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The IIT Entrance Exam

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Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#3
post #2

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

That is wonderful. I struggled at both of them. :) If you don't mind asking, what is your current education level? These exam questions are attempted by high school teenagers in the IIT entrance exam.

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#8
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...

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#9
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/ )

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

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

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

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

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

Edit: Formatting

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#10

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.

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...)

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