GAT. PAT. GPAX. Onet. SAT. CU-ATT. TU-GET. These acronyms used to be meaningless gibberish to me. Now they are making my life hell.
If your children are among the high school students currently caught in the trap of cut-throat competition for university seats like mine right now, you'll know what I mean.
Those cryptic acronyms stand for only some of the tests high school kids must take in the complex university admission system that is torturing them with stress and strain and leaving their parents financially and emotionally drained.
I'm one of those parents.
University entrance examinations used to be relatively simple. Before 1999, aspiring senior high school students took only one annual national university entrance exam at the same time. They gave a list of their choices, and they got university seats according to their scores in the required subjects. If they failed, they could just try again the next year.
With only one annual exam, the affair was inexpensive, thus allowing students from all social and economic backgrounds to take part. The system was then relatively fair and transparent.
Not anymore.
Now, the complicated central admission system requires many ingredients to be part of the students' university admission scores.
First, the GPAX, or the accumulated grade point average for the whole three years in high school. It means three years of stress.
Then the Onet, the annual test for all senior high school students nationwide. More stress.
Next, the mandatory professional and aptitude tests called PAT and GAT, which are divided into many dizzying sub sets according to different requirements from different faculties at different universities.
Are you still with me?
These Onet, GAT and PAT tests are usually more difficult than what the students learn in school, which is forcing the kids to flock to tutorial schools.
Meanwhile, many universities - unhappy with sub-standard students delivered by the central admission system and attracted by a new source of income - now recruit their students directly.
Since they offer their exams before the end of Mathayom 6 (Grade 12), the students must once again head for cram schools for extra help.
Apart from expensive tutorials, the direct exams entail more expenses in application fees, transportation costs for the tests both in Bangkok and in the provinces - and many sleepless nights for the students as they still have to prepare for the eventual university admission exam later in the year.
If they want to try their luck at international programmes at different universities - all very expensive - they also have to take English, maths and science proficiency tests, such as CU-TEP, TU-GET, CU-ATT, and SAT.
"This system is killing me, mummy," complained my daughter, now a Mathayom 5 student.
Like her peers, she feels pressured to take tutorials with her teachers to ensure a decent GPAX score. Her weekends are also filled with tutorial courses to ensure a satisfactory GAT and PAT performance.
"I no longer have a life," she moaned.
"Nor have I," I replied. It's me who drives her around for the tutorials while having to stick to canteen food to pay for the expenses.
This system is plain crazy. Why test the students for what is not taught in school? Why make the kids take so many gruelling exams which fail to effectively screen the students anyway?
Education is supposed to promote equality. Why foster a very expensive system that punishes the poor and widens social disparities?
This university admission madness results from a system that overvalues textbook knowledge over other skills and allows vocational education to wilt with poor quality and low status because of a lack of state support.
Fed up, a group of parents have recently taken the matter to court to demand education reform.
"Is there a chance of them winning?" asked my girl.
I looked at the multi-billion-baht tutorial businesses and the huge amount of income universities routinely get from all this madness, and all I could do was let out a deep sigh as an answer.
Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor, Bangkok Post.