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Why do an overwhelming percentage of Indians choose BTG?

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by uwhusky » Tue Oct 19, 2010 6:41 pm
Given my background in social science, I have been quite curious with this thought for a while now. According to the released statistics from GMAC, an equally large number of Chinese students are also taking the GMAT, and yet, it is almost rare to see a non-native Chinese, if any, posting on this forum.

So why is it that Indians sign up and post in this forum, and how come other groups of people are less likely to participate?

Anyone have a thought on this?
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by ezhilkumarank » Tue Oct 19, 2010 8:02 pm
Given my background in social science, I have been quite curious with this thought for a while now. According to the released statistics from GMAC, an equally large number of Chinese students are also taking the GMAT, and yet, it is almost rare to see a non-native Chinese, if any, posting on this forum.

So why is it that Indians sign up and post in this forum, and how come other groups of people are less likely to participate?
Curious -- how did you arrive at this conclusion/argument? Is it purely based out of recent activity triggered by the $100k BTG challenge?

Maybe there are a equal number of non-native and/or native Chinese friends here although without easily recognizable Chinese username.

Anyone have a thought on this?
It is interesting that after preparing for the CR, everything you read translates to either a Analyze the reasoning/Method of reasoning passage.
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by uwhusky » Tue Oct 19, 2010 8:31 pm
Let me rephrase, why is there an overwhelming percentage of Indian students that participate in BTG relative to other group?

I am not part of the 100k challenge, but if there is a large percentage there, then it goes to support my assumption that there is a higher percentage of Indian participants on this forum.
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by ezhilkumarank » Tue Oct 19, 2010 8:49 pm
uwhusky wrote: I am not part of the 100k challenge, but if there is a large percentage there, then it goes to support my assumption that there is a higher percentage of Indian participants on this forum.
Yes, I agree. This certainly does strengthen your argument/claim.
uwhusky wrote:Let me rephrase, why is there an overwhelming percentage of Indian students that participate in BTG relative to other group?
Breaking your argument into parts:

>>> overwhelming percentage of Indian students that participate in BTG relative to other group?

Not sure of the exact statistics but if there is a perceptible presence of Indian students then it might be because of demographic profile of India. Given its large population, even a fraction the population being in the age group of 19-30 would be quite a large number. But there could be another angle to it. I am also part of some other forum and I have found similar if not more Indian students participating over there.

I guess since the base pool of current/future Indian business school applicants is so large that it is quite natural to have such a visibility.

>>> why?

Well am not sure of this. I can answer for myself though -- maybe BTG is the one forum which has very well distinguished itself from the rest of the pack by being more than just a forum. The layout and the content delivery has been very professional and clean.

I guess this is the USP of BTG wherein members could read and learn from a large number of articles posted on daily basis.
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by uwhusky » Tue Oct 19, 2010 9:34 pm
ezhilkumarank wrote: Not sure of the exact statistics but if there is a perceptible presence of Indian students then it might be because of demographic profile of India. Given its large population, even a fraction the population being in the age group of 19-30 would be quite a large number. But there could be another angle to it. I am also part of some other forum and I have found similar if not more Indian students participating over there.
I don't mean that there is a large number of Indian GMAT takers, in fact, the number of GMAT takers who are from India is actually about the same as the number of GMAT takers from China and Taiwan. So unless majority of Indian students who are participating in the GMAT forums are not actually taking the test, then the argument above does not actually answer why there appears to be a large number of Indian participants in GMAT forum.

According to the latest number in 2009, there are roughly 128,000 US citizens that have taken the GMAT, and roughly 31,000 with Indian citizenship, and about 31,000 with China and Taiwan citizenship. However, if you do some sort of a statistical analysis of number of active participants and the number of posts, the number of participants and posts made by those of Indian descents probably outnumbers those of any others.

More information on GMAT test takers: https://www.gmac.com/gmac/researchandtre ... geotrends/
>>> why?
Perhaps I should also ask why not, why aren't more people in US or in Europe posting in this forum, and why aren't more Chinese GMAT takers posting?

I think maybe it's difference in cultural and social factors and norms, and these things fascinate me, hence why I thought I would post this in the lounge.
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by Kaneisha Grayson » Mon Nov 01, 2010 9:11 am
I find this forum very interesting, because I've noticed the same thing as well! I don't have an answer as to why there seems to be a disproportionate number of Indian students, but I DO have an answer for why there are so few Chinese test-takers here at BTG.

I have a client who lives in China, who very helpfully let me know that my business' site is BLOCKED in China. It's nothing against my specific site--it's just the entire server on which my site is hosted that is blocked.

I am fairly confident that this is the same case with BTG. I can only imagine how many more clients from China I would have if I switched servers as well as BTG would have if they made sure the site wasn't blocked in China.

