
The IIT Entrance Exam - hawkharris
http://priceonomics.com/the-iit-entrance-exam/
======
pitchups
As I was watching the Google I/O webcast last month, the one thing that struck
me was how some of the most important products and services from arguably the
most influential tech company of our times, were headed by IIT graduates:

Amit Singhal, a Google fellow, who heads their search team and essentially
rewrote the critical ranking algorithm in 2001, and a graduate of IIT Roorkee
[1];

Sundar Pichai, who heads Android, Chrome/Chrome OS, and Google Apps [2] - a
graduate of IIT Kharagpur;

Vic Gundotra - who heads Google+ and social and is a graduate of IIT Bombay
[3];

Nikesh Arora, who is Google's Chief Business Officer, a graduate of IIT
Varanasi [4];

Sridhar Ramasway - SVP for Ads & Commerce - a graduate of IIT Madras [5], plus
dozens of other key people.

(The latter two are listed on Google's management team page at :
[http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/](http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/)
)

Not to make too fine a point about it - but IMHO Google is one example of the
influence and impact of IITians on the world.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amit_Singhal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amit_Singhal)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundar_Pichai](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundar_Pichai)

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Gundotra](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Gundotra)

[4]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikesh_Arora](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikesh_Arora)

[5] [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/sridhar-
ramaswamy/2/220/972](http://www.linkedin.com/pub/sridhar-ramaswamy/2/220/972)

Edit: Formatting

~~~
jbarham
Clearly these men are all very capable but would they have been able to have
the same impact had they stayed in India?

Given that they all did post-graduate study in the US and currently live in
the US and work for an American company, I think their accomplishments say
less about the quality of IIT graduates and more about the fact that a huge
amount of human potential is being wasted in India.

~~~
simula67
>huge amount of human potential is being wasted in India.

Just a counterpoint : IITs are state funded, i.e most of the student fees are
paid for by the government. Once they complete their education, do they not
have a duty to give back to the people ? Remember, brain drain is a serious
problem for countries like India.

~~~
lake99
Though my own taxes help fund the IITs, and I never was hard-working enough to
get through the JEE, I'm happy that we have the IITs setting at least some
kind of an example for the rest of India. I am disappointed by the idiots
filling teaching positions in most other colleges.

> do they not have a duty to give back to the people ?

I hate this attitude, not just in India, but anywhere in the world. Like
Kennedy's "ask not what your country has done for you...". To start with,
their own parents paid taxes to support the IITs too. Do we have a way of
making a balance sheet for how my taxes were utilized? How much have I lost to
supporting corruption? How much have I lost to supporting undeserving
candidates who got in through reservation?

In case of IITs, you are, of course, neglecting all the private funding it
gets.

> brain drain is a serious problem for countries like India.

Many Indians who have left have gone on to accomplish great things. Do you
think they would have accomplished even 1% of that, had they stayed in India?
Brain drain is not India's problem; it is an avenue for opportunity for many
Indians. India's problem is corruption and unfettered democracy.

~~~
Ashuu
About the brain drain problem, I think yes. They would have accomplished more
if they stayed in India. Just have a look at Narayan Murthy, founder of
Infosys. Just imagine if people like Sundar Pichai, Vic Gundotra etc stayed in
India, they might have done something even bigger than what they had done at
Google. Android or something similar would have been created in India or India
would have a social network like Google Plus! Who knows!

------
kevinpet
If these numbers are true, I think it points to an academic rip off far larger
than the US student loan problem. If the coaching industry is $3.4B annually,
and there are only 10,000 slots at the IITs, that's $340,000 per spot. It
effectively costs more to attend the nominally state-funded IIT than an Ivy
League school.

Of course, most of that cost is not paid by those who get in. If we assume
that every one of those half million test takers spent $6800 for coaching,
they're being severely ripped off. You'd have to assume that the average IIT
entrant spends over 50x as much as the average unsuccessful test-taker before
that comes down to even half -- and at that point, the IIT entrants are paying
$175k.

