Conventional Benchmarking: Pros & Cons

Exams and particularly entrance exams act as a sieve through which only a student who manages to perform above a certain performance threshold emerges successful. This threshold level unlike qualifying exams is actually determined by the capabilities of the population appearing for the test. Hence benchmarking oneself against his peers is a key indicator of success probability. Since these tests are becoming a national exercise, any worthwhile benchmarking has to be at national level.

Until over a decade ago the market, which catered to the need of these students, was highly fragmented with small city centric players scattered throughout the country. These centers catered to numerous categories of exams. Any benchmarking, if done was at most at the city level, which really didn’t give a clear picture in National or State Level Exams. Things began to change when National chains of institutes started emerging. They brought in their own national benchmarking tests. Though these tests were held at a national level, they lacked statistical significance. The population of these students was majorly composed of students of the chain only; hence any statistical comparison was not representative of the actual population of competitors.

Internet brings Analytics; the rules of the game are rewritten

Analytics have the potential to transform the way test prep is done in the world. The advent and subsequent mass adoption of internet in the country led to various disruptions in many sectors. We saw the norms changing in many traditional core sectors like banking, ticketing, shopping, matrimonial services etc and these innovations are threatening to wipe off the companies running these businesses conventionally.

In education, animated and interactive content was widely believed to be the biggest disruptors whereas the next big thing is not solely the content but mainly what happens around that content. The ever-growing volume of data around high quality content gives way to the concept that every new user on the website adds value for the next user and makes benchmarking more scientific and relevant.

Analytics have started solving many of the problems that traditional benchmarking had. The sample is random, representative of the entire nation, permanently captured and continuously growing.

Levels of Benchmarking

Analytics offer benchmarking at two levels

Benchmarking with self:  A test taker would like to know if he is improving with each subsequent test. These analytics would cover speed, accuracy and error analysis to continuously improve on any subject area, stream or competitive exam area.

Benchmarking with peers:  In this, a user has the flexibility to benchmark against any student sitting in any corner of the country. The benchmarking can be done at various levels; starting from city, state or national level. He can also benchmark himself against any group preparing for any competitive exam and has the flexibility to go up to any subgroup level. For example, you may benchmark yourself against male engineers preparing for FMS from NCR.

Much more than a regular benchmarking tool

The analytics engine even takes you one-step forward. It can not only select the most appropriate tests for subsequent practice based on your test history but can also take you to the relevant video tutorial where your conceptual foundations can be strengthened.

Therefore, this tool has started taking millions of students from a shotgun strategy of preparation where they fire all around and hope that a shot would hit the target to a rifle strategy where one feels empowered to take a careful aim to reach target at the first shot. This keeps a student away from inefficient learning practices thereby manufacturing time for other creative pursuits.

Analytics is an Indispensable tool for all stakeholders in education

All these unique features propel analytics to the status of becoming an indispensible tool in exam preparation for any student, teacher or institute. Teachers and institutes not using analytics would be depriving the student a chance of effective test preparation in a scientific manner.

The data comprises threads of discussions that unwind around questions, giving students valuable insights into problem solving techniques contributed by those who attempted these questions; something no traditional classroom training can offer. Peer to peer learning is also promoted through the interaction of students undergoing similar academic pursuits in groups. The most interesting thing is that it is the analytics engine that recommends and adds new members to the groups. The learners collaborate in this environment to take their preparation to the next level.

However, such an internet based platform is not without challenges. Thousands of tests are developed by hundreds of authors, so it becomes a real challenge to manage the quality of these tests. It took us hundreds of authors to write around 450,000 tagged questions and enroll 1 million students to capture approximately  23 million Analytics ( read question attempts ) before we can say that we can provide decent benchmarking . Another rating based system for content and authors ensures that inferior quality tests are chucked out of the system automatically.

Fulfills the aspirations of teachers to deliver the best

Another interesting side of the story is the ‘game change’ in traditional publishing. There is a big problem of the traditional Industry that such system is addressing. Volumes are written usually by one or two authors. If we have a book, which contains 20 chapters, we cannot assume that the author is equally good on all the 20 chapters to be dealt with. Therefore, we usually have textbooks, which cover some areas perfectly, but some areas are left not so perfect. So how do we get our perfect book?

