Are you smarter than a college goer?

Are fixed deposits risky instruments? What does a Form 16 mean? What is the difference between an asset and a liability? How to calculate profit or loss? What is PAN? These are just a few of the 100 basic financial awareness questions that formed the Youth Money Olympiad 2014, a financial literacy quiz, conducted by Money-Wizards, a Chennai-based venture headquartered in Singapore. The quiz was conducted at 20 colleges in four cities—Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad—from September 2013 till March 2014. Over 1,000 students, of whom about 40% were from engineering courses, participated. Almost 80% were in their final year.

The results were, unfortunately, not good. “Some of the questions were very basic. Even school students would know the answers. And some of the colleges were top of the chart in their fields. The situation is quite sad,” said V. Venkatesh, director and co-founder of the company, which has tied up with Principal PNB Asset Management Co. Pvt. Ltd to conduct a similar exercise in 2015 across 100 colleges.

“The faculty of some colleges felt the quiz should only be for Commerce students. Some felt it was too early for students to know such things. Some even asked if the quiz would help with placements!” said Venkatesh. Of the four cities, the best response came from students as well as faculty of colleges in Mumbai, while those in Chennai showed least interest. Hyderabad and Bangalore were in between. “It’s not surprising that penetration of financial products in India is poor. Those who need financial awareness the most, don’t have it. In Bangalore, I have seen people selling Ulips (unit-linked insurance plans) and other products to unsuspecting young employees of big technology companies just on the salary day,” said Venkatesh.

College students may or may not be money savvy. But are you in a better position? How do you measure up? Take the quiz and see for yourself.