Either the article is leaving off the some important details -- perhaps the
number quoted for the coaching industry does not just include the IITs -- or
this is an economic disaster that no one has yet noticed.

~~~
alok-g
This is a great observation! While I cannot testify for the numbers quoted in
the article, which are suspect as other comments have noted, I'll share my
understanding from about 15 years back when I was one of those students. Note
that I barely have any data in support of this.

Many of the students who are able to make it through the IIT-JEE examinations
actually do not have to spend as much on the coaching. There are people who
are in the top 2% in terms of their brains, irrespective of the exam, which
have a high likelihood of being in the top 2% in the examinations too. They of
course still have to work hard (1) to acquire the needed knowledge, and (2) to
gain speed which is also critical via practice.

There would be people in the first 2% who do not fall in the second 2% and
vice versa. All the students on the boundary need to work hard to boost their
chances as much as they can. But then there are top 1% (number is made up),
for whom chances of slipping outside of 2% would be relatively smaller.
Reality gets more complex of course since it is not just one threshold "in-or-
out", but also about being able to choose the field of one's interest after
getting in.

A whole next class of people are those who believe in themselves a bit more
than their real capabilities, because they do not know it just yet. These are
the ones I believe who end up paying the most. They would gradually see that
there are falling through the cracks while still having the desire to get in.
A friend of mine took a bold step, surprising everybody around, by backing out
on a timely basis.

Finally there are people who would be interested in getting in, but know they
do not stand a chance with IIT-JEE. These better save both time and money and
focus on something else, that may include other colleges or other fields of
study.

Given the reputation of the college, there are coaching institutes which
downright abuse the situation. I have heard of famous coaching centers
promising money-back guarantees of making it through, which have their own
entrance examination to select students that already have a very high chance
of getting through! I have also heard of similarly reputed centers who would
secretly promise a country-wide rank in the top 10 to as many as 50 students
(!), again with a money back guarantee.

Serving as a single data-point would be my own case. I did not go to the IIT
but to another reputed engineering college [1], but yet the idea is valid. My
total expense for the coaching was about $150 [2], and my four years of
undergrad, being subsidized by the government, was about $100 + books [3].
Yes, this is all four years of college, and this applied to ALL students in my
college. Yet, some of my own cousins paid $5,000 to go to a local college of
no reputation for a nominally similar degree that ultimately did not get them
anywhere.

To summarize, the distribution of spending amongst prospective students is
somewhat more involved, probably hurting those people the most whose idea of
self-worth is not commensurate with reality.

[1] That's a separate story in itself.

[2] None of the numbers here are inflation-adjusted to today from ~15 years
back.

[3] Books too were generally cheaper Indian editions, so not as costly.

------
hawkharris
Stories about rigorous tests and top-notch universities in other nations make
me realize that prestige is myopic.

For example, I recently introduced two friends: One was an American who had
gone to Princeton; the other was an Indian who had attended the Indian
Institute of Technology Bombay.

Both colleges have fancy names and star standing in their own nations, but
neither person fully understood the cachet of the other's education. I'm sure
that employers wouldn't entirely understand it, either.

That's ironic when you consider how much we judge ourselves according to
prestige ... you move to another nation and suddenly your clout evaporates.

~~~
cocoflunchy
I feel that very deeply as a french student attending one France's top
engineering school (École Centrale Paris), and currently living in the US.

No one I meet here has ever heard of my school, and I kind of feel like I have
to prove myself again outside of school, if I want to have a chance of being
noticed by the big companies here.

The whole effect is also increased by the fact that the size of french
universities is at least ten times smaller than US universities on average (my
school has 500 students per year), and virtually invisible in global ranking
that are based on the number of published papers...