There are thousands of authors who want to publish their work, but they are proficient in only a set of topics. Traditional publishing houses are hence out of their reach. Such online platforms have the unique capacities to put together thousands of authors in the long tail to write on the subjects that they know best and would have the perfect compilation on them.

There are many exams also in the long tail that are held at a limited level and hence are not financially viable for quality publishers to cover. Therefore, there is always a dearth of quality material for the students who prepare for these exams. Such online platforms that give flexibility to students to generate their own tests are a big boon.

All this is just the tip of the iceberg. Such rich data of a candidate at various stages of his student and working life can disrupt some other sectors too. May be it calls for another long article…..

Kamal Wadhera

-benchmarking in a group
Here a student identifies a small group against which he would like to benchmark himself. Usually this group would be of a similar profile as the candidate himself. The candidate first excels in this group and chooses progressively larger groups subsequently.

-benchmarking nationally
Students who are appearing in National competitive exams like CAT, IIT JEE, PMT, GATE, UPSC etc, adopt national benchmarking. Here a test taker compares himself with his peers throughout the nation and then focuses strategically on maximizing his overall score by working on his weaknesses and reinforcing his strengths.

How is Benchmarking done?
paper pencil based mock test
This can be a very good tool to assess one’s competitive positioning in the nation after completion of one’s preparation. The nature of the assessment being summative, this is kind of a final judgment on one’s preparation rather than a tool of improvement.
However, is the preparation for any competitive exam ever complete?
The reported aggregate score and a percentile rank leave little scope for any analyses of topics for areas of improvement. Also, since the student base is from the test conducting institute only, the data is not true representative and any inference drawn is biased.
online mock test
Online mock tests present a more detailed analysis of test performance. The student can easily see the areas where he needs to improve. However, these tests stop at that, and seldom provide the user with the tools for improvement. Since a user would require tests in many different formats for further improvement, these tests are a one time affair and leave the user high and dry, gasping for improvement.
Besides, the scores and analyses are reliable and statistically valid only if these tests enjoy the patronage of a significant number of students.
analytics way: the right way
There are very few analytic engines worth their salt in the online space. TCYonline.com is the leader. TCY Analytics* gives the user a number of interesting advantages:
- Flexibility to use any type of benchmarking refereed to earlier
- A large student base of approx 1 million (& counting) gives considerable statistical advantage
- 23 million TCY Analytics* (question attempts) & counting
- Automatically suggests improvement areas and action points
- Generates tests to specifically improve identified weak areas
- Picks suggested video tutorials based on your test performance
- Gathers information around each question through student and author discussions
*TCY Analytics: Question attempts where each question has data of each candidate who attempted it, around parameters like time taken on question, gender, age, city, stream ( B.Com, B.Tech, BBA etc)
This data gives students:
A. Comparative benchmarking like:

National benchmarking: National ranking & percentiles for each test
Comparison with top ten : Your performance with national toppers
Comparison with Friends/Groups/Classmates: Your performance with your chosen friends
Customized Comparison: City-wise, state-wise, stream-wise comparison reports
B. Recommendations like:
Your weak areas and recommended tests to overcome these weak areas
C . Self Assessment:
Overall Performance till date: Your performance trends test by test
Topic-wise Analysis till date: A cumulative topic wise analysis of your tests
View Overall Analysis : Which questions you have marked correct/wrong
Question by Question Analysis: The answer to each question and discussion with others
Topic-wise Analysis: Your sub-sub-sub skills to improve faster and your BEST & WEAK topics in the test
Difficulty-wise Analysis: How well you performed on difficult questions
Your Time Management: Know your Time Savers & Time Takers in the test, based on average time per question

What makes TCY-Analytics unique is that hundreds of authors spread all over the world upload thousands of quality tests. It is like a textbook in which each chapter is written by the best expert in that area. Each question is rated and the junk is automatically removed from the site, giving users the best content quality experience.

For our school going K-10 friends, we have a highly effective assessment test called National Benchmarking Test, for students in grades 6 to 10. TCY -NBT is a test of its kind! It is unique as it combines a comprehensive assessment test with a plan of remedial action to overcome the weaknesses it identifies, and further with a career preparedness graph to guide a student on the career options available as per his existing skill levels. What is more, the Analytics of TCY-NBT also provides detailed statistics on his competitiveness at the national, state, regional and school levels.
If you have a testing history on TCYonline, it is mapping your different competencies more and more accurately with every subsequent test. Start early; maintain regularity for us to recommend to you various career options, based on your competencies, throughout your student and working life. Remember, ever increasing portfolio of test categories on TCYonline will give you tests that help you decide career paths. Keep visiting TCYonline more and more often for more and more tests and keep growing intellectually all your life.
Test Preparation without TCY Analytics is incomplete.
Your comments and suggestions are welcome!

