Comments on: Why Tata Steel (and others) won’t recruit IITians

By: AD

AD — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:21:09 +0000

I did not understand the connection between knowing the names of authors and the students’ intellect because of which, I believe, the said students have been chosen to study in IIT.

By: Amit

Amit — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:01:30 +0000

IITians whom I have seen very much lack what I would term as EQ and ‘life-skills’.Some of them even lack basic social/interpersonal skills like ‘appreciating efforts of others.’.

For them profession/work is everything.We have a CEO in a Indo-Japanese venture in NCR region of India,who takes it as a metter of prestige that he was abroad serving his clients. at the time when his wife was in hospital giving birth to their baby.Profession over family.Thats what IITians are..

By: iit

iit — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:29:53 +0000

IITAN’S DO NOT KNOW HOW TO READ ENGINEERING DRAWING, TALKS RUBBISH AND IS OF NO USE TO INDUSTRY. MEDIA HAS MADE IIT FAMOUS. OUTSIDE INDIA NOT MANY PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT IIT. THEY GIVE A DAMN.

By: Shreekar

Shreekar — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 04:50:47 +0000

Here is a theory on why IITians are/were considered great and what has caused the deterioration in their standards.

Students learn MORE from peer influence and interactions than from their professors, textbooks, or from the infrastructure of great institutions. Like for example, when you play tennis where your opponent is better than you, your level of play tends to improve because you try your hardest to bring your own play to match or exceed that of your opponent. Similarly, when your opponent’s standard is inferior to yours, your own play tends to drop down from your normal level/potential.

Coaching factories focus only on training the candidates in getting good marks. In the process, they fail to inculcate in the candidates an interest in the subjects of study. Because such students who master the art of scoring high in JEE get admission into IITs the quality of peer influence also gets diluted. These very same students then go on to do post graduation, doctoral studies, etc. and come back to the IITs as faculty.

By: Telugu

Telugu — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:28:32 +0000

@ Dheerendragopal

Mind your language

By: Ck

Ck — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:02:54 +0000

Most of the high school students take up engineering because of pressure from the family. For JEE, the pressure starts much earlier that it becomes an aspiration. We study for marks till high school, and we slog for earning a life later.

Why dont we yearn (and not earn) for a better life?

By: Sapan Shrivastava

Sapan Shrivastava — Fri, 27 May 2011 05:00:57 +0000

Dear Mr. B. Muthuraman I would like to share my own experience with you. I have worked with one of the largest PSU of India and there one day a GM of that company shared his experience of interviewing a kid at IIT. He told me that during the placement interview he asked a kid that “Name some bearing manufacturing companies” and the student was speechless. The same GM fellow once asked me that which book I followed for power electronics and I said that I dont remember. But the point here is that this GM fellow never asked me that wether you could explain me the working of thyristor or he never asked me wether you could calculate the fault current in some circuit. And the same guy never asked the question to that interviewee kid that can you explain the difference between roller bearing and ball bearing.
It’s not the fault of that person, the point is as I look at it is in a manufacturing company in India one dont need to be a crow who finds an inovative solution of drinking water from pot, one needs to be a donkey following the defined set of rules or following what the rider says.
So there is nothing wrong with IIT education. These are technological institutes and they are producing technocrats and they are definitely not required at a manufacturing industries rather they should be employed at research institutes. But because of lack of research facilities in the country most of them fly away to US.

By: chandra

chandra — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 11:49:11 +0000

IITs are highly rated undergraduate colleges and never innovated any engineering product. Crores are spent on these iit’s to no avail. These iitan’s are so proud that they show red eyes even to foreigners and get beaten up or stabbed.

By: Athreya

Athreya — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 08:10:52 +0000

@sam
that was really funny . You say “Btw, I am one among the 1st kind.”
and then you are generalizing on both serious and light ones! :)
How lightly you take things in life? :)

The question is not whether one failed to get into it or any one is egoistic, it’s about “level playing ground”.

By: another commentator

another commentator — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:05:26 +0000

@sam,
thanks for summing it up nicely. I guess the worst part that i hate about such rants about IITians is the generalizing part — things like “i have worked with multiple IITians, and they are full of shit”.

i have seen IITians whose achievements (career status after 10+ years of graduation) are not commensurate with their (supposed) talent. I have also seen IITians who you simply have to look at in awe. For example, 50+ patents in first decade of career, that kind of stuff.