------
teeboy
Just an FYI, IITs are not the only Institutes of National Importance (INIs) in
India. 30 campuses of National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are also in
that bracket. NITs also have more than 10,000 alumni in Silicon Valley alone.
Though IITs, justifiably, hog all the limelight and we don't like it one bit.
:-)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutes_of_National_Importan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutes_of_National_Importance)

------
tokenadult
From the article: "Only two percent of students will be rewarded for their
hard work. In 2012, Harvard accepted 5.9% of applicants. Top engineering
schools MIT and Stanford had acceptance rates of 8.9% and 6.63%. The
acceptance rate at the IITs, as represented by the pass rate in the JEE, was
2%. Every year, when the results are announced and the media swarms the
accepted students, 490,000 students receive disappointing news."

I am NOT saying that the IIT admission process is easy, but I will say that
this is the wrong way to show that the process is hard. Not all smart students
vie to attend Harvard, MIT, and Stanford in quite the same way that many,
many, many smart students vie to attend IIT. The base of applications is
broader, by far, for IIT, partly because of the especially steep drop-off in
quality and in prestige from the IIT echelon of universities in India to other
universities. If we compared Harvard's number of admitted students in the most
recent reported year, 2,029,

[http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/03/college-
admits...](http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/03/college-
admits-2029-5-8-percent-of-applicants/)

to the number of students who took the SAT college entrance test in the
relevant high school graduation class, 1,664,479 students,

[http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/T...](http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/TotalGroup-2012.pdf)

we could calculate that 0.12 percent of all high school seniors in the United
States who took a college entrance test were admitted to Harvard, quite a low
base admission rate. The key, of course, is that many American students self-
select out of applying to Harvard, and indeed don't self-select to submit an
application to any "prestige" university.

That said, direct examination of the IIT examination item content

[http://www.askiitians.com/iit-papers/iit-jee-
papers.aspx](http://www.askiitians.com/iit-papers/iit-jee-papers.aspx)

may suggest what level of performance on specific item content is necessary to
be part of the small subset of the large number of IIT joint entrance
examination test-takers who gain admission to an IIT campus. On that basis, I
agree with the statement that the IIT undergraduate programs are highly
selective and likely to collect on one campus many very smart young people who
provide a good peer group to one another so that everyone on campus picks up
habits of aiming high intellectually, as the IIT alumni I know here in
Minnesota all seem to do.

~~~
areddy
Agree with you. There are around 12 IITs while Harvard is a single
institute(?). The article omitted JEE mains phase. 12.5 lakh students appear
for mains, in 2013. 75,000 qualified for JEE advanced.

~~~
xxpor
1.25 million, for those (like me) forgot how much a lakh is.

------
Balgair
I have been collaborating with 2 IIT grads, one Mumbai, one Calcutta. Holy
cow, these guys are mot-ti-vated! They may not always be the inherent smartest
guys, but man they can pack in the hours. I know that working smart is better
than working hard but they sure as snot can work hard. Here in the US, I think
we have an ok balance of the work and sports and school aspects. There in
India, if your name gets published in the local newspaper next to your score,
you can bet things look a bit different.

