Alumni Guest House : Donated by Mr. Mody (Class of '55)

This coach prepares a success formula for youthful dreams

Link

This is the profile of Prof. Vinod Kumar Bansal (Mechanical 1971) who started coaching classes called Bansal Classes (http://www.bansaliitjee.com) in Kota, Rajasthan to better prepare students for IIT-JEE and other professional exams. Despite being handicapped, his devotion to teaching is remarkable.

The article:

Muscular dystrophy & warnings of imminent death led Bansal up an unusual path: preparing students for IIT

Kota, Rajasthan: One hundred and fifty students sit elbow to elbow, packed into the long, stuffy hall. They’re in a whirl, trying to keep up with the complicated maths problems in which they’re immersed—and with the wheelchair-bound man before them who just might be responsible for their destiny.

The teenagers, like countless others across the country, aspire to gain admission to one of the Indian Institutes of Technology. And that’s why they have ventured to this dusty town in Southwest Rajasthan to coach with Vinod Kumar Bansal, a controversial businessman who revolutionized IIT admissions and helped rebuild a fading industrial centre by practising a profession centuries old: teaching.

Bansal begins a problem on permutations and combinations by saying, “six newly married couples are enjoying…”

The class erupts in hoots of laughter. Bansal joins in, then finishes the sentence.
“…a birthday party.”
Swiftly moving back to business, Bansal jots down a formula on a transparency projected onto a screen. More than two decades ago, Bansal was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy; today, he cannot stand without support. He zips from classroom to classroom in a motorized wheelchair.

Bansal Classes is situated in a tall office building. To the sharply dressed students trickling in and out of it, it offers rigorous courses in maths, physics and chemistry in preparation for the Joint Entrance Examination, the standard test used to determine undergraduate admissions at the seven IITs in India. More than three lakh students take the test each year; around 5,500 are successful.

To enter Bansal’s classroom, Class 10 students must graduate with more than 75% marks in physics, chemistry and mathematics. They must also sit for an entrance exam devised by Bansal. He says he has never advertised his classes, but his reputation lures in students from all over India, from urban Delhi and Mumbai to the more mofussil Jhansi and Indore.

Of the 3,000 students who took Bansal’s classes last year, 955 gained admission in an IIT. In 2005, of Bansal’s 2,400 students, some 784 got into an IIT.

Bansal’s coaching classes have spawned an imitative movement in Kota, a small town with a population of 1.5 million people, about 250km from Jaipur. The industry now trains an estimated 50,000 youths each year in standardized medical and engineering exams.

As teenagers sans parents enter the boot camp that has become Kota, they attend boarding schools, rent rooms, order food from caterers and restaurants, hang out at juice bars, watch films and frequent playstation cafes. The newcomers and their youthful pastimes have transformed Kota, a once-vibrant textile hub.