Kota is a city on the Chambal River in Rajasthan. It is best known for IIT-JEE & NEET coaching. Over the years it has produced thousands of IITians and doctors.
Every year thousands of aspiring students move to Kota for JEE/NEET coaching. Many of them have no clue about what to expect, Kota.
In this discussion, we will cover Life at Kota.
Life at Kota is challenging and inspiring at the same time. Kota can build you or emotionally cripple you.
Accommodation in Kota
There are two types of major accommodations:
- Rented accommodation
- Hostel
You can either choose to stay in rented accommodation or a hostel based on your preferences.
Hostels are mostly noisy and there can be a lot of distractions, but if you are like to around people and understand things better through discussions hostel can be a good choice. At the hostel, you can meet many fellow students preparing for JEE/NEET. Many students form study groups to study together and solve problems. Most hostels have their mess, so you won’t need to go out for food.
But if you need a quiet environment and no distractions individual rented accommodation is better. If you learn by reading and studying alone, rented accommodation is better. If you can have the option to subscribe to a home delivery mess or cook by yourself.
Food
Kota is a vegetarian city, 99.9% of the messes are there vegetarian. You have to get used to eating vegetarian foods. You can still get non-vegetarian foods in restaurants.
Food can be availed from messes. Kota has a well-established mess system, mostly run by individual owners. Anyone can subscribe to these messes. One can either take food at the mess or avail of home delivery.
Weather
Kota weather is very hot, and dry. Heatwaves are very common during summer.
Drink water frequently and don’t forget to keep a water bottle with you. When you first visit Kota, you will feel very thirsty frequently for the first few weeks.
Competition is everywhere
Kota is all about competition. Coaching institutions are designed to create a competitive environment. Rewarding the best students through various means fuels competition to the next level.
A system such as reshuffling (Learn more) of students across batches based on interim mock tests are one example of that. Where students are promoted or demoted based on their ranks. The top batches are given special care and the best teachers. While lower batches are mostly given mediocre and bad teachers and ignored.
Everyone wants to be at the top batches.
This fierce competition can also introduce mental health problems among those who can’t deal with completion. Demotion to a lower batch sometimes can lead to depression. Losing to this competitive environment, many students leave coaching institutes and admit to subject-wise individual coaching classes run by independent teachers.
While there are many good individual coaching classes, this system is still not efficient, as classes are not synchronized, and the students have to travel to different places to take classes for different subjects resulting in more travel time and fatigue. Time management becomes difficult, for cracking JEE/NEET every minute wasted on non-productive works will set you back.
Taking only individual coaching should be avoided at Kota, as it creates more problems than solutions.
Before embarking on the Kota journey, you should evaluate yourself, whether you are ready for Kota?
One should have the following strengths:
- You are academically very strong
- You are good at a competitive environment
- Good at managing yourself and time. Don’t need continuous pushing.
- Can accommodate to a new place easily, away from home
If you don’t have any of the above strengths you should avoid going to Kota.