You Call It Aptitude?

 Have the admissions started?

 Have you filled the forms?

These are the questions whose air molecules have been around my eardrum lately these days. Though I am a senior but my juniors who have just completed their high schools keep talking about it. I in my time had also asked and answered such questions.

Buying aptitude test books and going to aptitude tuition centers for preparation is common among the students. I can understand the former but the latter I can’t. Is it not paradoxical to have APTITUDE TUITION CENTRES? Well let me explain, according to the Oxford Advanced Learners’ 8^th edition, the word aptitude means “natural ability” or “skill at doing something”. So how can you go to a coaching center to prepare for aptitude test? Aptitude is your natural ability which means it is the sum of your intelligence and hard work. It should be enhanced by the love for subject. Different universities in Pakistan have different criteria and the thing which annoys is that universities are also specific board biased for instance I took an aptitude test of a certain university in which I observed that there were topics which the Sindh board or the A-levels student had never studied particularly the topics were federal board. Now this does not mean that I am against federal board this simply means that this is also one of the reasons for joining the aptitude test center. So a person from Sindh board would simply realize that Einstein was right when he said,

“Twelve years of formal education is twelve years of ignorance.”

This is truly a fault of having so many different systems/boards of education. So what is the solution?

As I am an engineering student I’ll opine for engineering universities tests, I believe that there should be a single board of education for everyone and that the aptitude must be examined through an interview with a purpose to test the knowledge of engineering, if suppose a student wants to be an engineer he must be asked what he knows about engineering? What ideas does he have to put forward in future of technology? Lets say if its electrical engineering, one must know what is electrical engineering the student should know the difference between electrical and electronics engineering. The student must be asked questions about different fields of engineering. And most importantly why does he want to be an engineer? I am sure most of the students are forced to become an engineer. So with the written tests along with such interviews we can get engineers with greater intellect. And through the interview part students will get a clearer view of what they want to do and why, be it for engineering, medical or anything other faculty.

The loss of traditional aptitude tests is that our most engineers become engineers just to get the degree and ipso facto people are not using their to THINK.

Adeel Zia