Kamal Wadhera along with Viji Raj

Building six pack abs and creating an entrepreneurial organisation may seem to be poles apart but the principles that apply are no different. Let us run this analogy and analyse how the fundamentals are the same.

Rewind to the release of the Aamir Khan starrer, Ghajini. A young man walks out of cinema, enthralled by Aamir’s six pack abs and wants the same for himself. He is all pumped up, imagining himself with those abs one year later. As he starts to make a mental checklist of things to do to reach his goal, his reverie is interrupted by the aroma and sight of delicious burgers on the food court a floor below. As his stomach suddenly starts to churn, he stops and picks up a fat-laden burger. He bites into it thinking he’ll just workout a little harder when he starts. No sooner does he reach home that he gets invited to, and goes to an all night party. A lot of beers and a bad hangover later, the resolve to go for an early morning run has evaporated like dew on a hot summer morning. The best hangover cure is a butter rich breakfast, muses our six-pack wannabe, and gorges on mummy-made paranthas. A few days of everyday routine and the six pack abs are relegated to some obscure corner of his consciousness. They do resurface every time our protagonist sees Shahid Kapoor or John Abraham on TV, but the passion wanes each time and the emotion evoked is more wistfulness than ambition. The timeline of one year gets replaced with someday. Someday…..

Now imagine a young management student in a B School of the Ivy League. He has stars in his eyes and sees himself as a successful entrepreneur in a few years. Discussions with fellow students revolve around what business he wants to usher in and how big his dreams of entrepreneurship are. As the graduation day approaches, head-hunters from corporate houses enter the campus looking for future managers. Our wannabe entrepreneur joins the queue of interviewees and lands himself a plum package. He starts his job thinking he’s taking up the job for experience and that he will work just a little harder when he turns an entrepreneur. Very soon he gets a car financed and buys a flat on a bank loan. After all, he has a certain status and is expected to live up that image. Platinum credit cards, conferences in five star hotels, luxury vacations and a jet-setting lifestyle combine to purge the dreams of entrepreneurship from the conscious. Every time he sees an entrepreneur of his age, he promises to himself – someday….

So, what do the two stories lead up to? Or more specifically, why does the protagonist get lost in the wilderness of fat morsels and fat packages? The reason is simple – lack of focus; the illusory someday that never comes. Be it a burger or a cushy job, people who are easily swayed fail to focus on the end result and are lost in the maze of distractions. Be it an Aamir Khan getting a six-pack in less than a year; be it a Sachin Tendulkar hitting a quick fire double century in one-dayers; be it an entrepreneur doggedly pursuing his dream, – the focus is never and ought never be lost.

Everyone wants to be an achiever. But very few recognise the hard work and the ruthless self discipline that go into it. Fewer still are prepared to put in what it takes to get there. In this world of instant coffee and fast food, instant gratification is the new mantra. There is, though, no shortcut to success. To get six-pack abs, one has to understand what the mental state of Aamir was before he set out to get a six-pack. What was he thinking when he started? How did he react when results weren’t visible? How did he deal with the pain? How did he train his mind to ignore the pain? What did he give up to get the six pack? How did he deal with ennui, fatigue and distractions?
How hard did he push himself to achieve the results by the desired timeline?

Every time someone achieves something, people are quick to marvel at his luck. Nobody sees the many small and big failures that came before the victory. Someone who won the war in spite of losing battles did not get lucky; he just got mentally stronger.

What is needed, first and foremost, is to be clear in our head as to what we want to do. If our career map is clearly etched in our mind, nothing will distract us. If we want to travel from Delhi to Mumbai, we will not take the Delhi-Jammu road. We have to know where we want to go. We got to have a plan and we got to execute it with single minded devotion.