Not much to say, other than that those kids are gunning hard for a middle
class life and legacy.

~~~
BhavdeepSethi
I think that's the case with most Indians and our education system is to blame
for that. The entire schooling system is very competitive. If you're not
aiming to be an engineer or a doctor, then you're wasting your life. Slogging
day-in day-out becomes a part of our life. The result is a bunch of people who
may not be very smart (not much practical knowledge) but can more than make it
up with hard work. While this is a sure way to success, you lose a lot along
the way. There is absolutely no work-life balance. Sports is seen as a
recreational activity, not a profession. India is pretty much missing on the
Olympics or any global sports chart because of that [except where Cricket is
involved. We take that seriously:)].

------
tathagata
Just to clear some of the myths surrounding the exams - I studied for only a
week (and only one subject - physics) before the exams in 1997 (the year the
paper leaked and the exams were re-administered). I cleared the exams with a
rank of ~1500. In the two years prior to the exams I was busy making money
assembling computers. Did not take any coaching either.

I guess what I am trying to say is that the exams are not as hard as they are
made out to be, and the students, at least some students, are not as
studiously dumb as they might seem in retrospect. I know that most of us who
cleared the exams with decent ranks were just luckier that those who didn't.

Oh, by the way, I almost didn't join IIT because that year the tution fees
were hiked by 10x (from $30 to $300 per semester).

------
singular
To me it's somewhat disappointing to see how quickly HN jumps on an article
like this. With all due respect to the obviously enormous hard work these
people put into getting in to an IIT, and their obvious intelligence, isn't
this kind of discussion about some test to determine whether or not you're
'smarter' than other people something of a pissing match?

No doubt intelligence to a certain degree is a pre-requisite, but beyond that
privilege and wealth contribute a huge amount (emphasised in the article when
discussing tutors.)

When I attended university I saw how important it was to strategise in exams,
the actual technique of exam taking itself is clearly something you can work
on, regardless of intelligence. Any test like this can be, and inevitable is,
gamed by its candidates; the exams become more a matter of how good you are at
guessing what will come up and being good at the art of answering exam
questions rather than what the exams ostensibly examine.

I raise this because I find the whole 'elite universities, passed difficult
tests = wonderfully smart people who should be given every opportunity in the
world to shine' as suspect, biased towards the privileged, and false beyond a
a certain base level which is probably not the 'cream of the crop' levels of
intelligence people ascribe to those attending this institutions. It smacks of
pomposity and self-serving arrogance.

I say this as somebody who went to an 'elite' or at least well regarded
university here in the UK (Imperial College.)

Full Disclaimer: I myself may be somewhat biased as I under-performed at
university because of quite horrific family issues which inevitably results in
an emotional reaction to this kind of thing, however I don't think that
invalidates what I'm saying.

------
ShabbyDoo
Let's say that someone sat for the JEE and ranked quite poorly. Who would know
this person's actual ranking? Presumably, given the existence of the secret
code for checking one's score, not all rankings are made public. Does the test
taker himself even know below a certain level of mediocrity?

I ask these questions because they seem relevant in understanding the
motivations of many taking the exam. Does it reflect poorly on an Indian
family if a child (especially a son, I presume) does not sit for the JEE? If
so, it might be socially rational for an academically mediocre child to go
through the motions of test preparation. This incentive is heightened if no
one would have to find out just how badly the child did on the test. Is it a
source of pride or honor for a family that a child is preparing for the JEE?

If these social motivations are present, perhaps a talented student's actual
chances at getting into IIT are much higher than the overall numbers suggest.
I argue that admissions percentages at top-tier US schools are similarly
affected. Little Sally, even after spending hours with a private SAT tutor,
got only a mediocre score. Yet, her high-achieving parents demanded that she
apply to Harvard, Princeton, etc. This way, they could signal to others that
they deemed their child of high calibre and (the real incentive here)
themselves parents so good that they want only the best for their child.
Because the acceptance rates are so incredibly low, it will not be a mark
against either Sally or her parents when she is rejected from all her "first
choices" and ends up at a mediocre university somewhere -- her "safety
school". Sally's parents might also be rational to avoid mentioning that she
applied to and was rejected from a couple schools only slightly more selective
than BeerCanU as these rejections would be seen by others as a legitimate
measurement of their daughter's mediocrity.

~~~
arjunnarayan
JEE rankings are public knowledge, in the sense that unranked == failure. (You
don't get a rank if you don't get one of the top 10,000 spots). If you do get
a rank, and choose to hide it, it can be pretty easily inferred by what you
are studying (CS at IIT Bombay == top 100 or lower. Mechanical at Guwahati ==
over 1000).

It is definitely a source of pride/honor, and so NOT taking the JEE is
definitely seen as somewhat shameful. For example, I grew up in India, and
went to the US to study at Williams College. My parents were a little sad
about me not writing the JEE, and it was seen as somewhat of a cop out. (I
decided at the end of 10th grade that I was going out of the country for
college so I didn't write it.)

