IITs : The Pride of INDIA

What is common to savvy entrepreneurs like Mr.Vinod Khosla (Co founder: Sun Microsystems), Corporate head honchos like Mr.Arun Sarin (CEO: Vodafone) and leading scientists like Mr. Narendra Karamarkar (World renowned for his work in applied mathematics)...............they all are alumni of world renowned Indian Institute of Technology.

Established in 1950, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) has become synonymous with excellence in technology and engineering education in India. The IITs, are a group of seven autonomous engineering and technology oriented institutes of higher education established and declared as Institutes of National Importance by the Government of India. The IITs were created to train scientists and engineers, with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to support the economic and social development of India after independence in 1947. The seven IITs are located in Kharagpur, Bombay, Madras, Kanpur, Delhi, Guwahati, and Roorkee.

History of IITs:-

The history of the IIT system dates back to 1946 when Sir Jogendra Singh of the Viceroy's Executive Council set up a committee whose task was to consider the creation of Higher Technical Institutions for post-war industrial development in India. The 22-member committee, headed by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, recommended the establishment of these institutions in various parts of India, with affiliated secondary institutions. The committee felt that such institutes should not only produce undergraduates, but researchers and academicians. The institutes were expected to maintain high educational standards.
With the recommendations of the Sarkar committee in view the first Indian Institute of Technology was born in May, 1950 at the site of Hijli Detention Camp in Kharagpur, a town in eastern India.

The office of the Hijli Detention Camp (photographed September 1951) served as the first academic building of IIT Kharagpur

 

The next IIT to be established, IIT Bombay, was founded in 1958 in Powai, Mumbai.

Then next two to follow were IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur both formed in 1959.

Established as the College of Engineering in 1961, IIT Delhi was given the current name and declared an Institution of National Importance under the "Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Act, 1963". IIT Guwahati was established in 1994 near the city of Guwahati. IIT Roorkee, originally known as the University of Roorkee, was established in 1847 as the first engineering college of the British Empire and was granted IIT status in 2001.

Education:-

The B.Tech. Degree is the most common undergraduate degree in the IITs in terms of student enrolment, although Dual Degrees and Integrated (five-year) Master of Science degrees are also offered. The B.Tech course is based on a 4-year program with eight semesters while the Dual Degree course is a 5-year program with ten semesters.

In all IITs, the first year of B.Tech. And Dual Degree courses are marked by a common course structure for all the students, though in some IITs, a single department introduction related course is also included.

The dream of every engineering aspirant: The Main Building of IIT Bombay

From the second year onwards, the students study subjects exclusively from their respective departments. In addition to these, the students have to take compulsory advanced courses from other departments in order to broaden their education. Separate compulsory courses from humanities and social sciences department, and sometimes management courses are also enforced. At the end of third year, the undergraduate students have to undertake a summer project at an industry or reputed academic institute as part of the curriculum.

IITs also offer various research opportunities by offering masters degree in engineering

(M.Tech.), science (M.Sc.), design (M.Des) and doctorate degree (Ph. D.) in many areas of research like aerospace and biotechnology.

Alumni:-   

IITs have a very strong alumni base with many of the alumni’s occupying very important posts. The society and industry is benefited time to time from their significant contributions.

Many IIT alumni have become entrepreneurs, including Nandan Nilekani(co-founder CEO, President and Managing Director of Infosys), Vinod Khosla (co-founder, Sun Microsystems), and Suhas S. Patil (founder and Chairman Emeritus Cirrus Logic Inc.)

Other alumni have achieved leading positions in corporations, such as Rajat Gupta (former Managing Director, McKinsey), Arun Sarin (CEO, Vodafone), Victor Menezes (Senior Vice Chairman, Citigroup), and Kanwal Rekhi (CTO, Novell).

IIT alumni have also pursued careers in politics: for example, Manohar Parrikar became the Chief Minister of Goa. And recently a new political party has been formed by bunch of IITians by the name of Lokparitran. Harish Saluja, the director of the film “The Journey” is an IIT Product. Jag Mundhra, the producer of over 25 bollywood and Hollywood movies, whose latest venture, sandstorm (“Bawandar”) has picked dozen-odd awards at various international film festivals, is also an IITian.

And this is not all; the list of successful IITians is endless. Can u attribute all these successful stories to co-incidence?

Lifestyle at IITs:-

Ah! Look for some jeans/shorts. Wear a white T-shirt. Wear bathroom slippers (chappals), the straps being preferably of different colors. Get a barely mobile bicycle. Use pieces of paper for notebooks. And sit in the last available bench. You now look like an IITian.

           

The day begins near noon, maybe a few classes to catch up on lost sleep, and back for tea. Then there's football or hockey or anything else till dark, then dinner. After that is the 'cack session' - which involves sitting on the wing cots and talking about everything and nothing. Later on is the argument about who's going to pay for the coffee at restaurant which opens till 4 in the night! Sleep time is at 2 a.m. usually.
The junta takes sports very seriously - and gets a lot more emotional about a game than about their grades. In all, life at IIT is totally casual and great fun!