Entrepreneurship can be likened to a very demanding and hard-to-please mistress. Pleasing her calls for immense personal sacrifices. It may mean working up to 14-16 hours a day; putting family commitments on the back burner; missing anniversaries, birthdays, parties, marriages and dinners – all in an effort to please the hard-to-please diva. It may also mean living the lifestyle of a struggling artist; traveling 2nd class; wearing non-branded clothes; and boot-strapping like hell. And yet the entrepreneur must also build his team; search for and find capable people who’ll be enthused by his vision and will work with a passion matching his own; guide his team members through the disappointments, the hardships and the challenges; stand firm even when everything seems to be falling apart; and yes, have enough self belief to lift not only himself, but also the entire team.

His own catharsis notwithstanding, there is still no guarantee that the goddess of entrepreneurship will be pleased. Even after putting in 100 percent and then some more, chances are that he might fail. Not everyone has the courage to stand back up, dust oneself and keep walking. That’s the kind of grit it requires to be an entrepreneur.

Once a B-school graduate gets used to the luxurious lifestyle that comes with a well paying job, the chances of him being able to break out turn bleak. The lifestyle, the perks and the comfort combine to form a gilded cage. The fixed costs build up and trap him. His financial liabilities, be it a financed home or other loans, conspire to keep him a prisoner of the treadmill. He has to keep running harder just to stay in the same place. Like with a boat caught up in a fast receding tide, the shore of entrepreneurship keeps getting further and further away. Settling in a comfortable job while nursing dreams of entrepreneurship is like wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

It so happened a couple of years back and started just as a casual discussion amongst colleagues entailing an athlete’s preparation for his next important goal. We talked about an athlete belonging to a small place having limited resources but a fire to succeed. What does he do? After a lot of brainstorming, the story comes out like this:

After he starts beating his local competitors regularly, he decides to raise his preparation to a new standard. He starts by increasing the track length from 100 meters to 110 and thinks if he outdoes their 100 m time by his 110 time, he is definitely on the next pedestal. The story of his perseverance and smart strategies stays continued. One day, after a few weeks, when he happens to compare his 110 m time charts against  others’ 100 m, he jumps with excitement to find each of his last fifteen timings better than others’ 100 m timings and even his own best 100 m timings. “I never knew this was possible,” he thought, “But, man! Is it my best?”

As a restless forward looking guy he decides to beat his best himself by adding other hurdle. Along with some friends, he spends next few days toiling with spade and soil. Finally he succeeds in giving slight elevation to his entire track. Now it’s 110 m, elevated track and a self motivated guy. Could anybody come in his way? Again straight ‘A’s in two months. Own records beaten every day.

‘Won’t I forget the actual event because I am not practicing anything simulated now ‘, he thinks one day sitting a little worried. Well, he decides to try one more thing and last time before he decides to break away and come back. He adds small equal weights on each foot.  Imagine! 110 m, elevated track and added weights. But who can stop the ones with this attitude. Practice, strategy, improved inputs were all that he needed. After all this when he unshackled him self a few weeks before the real event, within a few days anybody could bet on him. No wonder, not only did he blaze the track on the D day but in each and every event after that till Olympics.

Perhaps, that was the only trigger of analogy & motivation that my colleagues needed. It took two years flat, and a wonderful co-coordinated effort amongst almost all departments to roll out ‘Test Generator (www.TCYonline.com/CreaTest) – the indispensible tool for a student to generate topic, subject specific tests, combined tests and MOCKs’. This was TCY’s answer to ‘How to become an Olympian in any Competitive Exam’.  Its usage was like wild fire. Ever since its launch, we had good problems like shortage of server bandwidth, requirement of bigger and bigger tagged pool of questions to name a few. Nothing gives a team more satisfaction than creating something worth while, we have observed.

The team just needed this kick start as the next product ‘Challenge Zone’ (http://www.tcyonline.com/LetUsChallenge) – the online tool to compete with the friends on the same test - was out of their own imagination and observation. This tool was inspired by the idea of how learning can be fun and peer competition can be educative and healthy. Students sitting in any part of the country are benchmarking against students in other corner of the country, real time. Another, marvel! You observe in morning, after noon, midnight or whenever, it’s on and on and on. In some test categories, the entire family is glued to ‘Challenge Zone’ for hours and parents thank us for taking their children away from idiot box.

All this while, the real differentiator was being created underneath. We have been creating TCY Analytics (http://www.tcyonline.com/subscription/) very scientifically using our sophisticated testing engine. What every student today needs is – High Return on his Time Investment. TCY Analytics give you exactly accurate path of test preparation. It monitors your performance on each question (let alone a test), displays it in the form of the most comprehensible graphical formats and suggests the future course of action based on your strengths and weaknesses. It’s becoming the de facto method of preparation for every competitive exam in each and every part of the country.

