There is considerable angst and helplessness in India among students over the college admissions process. In a recent issue, India Today magazine reflected this topic with the cover title: “95% and nowhere to go.” In fact, many scored even more, acing several subjects, but their fate may not be very different.

Nobody denies the country faces an acute shortage of seats, and certainly a shortage of seats in quality colleges, for almost all streams of studies – engineering, medicine, sciences, arts or other colleges. But what this anguished cry masks are two key things horribly wrong with our education system.

Let’s first take the liberal evaluation and consequently high marks.

By clever tactics, one of which is to narrowly define exam syllabi and to narrowly prescribe questions, educators are heaping marks on students without any real intention of evaluating their true potential. So much so, it is hard to distinguish between a truly outstanding student and the one who is gaming the exam system with the help of private tutors and academies.

A recent report in The Times of India revealed that many students who had aced their math tests in secondary school barely passed a test at Tamil Nadu’s Anna University after one year of college. What is more, up to 20 percent failed the test. A key difference, according to the university officials, was this: Students who aced the Class XII exams were never tested on what they had learned in Class XI.

This leads me to the second problem in the college admissions process. Almost all colleges are accepting students based ONLY on the marks they scored in the final Class XII exams, and NOTHING ELSE. The notable exception is when colleges subvert the merit-based system and award seats for capitation fees, or lumpsum amounts in addition to regular academic fees.

This blind evaluation results in the problem, briefly described above: How is one to distinguish the truly outstanding student from the one who has scored high marks by gaming the system, so to say?

Colleges in the United States, Britain and presumably many other countries, evaluate students on a number of things – not just the marks scored in a single exam. If they followed the Indian example, all the Indian students could walk into these colleges if they could afford the fees. The truth is, many of these students with high marks would not make the cut in these developed countries because these colleges look for a variety of attributes in a candidate.

For example, US universities would judge applicants on the basis of student essays, described career goals and motivations, SAT scores, grades in school and extracurricular activities. But colleges in India are reluctant to do so. One college in Delhi asserted its right to follow its own admissions norm but what it was defending was only a variation of the marks-based model.

This lethargy on the part of colleges has serious repercussions for our educational system. Many students who are unable to, or unwilling perhaps, to game the examination system, suffer even though they may possess far more aptitude and skills than those who simply go through school with an eye on marks, not real learning and knowledge.

Colleges need to be able to identify these talented kids with diverse interests, motivations and knowledge. The pity is, they are not even looking. Mr Kapil Sibal, are you listening?