But behind this seemingly BINDAS lifestyle these IITians know that they are not born to be ordinary. The extra-ordinary culture at IIT successfully creates fearless, confident risk takers who are all set to take over the world.

Admission to undergraduate programs in all IITs is tied to the Joint Entrance Examination, popularly known as IIT-JEE. To know more about IIT-JEE and the optimal study techniques look for the next issue.

Written by:

Niranjan D Parab (Student IIT Bombay)

Vaibhav Bakliwal (Director Bakliwal Tutorials-IIT, Alumni IIT Bombay)

Is ‘IIT’ my cup of tea?

If my article in the previous issue has completely overwhelmed you, you may have begun to wonder “is IIT some kind of fairy world made for only GODS of academic world?” No, its not. Even an average student can aspire to be a part of the IIT dream, if only he decides to commit himself to this goal and approaches the exam in a strategic and careful manner.

Although the answer to the question, “Is IIT my cup of tea?” is not simple, I am not going to help you figure it out either. Preparing for IIT is a personal choice and you have to commit efforts to that decision and commit loads of efforts. My role here is simply to help you come out of some myths regarding IIT-JEE.

1) Have you ever really sat and thought why IIT-JEE is a tough exam? If you actually do so the first reason that shall probably hit you is the astronomical number of students that compete for the countable few seats.

For the uninitiated let me give the figures. Around 2.5 lakh students register for IIT-JEE competing for around 5000 seats. Roughly 2.3 lakhs appear for the exam. That means that 20 thousand students despite of purchasing the JEE form don’t even take pains to go for the exam. This suggests that not all who have registered for the exam are serious about it. Moreover according to surveys, almost 80% of the students who appear for the exam do not really increase the competition. Why? Well there are various reasons.

Many of these don’t aspire to be into IITs. They were instead preparing for SLEET (state level engineering entrance tests) which is engineering CET for Maharashtra. They had joined coaching classes also for SLEET only. When you prepare properly for IIT-JEE the preparations for SLEET is taken care of but un-fortunately the converse is not true. So if you prepare for JEE, you are definitely better of than this huge chunk.

Also not all who join classes for JEE prepare whole heartedly or are desperate to make it. And if you don’t want something badly you don’t get it. It’s as simple as that.

Then there are students who join classes for JEE and are quite serious about it, but un-fortunately suffer from a disease called ‘self deceit’. We shall talk about it in detail later in some other issue. In brief these are the students who work very hard, but understand little. What they lack is the right guidance and the right study techniques.

In nutshell if you approach the exam in a planned and committed fashion under some able guidance you automatically have an edge over so many others. Please remember, it’s not the ‘quantity’ of students appearing for the exam that make it tough but the ‘quality’.

2) The general notion is that IIT-JEE is a difficult exam and questions are complex and tough. This is not true. On the contrary, the test emphasizes on nothing but fundamentals.

3) Past ≠ Future. I know scores of otherwise brilliant students who feel that because they never topped their school’s merit list, they cannot sail through the IIT-JEE. This is an absolute myth. Performance at school examinations often bears little correlation with performance at IIT-JEE. The curriculum and skills required to crack two exams are as different from one another as chalk from cheese.

Success at school exams depends usually on a student’s mugging power. IIT-JEE on the contrary requires nothing short of strategic planning, motivation, hard work careful guidance and loads of practice.

Also I must emphasize, believing that because you did well in school, you will also do well at the IIT-JEE is living in a fool’s paradise. Basically IIT-JEE and School or Boards examinations are different ball games altogether.

4) In IIT-JEE the scope for error is high. This comes as a shock to the students when I share it with them for the first time. What does this mean? In the history of IIT-JEE the cut-off percentage score required to clear JEE has never exceeded 40% and has been around 30% usually. That means the scope for error is high. You can afford to do few silly mistakes! You can afford to leave few topics in each subject which for some reason you don’t like! In most of the other competitive exams like CET the cut-offs for good colleges and branches are of the order of 90%!!

5) Another myth that needs to be demolished is that you need to be super intelligent to clear JEE. Intelligence (or as we commonly interpret the term, based on a student’s performance in school or boards) is not a pre-requisite according to most of the IITians. IITs contain a broad spectrum of people and not all of them have exceptionally high IQ.

Finally remember, the only meaning that life has is the meaning we ascribe to it. This means, that if you are limited in any sense, you are limited only by your own thoughts. If despite of this article, you allow yourself into believing that you can never make it to IIT, I would agree whole heartedly to you. But if you have one little spark glowing in some corner of your heart that says ‘I can do it’ or rather ‘I will do it’ – don’t let that spark die. Instead give it fire. I assure you 100% that there’s nothing that can come between you and the IIT once you choose to enter its hallowed portals. It’s nothing but our belief systems that manifest itself into reality.

Please send your feedbacks about the article at bakliwaltutorialsiit@gmail.com.

Written by Vaibhav Bakliwal (Director Bakliwal Tutorials-IIT, Alumnus IIT Bombay)