The IIT Entrance Exam • Hacker News Board

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#41

Post by fakeer » Fri, Jun 28, 2013, 2:17 AM UTC

chetanahuja wrote: post #30

rurounijones wrote: post #24

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).

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. A…

||who had a bad day at the test or such

Or failed to grok the fact that they shall mostly have to do away with those 3-4 years of their lives outside studies. Or failed to understand that "you want to get into an IIT, you have to study Chemistry[1] - by rot, by repetition or by whatever it is required or take the refund and go home or to an NIT[2]".[3]

Sort of feels bad. That the curriculum and exam pattern(the core of it) is still the same it was like 50 years ago and then it's life. You learn to deal with it and accept the failure or rather the fact that I was not supposed to be what I am today via that route. My only regret as of now is the grand campus life I missed. Nothing else.

[1]Replace this with any subject that a particular doesn't like or is not interested in or hates(I did)

[2]This is where I passed out from finally

[3]A Bansal faculty member told me this when I went there after my +2 and failing at JEE(as a fresher), not clearing Chem cut-off - he said my overall score would have put me somewhere around 400-500 AIR if it was not for Chemistry. Well, I didn't take the refund and lost another INR 70K.

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#42

Post by counterpointer » Fri, Jun 28, 2013, 2:25 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #36

pitchups wrote: post #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 Androi…

On the other hand, India has a huge population and its inevitable that it will have more than a few geniuses/great persons. Did IIT help make these people, or did IIT just select them via rigid examination and admission standards? If the latter, more worryingly, how many great people were condemned to mediocrity because they weren't selected? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

>On the other hand, India has a huge population and its inevitable that it will have more than a few geniuses/great persons

China 1.3B population

India 1.2B population

Africa 1.0B population

Surely there's a lot more here at work rather than the raw population. The environment, social culture, peers, educational opportunities, cost, language, parental expectations and lastly, great educational institutions all surely increase odds.

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#43

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Jun 28, 2013, 2:37 AM UTC

counterpointer wrote: post #42

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, India has a huge population and its inevitable that it will have more than a few geniuses/great persons. Did IIT help make these people, or did IIT just select them via rigid examination and admission standards? If the latter, more worryingly, how many great people were condemned to mediocrity because they weren't selected? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

>On the other hand, India has a huge population and its inevitable that it will have more than a few geniuses/great persons China 1.3B population India 1.2B population Africa 1.0B population Surely there's a lot more here at work rather than the raw population. The environment, social culture, peers, educational opportunities, cost, language, parental expectations and lastly, great educational institutions all surely…

China, at least, has the gaokao for identifying talent, the actual Qinghua University experience is mediocre compared to one at American research universities; its just that the gaokao + a huge population allows them to select the best students. It would be an interesting experiment to see if they could take low test performers and "make" them into high quality graduates.

Africa is not one country and doesn't have any easy way of selecting their best or brightest, or even motivating kids to study very hard to win at the test. We might say its "culture" but it has more to do with resources.

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#44

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Jun 28, 2013, 2:40 AM UTC

jbarham wrote: post #25

pitchups wrote: post #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 Androi…

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.

Fakeer, you've been banned or hell banned for some reason. Nothing in your comment history stands out to me, so you might want to talk to the admins to see what happened.

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#45

Post by cocoflunchy » Fri, Jun 28, 2013, 2:43 AM UTC

hawkharris wrote: post #29

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 ot…

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...

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#46

Post by tathagata » Fri, Jun 28, 2013, 3:07 AM UTC

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).

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#47

Post by morganwilde » Fri, Jun 28, 2013, 3:14 AM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #40

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 disappoint…

This seemed like a key omission when comparing IIT to Harvard. As for self-selection, it seems that developed countries have more options for viable education, and a more independent youth at that age, thus it becomes possible for future students to spread more evenly across the system. Not something that's possible at this point in the developing world, where these kids carry a much bigger weight on their shoulders.

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#48

Post by 108 » Fri, Jun 28, 2013, 3:22 AM UTC

"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?

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#49

Post by 31reasons » Fri, Jun 28, 2013, 3:28 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #36

pitchups wrote: post #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 Androi…

On the other hand, India has a huge population and its inevitable that it will have more than a few geniuses/great persons. Did IIT help make these people, or did IIT just select them via rigid examination and admission standards? If the latter, more worryingly, how many great people were condemned to mediocrity because they weren't selected? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

I don't think they are condemned to mediocrity just because IIT didn't select them. You will find far more non-IITian indians making impact in the world if you look for them. Just like not all fortune 500 CEOs come from Harvard, not all great engineers and scientists come from IIT.

Re: The IIT Entrance Exam

#50

Post by ShabbyDoo » Fri, Jun 28, 2013, 3:36 AM UTC

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.