For every 5 such awe-inspiring IITians, i have also encountered 2-3 non-IITians (and indian) of similar caliber. Look at the composition of core research group of major corporates, and you may start agreeing to me. here, by corporates i mean HP, Intel, Microsoft, Google, and other semiconductor majors such as Texas Instruments, ST Micro, Qualcomm, Broadcom etc..

By: sam

sam — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:39:01 +0000

Let me generalize(yeah, I am aware, I am doing a sin) it about the wanna-be IITians, who couldn’t make it to the IITs. They are of 2 types.

1. First, who take life lightly, and are happy with other things that life offered them.

2. Second, the serious ones, whose ego couldn’t take it that there were more deserving candidates than themselves. They are pained to their core when they see a JEE qualified IITian. In their pathetic state of agony, they give in to the instinct of “finding faults” and then “generalizing” it about IITans. That’s it. Their talk, I consider bullshit.

Btw, I am one among the 1st kind.

By: another commentator

another commentator — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:05:02 +0000

@ Athreya,
i can sense disbelief in your comments — and i am fine with that. the person i am talking about got into IIT in mid nineties, and not in 1960. Regarding the “2 months” thing, well, may not be exact in terms of details, but you got the sense of it. He had never heard of JEE until he was well into his 12th standard. He was told that “JEE is a good thing, he should write it”. So he wrote it, and cracked it. He saw the Irodov book (that book on insanely difficult physics problems) for the first time after coming to IIT.

please do not nit-pick on my English, or my screen name etc. i am not a liar.

By: Athreya

Athreya — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:11:46 +0000

@another commentator,
2 months and JEE cracker !! Marvellous. My salutes. Which village, college, year ? Would be privileged to see his comments. Can you please show him this space?

Now don’t tell that he was from 1960 batch with 1000 odd people writing it.

You surely are a commentator than a commenter.

By: another commentator

another commentator — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:11:54 +0000

Hi all,
well, this is one of those many blogs discussing on IITians, their attitude, ego and how good they are etc etc. Well, based on my experience of over 8 years in industry (semiconductor), here are my observations –

Fact-1: some IITians think every IITian is superior to every nonIITian. These IITians are jack-ass type (but some may be technically good) people who are low on confidence. This statement is just not correct, it reeks of ignorance.

Fact-2: a significant proportion of IITians are good natured, humble human beings. I have seen that humility is proportional to confidence and talent.

Fact-3: A significant number of nonIITians outperform IITians in the long run. Here, outperforming does not mean outperforming in a problem solving exam, but outperforming in career growth, where a lot more skills than pure analytical skills are required.

Fact-4: out of 100 IITians, about 10-15 will be super smart (anyone would love them to be on his team), rest 10-15 are very good, and rest 60-80 are good. none will disappoint you. out of 100 nonITians, around 5 will super smart, next 10-15 will be very good, next 50 will be good, and there will be a bottom rung who will be disappointing.

Fact -5: the smartest person i have seen so far, and have worked with, is an IITian, who is from a village, had never heard of JEE until 2 months before writing it. he cracked a <100 rank.

i guess this kind of sums up whatever i had to say..

By: Athreya

Athreya — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:29:45 +0000

“By one estimate 95% of students getting admission into IITs have attended one of the many coaching factories which have spawned all across the country” ….

True, the rest 5% will be sons of professors who set question papers :)

The same thing happens with defence also. Most will be (white)fucked up northies with 6+ feet and above, without any brains but with fathers already in defence; and we seem short in front of them even though with strong body. Wonder if they can put same yardstick for chinese heights even though got beaten by them in war.

Whatever comes with “Indian” like IIT, IIM , IAS etc…. we should continue ignoring them and stop contributing any amount of expertise to progress of that nation.

Let coaching be abolished and question papers set by people who don’t take any classes – retired known and impartial profs; and papers be set in all languages – that would be a fair ground. Isn’t it? Bloody then you will know who will be the losers.

Congress anthe, Jawahar anthe, industrialization anthe, Talent anthe , Hardwork anthe….. My foot.