Hello Jigya,

My clear response would be NO. I see 4 reasons for this.

1. Your son is not clear about the career choice yet: I am guessing that your son is in class 7 or 8 right now. It is too early for him or even for you to understand his liking. What if he wants to become a doctor or become a CA or an animator? He has not made up his mind and you dont know his talents yet.

2. The IIT JEE pattern may change: It is still 4-5 years from now that your son may appear for IIT exam. The IITs are constantly trying to revise the pattern. What is asked today may not be relevant tomorrow. The IITs are actively trying to get rid of this "coaching" system and hence in the recent years they have brought about new rules e.g. value of the board marks, objective type questions, simpler papers etc. They may do more such changes in the future. No matter what they claim, none of the coaching classes have a clue about it right now. either you and nor the coaching classes have any clue about these.

3. Four to five years of coaching is an overkill: The course in IIT (especially the recent one) does not demand 4-5 years of cramming at a coaching institute. With more and more of IIT course resembling the board pattern, the need to read from 50 books and solve masters level integration question is not there. So its a hype created by the coaching industry to start it so early. The same IITs used to require 1 year of preparation previously. Then coaching industry increased it to 2 years and now its almost 6 whole years. All this time, the IITs have been simplifying the papers. Something does not fit!

4.. Too much pressure may lead to burn out later: 4-5 years of constant pressure for IITs, continuous tests, extra classes are bound to take a toll. Competition is great but it is this negative effect of competition that we are worried of.

Trust me, your son will not loose out on anything and will not be at any loss whatsoever as compared to other candidates. Instead, he will be fresh and enthusiastic for the preparation, if at all he decides to prepare for IITs later. Let me know if you need any further discussion on this.

Sunandan