WHILE the US media often report on the apparent success of well-educated Indian management and technology graduates, the Indian media report that India's vaunted management students are faring badly in comparison to students "from small countries like Bermuda".

Writing on Wednesday from Ahmedabad, home of India's top business management school, reporter Joydeep Ray bemoaned the performance of Indian students in the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT). However, Mr. Ray's own work may require some review ? he reported that students from Bermuda "placed third" in the world, despite four countries scoring higher marks.

The GMAT, administered by the US Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) is "a standardised assessment, in English, that helps business schools assess the qualifications of applicants for advanced study in business and management", according to mba.com, a GMAC web-site.

"The GMAT measures basic verbal, mathematical, and analytical writing skills that you have developed over a long period of time in your education and work. Schools use the test as one predictor of academic performance in an MBA programme.

"While the demand for Indian managers and IT professionals has been witnessing a steady growth overseas," Mr. Ray wrote, "Indian students are falling short of expectations at the GMAT hurdle in comparison to students from at least 15 other countries, a report from the US Graduate Management Admission Council has revealed."

He reported that the Chinese are "leading the pack", and have been "fetching the highest GMAT scores for five years, proving their undisputed superiority over candidates from any other country".

There is clearly not much room in the Indian lexicon for politically correct notions of non-competitive education, where diversity is celebrated and everyone's a winner. In the real world, Mr. Ray knows that Darwinian rules of natural selection apply.

Indian students, having placed 16th in the 2002-2003 GMAT tests, "lost the battle even to students from small countries like Bermuda, Uruguay or from the disturbed Gaza Strip."

Mr. Ray damns his countrymen with faint praise for having finished ahead of US students.

"The only silver lining is that Indian GMAT candidates have been consistently faring better than their US counterparts, if that is any consolation.

"The data for 2004 has yet to be compiled by GMAC, but for 2002-2003, the total mean score of Chinese students was 593, against 587 fetched by Australian students, who shared second spot with those from New Zealand and the United Kingdom, both reporting an identical total. Students from Bermuda reported a total mean score of 585 to be placed third (or fifth, if you believe that that is the next position behind three countries sharing second place)."

The Dean of the Indian Institute of Management ? Ahmedabad, Indira Parikh, found the superiority of the Chinese performance "startling". She advised Indian students to increase the speed of their response to questions, as the Chinese were answering faster.

"Indian students are still not habituated to responding to questions during online examinations," she said. "This is an important issue and needs to be addressed urgently if their performance is to be improved in international examinations like the GMAT."

Mr. Ray did not have data on the population of students taking the test from the different jurisdictions, but GMAC reported that more than 130,000 students took the test in the first eight months of this year.

The average scores of students taking the online test do not compare well with the average GMAT scores of students who are admitted to elite business schools in the US. Although the median GMAT score is 500, the latest guide to graduate schools reports that the average GMAT score of the top US business schools ? such as Stanford, Chicago, Sloan at MIT, and Wharton at Penn ? "hover around 690, which translates to a percentage figure of 95 and up.

"The environment is extremely competitive. You should keep in mind that top business schools consider a score of at least 600 as competitive."