------
tharshan09
What a lot people may not know is that these universities release many of
their lectures online on youtube. I have watched some in the past to catch up
with missing notes and it was helpful. Edit -- Link -
[http://www.youtube.com/iit](http://www.youtube.com/iit)

~~~
sac2171
Could you provide a link?

~~~
pitchups
[http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/](http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/)

~~~
mkehrt
Wow, this is great!

------
goyalpulkit
> The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are a system of technical
> universities in India comparable in prestige and rigor to the Massachusetts
> Institute of Technology or the California Institute of Technology.

Far from it. IITs are not even in the top 20 in Asia[1].

[1] [http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/asian-
uni...](http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/asian-university-
rankings/2012)

~~~
dagw
Look at some of the criteria for those rakings. They are heavily weighted
towards how many international students and faculty they attract, research
done by the faculty and grad students, the number of papers they publish and
how often those papers are sited. IIT on the other hand is heavily focused on
producing high quality under graduate education for Indian students.

Their goals simply don't line up with the metrics being measures by those
rankings.

------
akavi
I'm unreasonably pleased that I was able to answer both the example questions.

~~~
scarmig
First one's simple enough, but second one I couldn't figure out if there's a
clever trick. Or are students expected to apply the quadratic formula and do a
bunch of symbolic manipulation?

~~~
nilkn
No factoring or quadratic formulas necessary. I'm going to write c_n instead
of a_n and a,b instead of alpha,beta.

Since a and b satisfy that equation, you know that

a^2 = 6a+ 2, b^2 = 6b+ 2

and hence

c_10 - 2 * c_8 = a^8 * (6a + 2) - b^8 * (6b + 2) + 2b^8 - 2a^8 = 6c_9.

Dividing by 2c_9 gives 3.

Edit: asafira beat me to it!

~~~
alok-g
Using the same convention as yours, I tried to break c_10 in terms of c_9 as
follows:

(a^10-b^10) = (e a + f b) * (a^9-b^9)

Multiplying out the RHS, e = f = 1 are the best choices, but there remained a
residual. At a second glance though, this residual was proportional to
(a^8-b^8). Problem solved.

------
iamshs
As an undergrad product of one of the IITs, and among one of the last ones to
write a main exam back in 2005, this was a nice article to read and a bit too
self aggrandizing. One of the most amazing things about being on IIT campus
was the collaborative culture, and the drive to initiate collaboration. There
was no sense of competitiveness on the campus, that was once prevalent while
giving JEE. Being among bright kids, all in their developmental stage, seeing
their personalities form, seeing them follow career paths after graduating is
so temporally connecting. One of the best memories remain the usage of campus
centric lingo [1]. I am in contact with every single of my classmate without
use of any social network. The bonds formed on campuses are incredibly strong.
The support of our seniors deserves prominent mention, be it in school years
or after passing out...that worldwide meshed network. Unparalleled.

[1] -
[http://www.qucosa.de/fileadmin/data/qucosa/documents/5134/da...](http://www.qucosa.de/fileadmin/data/qucosa/documents/5134/data/MAthesis_EvelynRichter.pdf)

------
casual_slacker
It's so strange to be considered a "peer" to people who have spent years
working harder than I can imagine at the same career path.

~~~
Schwolop
I can completely empathise with this viewpoint. People jump through
increasingly complicated hoops because everyone else is doing it, without
stopping to think whether the end result they're after can be achieved in a
simpler way. Then again, there are definitely benefits to competition
encouraging a strong work ethic, even if what you finally end up doing doesn't
require such efforts.