All these ideas were small efforts from our side out of our passion and experience of student results; without knowing that more than 450,000 students would enroll in the first  18 months, we’d need around a million tagged questions or would create more than 4.5 million  Analytic points. Our guess is that arguably www.TCYonline.com is one of the most used testing platforms in the world.

When students, parents and sector experts tell us that TCY and our team have changed the game in test prep; we look at one another in surprise ‘Is this how Game Changers think and work’? If yes, may be we’re a big story in the making.’

If endorsements and feelers from outside are any indication, though we never looked at any, yes we got quite a few:

Our franchisees telling that the response in their centres has gone up in the last one year owing to all this;

Highly talented human resources joining us from various parts of the country;

VCs and PEs contacting to understand what we do;

Foreign and Indian universities and colleges approaching the platform to reach out to these students;

Schools and colleges wanting to tie up for testing services.

Rightly said “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come”

–  how challenging their journey is
–  how arduous it must be for them to reconcile their steely resolve (interior) with  their moderate demeanor (exterior)
–  how onerous it must be for them to manage contradictions such as multi–tasking (that is in their blood) and the focus (that is expected of them);
–  how obsessive and ultra-radical they are in their single–minded pursuit; and above all
–  how exciting they are to deal with!

Let us take their ability to manage contradictions first. What they have in their genes is a canny sense of opportunity, though they are well aware that they can’t do so many things, all at a time. Obviously they started with their venture only after they had sensed the opportunity. They have per force to say no to opportunities that fall their way subsequently as they need to focus and fight any tendency of shifting interest.

Their 24 × 7 drive also has to be reconciled with patience, for the former is need for team and the latter for external environment. They carry the burden of expectations of their family, friends and peers, and have to balance their personal and business lives. For them their personal life is just an extension of their business life as they are wedded to their ventures. How else could 24 × 7 focus be possible? Any deviation could be just like telling Sachin Tendulkar not to concentrate on his batting, say after 7.00 pm or to tell Mr Ratan Tata not to think about Nano at home.( This analogy is to explain passion for their respective fields)

They are prone to spells of virtual solitude when they just have to be with themselves. For them, connection with self is an absolute must to allow for end to end thinking that gives them clarity of purpose and a focus for the target. They are prone to have similar spells of association with their teams so as to translate their thoughts to them and carry them along the path.

They remain disquieted for as long as they don’t find solutions to the problems that put them out of balance in the first place. Obviously such angst, such end to end thinking, leads to offbeat results. Could Aamir Khan not have made a successful movie based on conventional formula and star power? Sure! But he was obviously looking for an unbeatable model where he could win on the strength of a theme alone. He didn’t give in to the commercial temptation and conventional wisdom and continued with the courage of conviction.  And the outcome was Taare Zameen Par which could easily aspire for and more easily get an Oscar nomination.

The founders, in their pursuit of the big picture, give up on small things like social gatherings and even routine family matters. Does this mean they don’t love their family and friends? It only means that they are looking at the larger frame which may benefit them all. Likewise, they don’t look for short cuts that might make more economic and business sense to their team and to others. The purpose is not immediate and transient, but ultimate and lasting success.

There are disconnects with family, friends and others for another reason. The species keeps trying to connect the seemingly unconnectables – that it can’t even explain to them. There is a strange dilemma, even a risk of ridicule, where others around may not be able to link up the wood, the stone and a strange amalgam that the entrepreneur is trying to bring together. It is much too early for them to realize that he is aiming for the match stick. So the team has to be pushed and prodded, half willingly at times.

It is quite common to find people who are anxious to work with founders and become part of their core team. But often enough such enthusiasts are not able to come up to the founders’ high expectations. The latter are as demanding from their core team as they are from themselves. The enthusiastic riders on the founders’ bandwagon often get disillusioned and desert the ride, sooner than later.

Change is in the blood of this species. They never think of the trivialities. They are not much obsessed with resources, which they consider as nothing but the means to reach an end. They are the change agents that the society so desperately needs to reach one threshold after the other. The journey never ends for them. Achieving one goal marks the beginning of another journey. Where a project approaches fructification, they get rather detached from all the adulation with a sense of ho – hum. They start getting restless because now they are more concerned about the next big idea.

That’s it for now !!