In short:
1) Charge for registration increases at every level rising up to about Rs 10000
2) The written rounds are easy ensuring many qualifiers and the selection process is not transparent.
3) Orientation charge also increases exponentially.
4) The students attending orientation only get the study material which is needed to perform reasonably in the complicated useless rounds like word origin.
5) Mega prizes announced are never delivered.
6) All expenses to reach venues in state, national or international are to be bourne by the participant.
7) They have your account and personal details and they are phishing. Beware.
In detail:
After experience with the programme through one whole cycle 2011-2013, here is what I learnt. At the school level, you enroll with Rs 200 and the orientation if at all conducted is supposed to be free. At the district level, the enrollment fee is Rs 300 and you have to spend Rs 1500 for the orientation. At the state level, registration was Rs 500 and orientation Rs 3000. At national level, registration was Rs 1000 and orientation Rs 3000. For national final (oral) and international written, registration was Rs 3375 and orientation Rs 4500. For the final international oral the registration was around Rs 7000 and orientation was Rs 10, 190.
A word about the rounds. Apart from the spellings itself there are other rounds. The written rounds are easy and useful. A person can easily qualify to the next level. However, the oral rounds carry higher mark and if you want to’win’ it becomes necessary to attend the orientation programme. While the orientation itself adds no value, the study material is only available to those who attend the orientation programme and many questions in the oral round are from the study material.
The oral round includes rounds like:
Word Origin Round:
In this round a word is given to which, the child is expected to state which language it originated from and what the word was in the originating language. This is unlike the norm in scripps or hdfc spelling contests which give the origin language so that it gives a clue as to how the word is spelt. This round is just learnt by heart and forgotten soon enough, a waste of the student’s time.
Synonym Antonym:
A word is given with a starting letter. The child must give the synonym, beginning with that letter for the word given and the antonym to the synonym given within seconds.
For these rounds if you want to score well, you must attend the orientation for the material so that you can prepare, the scope being so vast otherwise.
To top that all expenses for travel and stay to locations in the state, nation or world would be borne by the participant depending on the level of the competition.
Finally, though mega cash prizes are promised, it is not delivered. I am yet to see the money won in the national level in December 2012. Repeated promises are made on contact but nothing is delivered.
The registrations each year are becoming more expensive. I have decided to discontinue.
After 1 1/2 years I received a random email saying the amount had been transferred and requested me to confirm but it was just a lie. Seems to me they are trying to phish for information. They run several other such programmes under different names and companies. I keep getting details advertising these competitions to my email account. Beware of: Eurekanext- Mathcount International Mental Arithmetic Competition, Maths Premier League etc. They also seem to have some tie up with axis bank as transactions are made through it.