Thousands of students went online last week to find out how they did on the Thanawiya Amma exams. The result, writes Reem Nafie, was a lot of business and too much traffic If you found surfing the net difficult last weekend, don't worry -- there is probably nothing wrong with your computer. Beginning around 10pm on Saturday, until Sunday at around noon, millions of people across the country either got a busy signal when dialing one of the "free internet" numbers, or else experienced abnormally slow connections when they were lucky enough to actually get online. The online traffic crush was the result of anxious students and parents trying to find out how they did on their Thanawiya Amma, the legendary secondary school qualifying exam that pretty much determines which university (if any) a graduating secondary school student will get to attend. Several of the country's main Internet Service Providers (ISP) and the Ministry of Education first partnered to provide the service some years ago; the arrangement even allows students to obtain their grades prior to their announcement in schools. By entering their official "test seating number", students are able to find out their grades two days early, thus virtually eliminating the journey to the school itself. Now most students only go to their schools to pick up their actual certificates and confirm that the grades they obtained through the Internet were authentic. Al-Ahram, which offered the online service, said 3.3 million people had logged onto their site to obtain their results. One effect of that much traffic was that the organisation's daily newspaper site was slow, and sometimes even intermittently down, on Saturday night and early Sunday. "The large amount of people accessing the website," said Mohamed Mortada, an Al-Ahram IT department engineer, "resulted in technical problems that made using the site nearly impossible." The increased traffic, however, also proved to be a major boon for companies providing the service. According to ISP Link.net's customer relations' manager Hoda Ismail, most companies were ecstatic with the volume of calls, despite the slower speeds. With customer paying LE1.2 per hour -- 70 per cent of which goes to the (ISP) and 30 per cent to the phone company, Telecom Egypt -- "what company wouldn't be?" she said. While most people were happy about the convenience of checking their results online, this year's general online slowdown as a result of the increased traffic raised questions about the ISPs' ability to withstand the large amounts of traffic. Link's Ismail said that because the online traffic jam only happens for one day a year, the company would not be expanding its service capacity in response. Major Egyptian IT firm Advanced Computer Technology (ACT) received numerous support calls from corporate clients on Sunday morning. "We received calls from several IT departments who thought there was something wrong with their Internet connections," said customer service department head Mohamed Wahba. "They all experienced difficulties logging onto the Internet." While ACT could not figure out the problem at first, when the calls kept coming in, a common thread emerged. Only those companies using ISPs that offered the Thanawiya Amma results service were affected. This year, students could also find out their results using cellular phones. Mobinil featured three ways to get your results via mobile: by dialing a special number that charged customers LE1.5 per minute (the average call seemed to take approximately 3 minutes); via SMS, at a cost LE4 per SMS; or via the company's WAP service at 1.5 piastres per kilobyte. Although Mobinil marketing executive Hamid Saad would not provide Al-Ahram Weekly with caller volumes, he did make sure to mention that "Mobinil will be using a percentage of the profits to provide prizes to this year's top ten students." The prizes include a two-week trip to France, Germany and Austria, a mobile line and mobile phones. Internet cafés were also out to take advantage of the frenzy. Realising that thousands of people who did not have computers at home needed a place to check the results from, many increased their hourly rates. An Internet café in Nasr City doubled their prices on Saturday and Sunday; instead of closing at midnight as always, the café stayed open for 24 hours. All night anxious students sat in groups in front of the computers checking their results. They also hung around to check their friends' results, and then stayed around to re-check their own results again. Amina Abdel-Qader and her friends were amongst the boisterous, ecstatic students at the Nasr City café. Checking their results had clearly turned into a fun outing; "we are happy that the results are online so we can go out together and have an excuse to tell our parents when we come home late," Abdel-Qader, who described the service as "excellent", said. "It's much easier than waking up early in the morning to find out the results at school." This year also heralds the introduction of an online method of university selection. According to Higher Education and Scientific Research Minister Amr Salama, this summer a random selection of 100,000 students (out of a total of around 300,000) will receive a letter detailing the method by which they can apply to college via the ministry's website. After specifying the faculty they wish to enroll in, the students will be able to later find out -- online as well -- if they were accepted. Al-Ahram, meanwhile, added a page to their Thanawiya Amma service that helps students determine the colleges they might get accepted into based on their results. This year's Thanawiya Amma results featured an overall 87.7 per cent passing rate in the sciences section, and an overall 82.3 per cent passing rate in the arts section, with boys doing better than girls in the former, and vice-versa in the latter. Last year, girls did 17 per cent better than boys in both specialisations. Education Minister Ahmed Gamaleddin said there were 1.2 per cent more passing grades this year than last. Mohamed Ahmed Abdel-Karim of Giza was the top student in the sciences section this year, while Basma Mahmoud El-Mahalawi of Minya was the top student in the arts section.