(Anecdotal case in point; I wanted to do Mechatronic engineering at
university, requiring me to place in the upper 0.75% of university applicants.
This requirement was purely because of the popularity of that course. I
noticed that a combined BE/BSc degree was less popular, requiring only a top
20% score - and yet the combined degree let you study exactly the same
courses, and you could drop out of the BSc part if you wanted! Lazy ol' me
took that option...)

~~~
ashray
That's the right choice - work harder or work smarter ? It's true that getting
into a top school like the IIT will open some doors, but that's really
important if you don't know about the doors you want to open and head down.

When someone already knows what they want, there's often a simpler way to get
it. Unfortunately, that's not expected of 17/18 year olds and in fact, parents
in India will say "Oh you want X now, but what if you want Y later ? Better go
to an IIT so that your options are open".

------
rurounijones
Think of the lost potential of the people who may still be the cream of the
crop but just outside the 2%.

The logical part of me says that they should be building more of these
academies (if they can without sacrificing quality).

~~~
chetanahuja
They are building more as well as converting some of the existing non-IIT
engineering schools to IIT status. More than 20 years ago when I took the IIT,
the total number of students admitted was much lower (~ 2000) than the article
states for today (~10000). That would seem like a 5 fold increase in number of
seats in about 20 years. Definitely much faster rate of growth than the rate
of population growth in India.

Also, people who are _just_ outside that 2% mostly do fine. There are a number
of other highly competitive (and pretty good) schools of sciences and
engineering that are not IIT's and most of the people you are talking about
(smart, motivated students who had a bad day at the test or such), do end up
with good careers regardless.

~~~
rurounijones
The problem I see is not to do with the education but the whole "I went to an
IIT" leg-up that people get (Like ivy-leagers).

Just seems extremely unfair that the _social_ outcome for getting into an IIT
is so different for people of almost identical intellectual capability.

~~~
th3iedkid
Given today's scenario the quality of engineers is dipping.So does the gap and
thus even a decently meritorious engineer looks much better than the rest of
the crowd.An old study [http://careers.learnhub.com/news/544-90-percent-
graduates-an...](http://careers.learnhub.com/news/544-90-percent-graduates-
and-75-percent-engineers-are-unemployable-nasscom) shows how poor the rest of
the colleges are.That said the socioeconomic gap keeps widening and thus
opinions.Opinions are hard to break lest someone disprove.Vast majority of
indian IT companies still run aptitude test to figure out who squares out a
big number faster and cracks the tell-tale puzzle quicker rather who can
understand the system and engineer better.So are their parent's
prioties:education is BIG investment and they only want returns not
knowledge.Well then these IT companies pay for a 12 hour code/test/typo
job!And these companies are PRESTIGIOUS in india!!

~~~
chetanahuja
I'm finding it hard to decipher the point you're trying to make other than the
fact that you're dissatisfied with... uhh... things in India. No argument
there. I am too.

The discussion at hand was about the small set of people who perhaps have the
capability to get into IIT's but for various reasons don't manage to get in
the top 2% in that particular test. I asserted that such people end up in
other decent colleges (and there are plenty of good ones outside of the IIT
system and they still form only a fraction of the sum total of Engineering
education in India) and generally tend to end up in good to great careers. Any
opinions on _that_ discussion ?

~~~
th3iedkid
Sorry my frustration overrode clarity!! the gap across good quality colleges
and others is getting bigger and bigger by the day .Unless something is
done,these off-center-2% might as well get mixed up and lost.i wanted to
mention the sociology-economic gap outside of IIT scheme of things.Its usually
expensive if it isn't IIT and when it gets to that it creates all the more
gap.Priorities change from educating oneself to undoing ones debts quickly and
these very same priories can take one in a very different course.This will
only widen the socioeconomic gap and lessen the opportunity for bright minds
to come out naturally in times to come.

------
lquist
Surprised there wasn't greater discussion of the reservation quota, which it
is widely agreed could single handedly fell the prestige/quality of the IITs.

