This year, Lahore’s premium educational institutions Aitchison College and Lahore Grammar School-Johar Town Branch (LGS-JT) conducted their admission tests on the same day.
Now, this in itself does not sound too troubling but if you look at the historical competition between the two prestigious institutions, something else seems to be cooking.
Aitchison College has traditionally been the first choice of parents when it comes to their kids’ admissions. Months of practice go into these tests when every year the college administers admission tests for the upcoming K2 class, to embrace new breeds of deserving students in its folds.
Children who remain unable to clear the tests are then put into the traditional second choice of parents in Lahore, LGS-JT. The tests traditionally take place on separate days but this year— due to some mysterious reason— these tests were conducted on the same day! This left the parents in a state of ambiguity as they had to now choose between the two institutions before the tests were even conducted.
“This is insane. They don’t know what predicament they have induced upon us. There are only two good choices in this city for boys’ education and they’re depriving us of one by taking this decision,” One mother, Saadia Yaqub, lamented, whose child will sit for the LGS-JT test only.
“I don’t want my child to be robbed of the only chance that he might have, at getting a good education, so I will go with the option that looks more likely to me,” she further said.
A teacher, Zainab Hassan, whose elder child goes to Aitchison College will choose LGS-JT for her younger son, because of the same reason, “One does think that LGS-JT could be doing this on purpose because they don’t want to be the second choice anymore, but I am not sure if this is the best way to go about it.”
Another parent, Amal Tanveer, said on Facebook, “I heard they always clash, leaving parents in distress.”
Nadia said, “Why would they do that? Poor kids who wanted to apply at both places”.
Some parents had issues with the speedy results as well!
Mehreen said, “Pata nahin (Don’t know) what could be the reason. But this time the entry tests ended on Tuesday and results started coming in on Wednesday. What insane speed!”
The fact was corroborated by Ayesha who said her nephew’s result came in the very next day of the test. “Kamal speed hai (such amazing speed)!”
Mehreen further said that it was, in fact, Aitchison College that had changed the test dates, “Last year Aitchison had the entry exam in June and LGS JT in April, this year Aitchison changed the dates.”
However, not all the parents share the same sentiments; there are some who say this was just a co-incidence which will not happen again.
A Facebook user, Natalia Rahim Khan, said, “No. I don’t think it was planned. It was just a coincidence. This can’t be a conspiracy, as these are separate schools and make schedules separately.”
Sobia Salman, a Facebook user said, “This happened for the first time …it’s a coincidence I think because last time it was on different dates and we applied for both. Even this year, class 3 tests were on different dates at both the schools”.
We don’t know what the reason for this year’s change could be, but one thing is for sure, this did leave parents a bit confused about the whole issue.
Whatever happens now, we do hope this little ‘co-incidence’ doesn’t happen in future.
