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The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

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Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#131

Post by abc_lisper »

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…

Where did you go to school, if I may ask. This seems like a dream to me, and not relatable at all as a student from India

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#132

Post by Aliabid94 »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #96
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 am becoming convinced by the idea that democracy itself is a bad and a terrible way to organize government. But I am also at losses for a less bad way. In similarities, I am at losses for a less bad than meritocracy. I am listening to hear more other options but am not hear any less bad.

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others" as Churchill supposedly said

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#133

Post by abc_lisper »

ghgdynb1 wrote: post #2

I used to think that the “holistic” criteria elite US colleges use to select students was a failure of meritocracy. My view was that the non-objective metrics were excuses for colleges to let in students who wouldn’t grind but wanted prestige and had rich parents. But if you tie a person’s social status to performance on a single test, you suffocate all the useful things people could be doing if they didn’t have to s…

You also make the successful people entitled and failures on the test feel like a second grade person in that IIT system. While meritocracy is a valid thing, expecting that a 16 year old has enough maturity or suck it up ness to ace that test while not having enough opportunity Is bullshit

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#134

Post by abc_lisper »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #85
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you do now?

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#135

Post by savanaly »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #49
ghgdynb1 wrote: post #2

I used to think that the “holistic” criteria elite US colleges use to select students was a failure of meritocracy. My view was that the non-objective metrics were excuses for colleges to let in students who wouldn’t grind but wanted prestige and had rich parents. But if you tie a person’s social status to performance on a single test, you suffocate all the useful things people could be doing if they didn’t have to s…

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.

It's hard for me to imagine someone not being meritocratic. You would really, in your deepest heart of hearts, be sincerely ambivalent about whether your, say, dangerous surgery was done by the best surgeon in the country vs the lousiest? And if we say yes we would prefer the more meritorious one for that job, why not extend it to virtually every job?

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#136

Post by avs733 »

shadowofneptune wrote: post #3

So, when do the parents step out of the picture, if ever? Sounds like the worst affected would fly apart the moment they had to live on their own. This is a type of student I've heard of in the US of course, but this appears to affect a huge portion of the students.

Speaking as a US professor, and speaking of all my students not just international ones,

Increasingly, never

Had a students father drop off their mask for them before class last week because they forgot it

This is one of the long lasting impacts I’m seeing covid have on society already

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#137

Post by known » 

    By the time they achieve their aim, if they do, many realise they have lost out on social skills, ability to communicate easily with others (an attribute now known as soft skills), and of course, some part of their youth.
Reminds me of movie https://yts.mx/movies/gifted-2017

Re: The price students pay for a prized IIT seat

#139

Post by akhilcacharya »

savanaly wrote: post #135
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.

It's hard for me to imagine someone not being meritocratic. You would really, in your deepest heart of hearts, be sincerely ambivalent about whether your, say, dangerous surgery was done by the best surgeon in the country vs the lousiest? And if we say yes we would prefer the more meritorious one for that job, why not extend it to virtually every job?

Honestly, anybody that passes a certain bar is probably fine for me. We already have that with medical licensing, board exams, residency matching, etc. If anything we could probably loosen the bar, since residency spots are artificially scarce because of the residency cap.

To be perfectly clear, I don't dispute ability exists - I just don't think that should be the ideal organizing philosophy for society.

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