National Mathematics Talent Contest, National Talent Search Examination (Stage 2) and Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana. "These great results have given us the inspiration to open two more centres in Chennai — one in Sholinganallur and the other in Anna Nagar. Not just that, every year we will be opening two centres at each location in the south. We are also planning to tie-up with schools across Tamil Nadu to arrange classes that will help students gain a much deeper understanding of the subjects," says Mahesh, who tells us that they have already spoken to Kingston International Academy in Vellore and Maharishi Vidya Mandir in Chennai in this regard.
Not just the students but parents too are more interested in Engineering and Medicine in the southern states, notes Mahesh. But he also believes that that, in some cases, hampers the student's learning as well. "The parents here are so much more involved in their kid's education. They help them stay motivated. But at times, this awareness might be a problem. They start directing the teachers on how to teach their ward. This is nothing but detrimental. This not only hurts the teacher's morale and ego, but it also hampers the child's progress. They stop accepting what we teach in class," explains Mahesh. "The students are very bright here and we are trying our best to direct them in the right direction so that they perform to the best of their abilities. They need to follow the teachers and practise as many times as they can. This, at times, enhances the abilities to the extent that they outperform themselves," he adds.
