Indian exams are notoriously competitive. In IITJEE, around 10 lakh candidates compete for roughly 15000 seats in different IITs. For entry into medical colleges, NEET is taken by around 17 lakh candidates. Those intimidating numbers are, however, misleading. A study of the IPMAT exams' RTI information make it very clear.

IPMAT-Indore exam is typically taken by 20K-25K students. IIM-Indore gives the details of how many of them score positive raw scores in all the three sections. In 2020, that number was around 8,105 and in 2021 that number was around 10,248. So roughly 60% of the candidates cannot even get more than ZERO in all three sections! If you are a serious candidate, are they your competitors? Not at all.

Your true competitors are around 5% of the candidates who seriously prepare for the exam. This is not only true of IPMAT, but of IITJEE, NEET and other competitive exams as well. Most candidates (I would say 90%, at least) sit for these exams because their parents told them to, or their peers are also sitting for it, or it’s prestigious to be an aspiring doctor, or engineer or manager. They are not serious about clearing it. They are not your competitors.

Do not be intimidated by the huge number of candidates reported by newspapers, or at your exam center. They do not matter. If you know your stuff, none of them are going to come in your way. Yes, they do have a purpose – if you finally get a single-digit rank, the glory is all the higher because you got it among such a huge number of candidates. After all, it’s more glamourous to get a Rank 1 among 25,000 candidates compared to just 1,000, right?

So hail those non-serious candidates who add to your glory, but doesn’t add to your competition!