Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

theprint.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 171 posts

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#81

Post by vishakad »

univalent wrote: post #80
vishakad wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Knew of some who didn't get in and their self-esteem was pretty shot for some years.

I was one of those 'not so smart' kids that got in. I know this because I struggled mightily once I did get i to maintain a respectable GPA. I think the system is most brutal on middle of the road students like me. If you know you aren't good enough, you get an out. Or if you are really smart you can coast in. The average folks get hosed :)

"Float to the top, or sink to the bottom. Everything else in the middle is the churn." - Amos Burton.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#82

Post by bvoq »

Isn't this the same place everywhere that has a meritocratic system? In Japan/South Korea it's the final test at high school, in Switzerland it's the 1st year of university, etc.

I prefer the system in Switzerland, because everyone gets a shot at studying in the university but only those who can pass the exams can continue studying. Of course it means that the entire university experience is high pressure but it's more meritocratic, since different high schools have different standards for a good grade.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#83

Post by [deleted] »

wppick wrote: post #19
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we overpopulated?

The whole world could live in Texas. It's a failure of the people in leadership positions and who control the resources to create a game where everyone can find a fulfilling role to play. Instead its rent seeking and actively blocking the game from changing because that would risk their wealth.

[deleted]

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#85

Post by akhilcacharya »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #56
akhilcacharya wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm becoming convinced by the idea that meritocracy itself is bad and a terrible way to organize society. But perhaps I'm biased by being a failure in the meritocratic system.

I'm interested in hear about why you believe you're a failure in the meritocratic system. I also have some doubts about meritocracy for a couple of reasons: 1) Although we can try very hard to be objective, at the end of the day everything is subjective 2) So called "merit" seems to be largely based on genetic traits (Intelligence, personality, physical, etc)

That's around my line of thinking, pure meritocracy is both too subjective and far too harsh to the people who aren't in the lucky egg club, especially in increasingly global winner take all games (an inevitable consequence of globalization).

I'm a failure by meritocracy by nature of losing at all of the tests we use to judge success and merit - test scores, elite school admission, elite institutions etc.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#86

Post by lordnacho »

barry-cotter wrote: post #51
endisneigh wrote: post #5

I would love to see really elite schools lowering the threshold for the quantitative measurements like the JEE to say, 85% percentile, and just randomly selectively students who meet it. In my experience there's definitely a point in which better scores on things such as the JEE stop being correlated with both college performance, life satisfaction or even career earnings.

> In my experience there's definitely a point in which better scores on things such as the JEE stop being correlated with both college performance, life satisfaction or even career earnings. Bring the citations because the research shows that doing better on highly g loaded tests is basically an unalloyed good.

Does it really show that doing a bit better at the very top of the distribution is useful for something? I'd imagine it's a satisfaction type dynamic, where the benefits taper off.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#87

Post by whack »

Everyone here is decrying how awful this meritocratic system is, and I'm just thinking about how awesome it would be if they made some tweaks to their entrance criteria.

Give students a score-bonus for:

- Completing a triathlon

- Doing 60 push-ups in a minute

- Performing 500 hours of community service

Even if it doesn't change how competitive the system is, at least you'll end up with an army of nerdy buff do-gooders. Hardly the worst outcome for any society.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#88

Post by desi_ninja »

darth_avocado wrote: post #75

This article is a gross misrepresentation of what it takes to get into IITs. I got into one, and I can guarantee that this article pretty much picks and chooses data points as it wants. Yes it is academically challenging to get into IITs, but there's two ways you can get into one: Devote your entire life towards "cracking" the game that's the entrance exams, or just study enough that you've mastered the understanding…

that's the print is for you.

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#89

Post by BeFlatXIII »

endisneigh wrote: post #5

I would love to see really elite schools lowering the threshold for the quantitative measurements like the JEE to say, 85% percentile, and just randomly selectively students who meet it. In my experience there's definitely a point in which better scores on things such as the JEE stop being correlated with both college performance, life satisfaction or even career earnings.

A lottery system with high acceptance requirements has always made more sense to me than obsessing over “objective” metrics to draw a line between students ranked 82nd and 83rd.

Put in other words, make a list of all students who you would be happy to have on campus and draw randomly if you have more students than freshman dorm space. If there is a large oversupply of students who passed the threshold to enter the lottery, then it may be time to consider increasing the requirements. If you don’t need to lottery at all, then there are probably difficult institutional questions to ask.

I will admit that this shouldn’t be the only system for admission at any school, as it leaves no room for the various specialty admission channels. My gut feeling says that at least ⅔ of the student body should enter through the general admission lottery with the remaining third reserved for athletics, academic scholarship winners, full-price foreign scholars, affirmative action, townies, etc…

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#90

Post by addicted »

darth_avocado wrote: post #75

This article is a gross misrepresentation of what it takes to get into IITs. I got into one, and I can guarantee that this article pretty much picks and chooses data points as it wants. Yes it is academically challenging to get into IITs, but there's two ways you can get into one: Devote your entire life towards "cracking" the game that's the entrance exams, or just study enough that you've mastered the understanding…

It also depends when you got into the IIT.

My dad got into an IIT and it was basically like you describe it. I got into IIT and it was like how this article describes it. It’s also gotten easier since I took the JEEs because they’ve quadrupled the number of seats available by enlarging the existing IITs and making a bunch of new colleges IITs, so I suspect it’s easier now than when I was taking those exams.

Post reply on HN