------
dipkakwani
I was one of the 1.3 million JEE aspirants this year. But I didn't join
coaching classes. I believe that we study for acquiring knowledge rather than
creating strategies for cracking exams which involves cramming thousands of
formulas and shortcuts.These coaching institutes provide the poorest of study
materials and low quality education.I prefer to study from internet.Most of
the students waste there 2 years in preparing for JEE. I don't know why
government encourage coaching institutes by asking questions that we are not
taught at schools.Moreover, many of the IIT grads prefer to teach in coaching
institute rather than going in industry and research.

I am immensely interested in computer science. I studied it a fair bit
throughout the two years. I made an image editor as my project. But this
backfired me as I couldn't devote my time to JEE preparations.I couldn't crack
JEE Advanced.

JEE arises in students a feeling of competitiveness which prevails in them
even when they are in colleges. Do you still think that this trade of coaching
institutes is fair and that students should participate in this rat race?

------
Schwolop
For all the shit Quora gets on HN, it's probably the leading authority on the
IIT system due to the enormous number of Indian members. See
[https://www.quora.com/Indian-Institutes-of-
Technology/best_q...](https://www.quora.com/Indian-Institutes-of-
Technology/best_questions) for some of the more interesting questions and
answers.

~~~
mayanksinghal
Most of the questions and answers are quite narrow in their perspective
probably because the community they are targeting to comprises largely of
other IITians and people who are closely related to them. If you are looking
at it from an outsiders view, I would rather suggest that you talk to an
IITian personally. Nearly all of them are quite open to discussion about it.

------
cuil
Nice article. But there are bigger questions to be answered,

1\. Did the person who made it in the top 4000 of the JEE actually want to
pursue engineering at all ? I have numerous friends in IITs who join the
bandwagon for nothing but the brand. They are clear in their minds to pursue a
MBA right after their undergrad (IIT+IIM makes parents, family, girls droool).
Then there are people who get into it because of family pressure. Its not a
very healthy environment at home for two years at any engineering aspirant's
home. Trust me.

2\. What about those people who didn't get in ? That feeling of not getting
into an IIT can be heart-breaking. Those two years of getting up early and
sleeping late, numerous hours spent on mind-numbing problems. Missing family
functions and gathering for the sake of your coaching exams. That peer
pressure of making it into the next FIITJEE All-India list. Everything in vain
? We live a very black and white life in India. You are either an engineer
from an IIT or you are from any-other-college. What about the person who
didn't get in ? Does this mean that he just isn't good enough ? Wait, let me
re-emphasis does a 6 hour test get to decide that i am good enough for my
dream ? This is unfair. One exam cannot definitely be the make it or break it.
Anyone can have a bad day.

3\. Boards or JEE ? For people who may not be aware, the other exam results
which are 'supposed' to be critical in your making it big in life are the
class 12th boards. Deciding in classes 11-12th on what to study for is a major
dilemma since the level of the courses are somewhat different. It isn't easy
going into this thing. The horrendous pattern change in 2013 actually shows
how the education ministry is actually using kids for experiments of their
own.

All said and done. The JEE does a great job bringing like minds together and
IITs automatically becomes the hub of the brightest minds the country has to
offer. Delighted to see this on HN.

~~~
kaze
I have seen Indian non-IITians who are way better than their IIT counterparts
at similar tasks. I also feel that good non-IITians are easier to work with
and get the job done because they don't come with the baggage of some sort of
entitlement.

But having said that, I do observe that an undergrad degree from an IIT serves
as a reasonably reliable indicator of Engineering strength.

------
108
"Students pay subsidized tuition at a fraction of the real cost of their
education. The Indian government subsidizes over 80% of the costs of the IIT,
with alumni donations only accounting for under 3% of the system’s budget.
“While the total government funding to most other engineering colleges is
around $2-4 million per year,” a critical article writes, “the amount varies
between $18-26 million per year for each IIT.”"

