London Chapter

IIT Bombay Heritage Fund

Pune Chapter Update - October 2, 2000

About 10 weeks back, during one of our Vaishali meetings, a discussion was taking place as to why only 5 students have been selected from Pune to all the IITs in the JEE for UG course.

One reason forwarded was that in Pune also there are good engineering colleges and students do not wish to stay away from home. This was soon refuted because none of these colleges comes anywhere near IITs.

More valid reason is that students from Pune did not do well in entrance exam. This year onwards, the pattern has changed. Everybody has to first appear for a screening test. Top few thousand students from the screening test are only allowed to appear for the next test. We found that the coaching available in Pune is perhaps not upto the mark. To change this situation, we decided to help aspiring students by giving them several practice tests for screening exam.

Dr M Prakash, of IIT Kanpur, is already helping school students in participation in Maths olympiad. He took up the responsibility for maths coaching. He also made available classroom space at Bhaskaracharya Pratishthan, an Institute devoted to promotion of Maths.

Vidyut M Bapat, B Tech (EE) IITB 1969 and Satish Rane, B Tech (EE) IITB 1970 are taking care of Physics. Pramod Phadke, B Tech (ChE) 1967 and Dr Shantaram Kane, B Tech (ChE) 1965 are managing Chemistry.

First such test took place on 6th Aug 2000 and every alternate Sunday thereafter. The response is encouraging.

Managing pure science coaching by an applied scientist (an engineer is one) is tough, especially after a gap of more than 36 years. However, we are not doing poorly. In fact, students appreciate our practical tips on how to perform better. This type of guidance is not available from any coaching class! Let us hope this activity continues.
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As you know, we have an informal IIT alumni club in Pune, sort of an informal Pune chapter of IIT AAs. We have alumni from all IITs who meet every thursday at Hotel Vaishali on Fergusson College Road at about 10.30 AM onwards. Thursday is an industrial holiday in and around Pune, for staggering of power consumption.

However, there are a large number of institutions and offices that observe Sunday as weekly holiday. The alumni employed in these places find it difficult to come for the thursday meeting and the activities
taking place as an offshoot thereof.

Thanks to you, I am now getting e-mails from a number of IIT alumni who would like to participate. Many of them are sunday-off-walas. I am therefore thinking of starting a sunday Vaishali club, parallel to our thursday club. There is an immediate response from about half a dozen alumni that they are interested. I am sure more will join. It will take a couple of weeks to organise this activity as I have to be away from Pune for my professional reasons. Let us hope this also gets going.

Interested alumni who visit your website may contact me as given below :

Pramod S Phadke
Consulting Chemical Engineer
Satyajit Society
30/1 Erandavana
Near Mehendale Garage
PUNE-411004.
Phone : 543 6383
Fax : 543 6994

E mail : psphadke[!]yahoo.com

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