It's definitely a disadvantage for Chinese applicants. This forum is so helpful (and fun!) for applicants.

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by ezhilkumarank » Mon Nov 01, 2010 1:40 pm
Kaneisha Grayson wrote:I find this forum very interesting, because I've noticed the same thing as well! I don't have an answer as to why there seems to be a disproportionate number of Indian students, but I DO have an answer for why there are so few Chinese test-takers here at BTG.

I have a client who lives in China, who very helpfully let me know that my business' site is BLOCKED in China. It's nothing against my specific site--it's just the entire server on which my site is hosted that is blocked.

I am fairly confident that this is the same case with BTG. I can only imagine how many more clients from China I would have if I switched servers as well as BTG would have if they made sure the site wasn't blocked in China.

It's definitely a disadvantage for Chinese applicants. This forum is so helpful (and fun!) for applicants.

Kaneisha
@Kaneisha
Hmmm... informative insight brought to the table . Maybe Eric or David could respond to this.


On second thought though .... wouldn't the BTG team figured out this by now. I remember Eric was mentioning about the number (195) of countries from which traffic flows into BTG portal and this should be based on the analytics information gathered. Hence if something as glaring as this is present for so long, then BTG team would have acted to correct it.

It is for obvious reason to ensure your content reaches the maximum number of like-minded or aspiring people and a pretty huge market like China would have been a glaring miss if it is not yet noticed.

Eric/David -- your thoughts on this???
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by humblebee » Thu Dec 02, 2010 12:12 am
India - Former British Colony, English is a common medium. Everyone speaks it hence outsourcing big there.

China - Very little English influences. Language not as widely spoken.

Just a hypothesis.
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by uwhusky » Thu Dec 02, 2010 1:05 am
I guess you didn't read my previous post and cited source with link. There are as many Chinese GMAT takers as there are Indians, and thus your hypothesis doesn't apply here.
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by humblebee » Thu Dec 02, 2010 1:17 am
uwhusky wrote:I guess you didn't read my previous post and cited source with link. There are as many Chinese GMAT takers as there are Indians, and thus your hypothesis doesn't apply here.
Sorry I don't follow your logic. I'm not that quick (i'll be the first to admit that).

If your race doesn't speak english, or doesn't have a culture of communicating in it, why would you participate in an english speaking forum???

You might well argue that because they take the GMAT, they all have enough language ability to speak, read and write on this forum - but how do you know the majority of chinese don't score lower than indians on the verbal? hence lack of language?

Notwithstanding, my underlying argument was based on culture i.e. no english influence.

Again, if this sounds really stupid, I apologies. Like i said, I'm not that quick.
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by rishab1988 » Thu Dec 02, 2010 2:45 am
Still you don't prove what you are saying.

Why would anyone who is not going to take the GMAT participate on a beatthegmat forum.Just because English is used on this forum,you will participate on this forum?

Why the number of Indians who participate on quantnet.com[another English language forum] is much less than the number of Chinese or Americans?

For eg: Let's assume the is a similar forum for LSAT.Do you visit that forum and make as many postings on that forum.If you are not at all interested in LAW,even if you know english,why would you visit an LSAT forum.

The real reason is as follows:

1) Indians are much more crazy about an MBA than Chinese.[There is an MBA mania in India.Just to make my point just for CAT ,an exam conducted by IIMs for a degree similar to MBA , almost 300k people sit! India ,prematurely,has become a service sector economy.Whereas,China's economy is much more into manufacturing and other hardcore areas.as a result,by UN's statistics,the number of Chinese engineers that graduate each year outnumber the total of graduates from India+total number of graduates from USA.!

Talk about that!

2) Everyone in India wishes to weigh his options [since quality institutes are a scarcity in India,everyone wants to jump into either US or Europe].All these people post on the forums to get advice.

3) Indians,in general,waste much more time talking on the internet than Chinese do.[Chinese do Indians talk]

4) Indians have always been fans of test prep [IIT-JEE and CATs].Whereas, Chinese believe in self study [just check how many people actually are present in test prep programs such as MGMAT's KAPLANs or Vertias's who are Indians].Chinese on the other hand have never been fans of coaching institutes.

Bottom-line :Indians just like to get coached.

6) Many sites such as btg could have been blocked in China.This is not the case in India.In-fact hardly anything is blocked in India.

Besides the question why Indians are the majority.You limited your analysis to Chinese[non English Speakers].What about Americans+Aussies+ Britishers +Canadians? [all of them are English language speakers]

According to the GMAT's data Indians are barely 10% of the test takers,but on this forum,the percentage of Indians is more like 50%.
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by uwhusky » Thu Dec 02, 2010 10:21 am
Great points, rishab.

I think Indians in general just are more enthusiastic about discussions and specifically about tests than any other culture, hence might the reason why Indians are all over these test preparation forums.
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