I dont get why the Indian government will spend millions on subsidizing and
educating its students and then allowing them to migrate to USA - if that
occurred in the USA there would be an uproar on why the government is using
the tax-payers money to fund another country's workforce. Something the Indian
tax-payer needs to think about, eh?

~~~
rgovind
The Indian govt is surely stupid in subsidizing higher education in place of
primary education. However, there is a flip side. Even though the people are
allowed to migrate, it is the same people who have brought the IT industry to
Indian shores. According to a study commission admittedly by IITians, there is
a positive economic benefit to funding IITs.

[http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-11-25/india...](http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-11-25/india/27888912_1_paniit-
iitians-iit-kharagpur)

~~~
108
More than stupid, the Indian government is clueless and careless about how it
spends its earnings from the 2-3% of Indians that actually pay income tax.
That coupled with rampant corruption and politicians only interested in saving
their vote-banks adds to the woeful state of affairs.

If the Indian citizens started being more demanding about how their money was
being spent, on whom and the ROI per rupee of tax collected, the government
and the politicians would be forced to change. See,
[http://openspending.org/](http://openspending.org/)

------
whitewhim
I am studying/working through the summer in what I guess would be a program
with "elite" students from my field. There are people from the top colleges
around the world including but not limited to MIT, Dartmouth, Harvard,
Columbia as well as some of the top Canadian, Chinese and European schools. My
only colleague that comes off as genius level smart and has a huge breadth of
knowledge is from IIT Mumbai. I know it is only one data point but he is also
a fairly normal guy. Really nice, thoughtful, loves to hang out and go out for
drinks. If every student from IIT is like him I could see a bright future for
India

------
sc00ter
"six grueling hours of chemistry, physics, and math"

Otherwise known as three two-hour papers - hardly the stuff of legend! I'm not
suggesting the papers are easy, just that by any measure, at this level the
length is nothing remarkable.

~~~
iamshs
It is remarkable. It is a game of chess. You have to be in upper 4000 ranks to
land a good engg. stream. And the ranks often have incredibly minor mark
differences between them, which makes for harsher penalties in form of being
denied good streams in good IITs. The mind games played in JEE is a game of
chess. You only know the syllabus, and that's it. In my times, physics paper
was easy and people scored a lot. It was Maths exam that made the difference.
This is what makes the exam remarkable. And these iterations are there in
every exam. I have given 3 hour exams in IIT in morning and evening...those
were not grueling....but JEE was.

~~~
sundae79
Is there an equivalent of this?
[http://web.mit.edu/ir/pop/awards/nobel.html](http://web.mit.edu/ir/pop/awards/nobel.html)
Closest would be University of Madras not IIT.

Its just a numbers game, the universities are not even smart enough to
increase seats in a country of 1.2 billion.

~~~
mayanksinghal
IITs have been increasing seats at a rate that is often unsustainable. During
my stay at IITB from 2007-2012, I saw the number of undergraduate freshmen
increase from about 500 to about 900. I think the largest issue has been
scaling infrastructure and faculty.

And no, IITs don't have any nobel laureate to boast about, largely because of
the lack of core sciences and graduate/post-graduate programs when compared to
MIT/Stanford etc.

------
anuraj
India should try to broad base its technical education and infuse quality
among the large number of technical institutes which have sprung up across the
country. Giving autonomy and aid to good institutions can be a beginning. IITs
are good, but not the first or foremost requirement for the transformation of
engineering education in the country.

------
sneak
I don't know fuck-all about chemistry or physics (I dropped out of the 10th
grade), but could someone confirm for me that the correct answer to that
multiple choice aluminum-hit-with-an-alpha-particle question about 20% in to
the article is (a)?

~~~
alok-g
Yes

~~~
sneak
Much obliged. :D

------
robryan
As it says in the article that the people that get into computer science in
IIT are the best of the best in this test. I wonder how the quality of
graduate compares with those coming out of mid/top US universities.

------
kamakazizuru
fascinating subject - but the article was blaringly badly written!

~~~
fixxer
Maybe you should help 'em out?

[http://priceonomics.com/jobs/](http://priceonomics.com/jobs/)

