“An IITian, virtually, always has a history that is marked by extreme dedication and assiduousness.” 

“They are the finest brains of the country.” 

Being an IITian myself, I can confirm that not a lot of things in India are so overrated as IITs and their students. I have personally seen a lot of students from non-IITs who are sheer geniuses and a few IITians who are downright dumb. I should probably fall into the latter category (No, I shouldn’t.), but that does not make my point any less strong. The thing is that securing more marks in physics, chemistry and mathematics, does not make one any more of a genius than someone who scores lesser. Not going to school and preparing exclusively for this exam for around 4 years or so, or even more, as is the trend these days, can give an advantage to even a dunce. But this is definitely not to say that IITians do not deserve the adulation they get all the time. It is just that, perhaps, a person should be judged by more than just one criterion, or better still, not judged at all. 

My experience as a fresher in IIT Patna was not at all surprising or overwhelming. The campus was (rather ‘is’?) still in the stage of infancy and was running from its transit campus. I did not have high hopes for the infrastructure, even though, as I found out, it was pretty decent for a transit campus. The faculty, without an iota of doubt, though, was up to the mark. Girls were a rarity, as can be easily expected from an engineering college, never mind an IIT. But the most striking fact about the IITs is how they can make one feel so special and so not-so-special at the same time. If you call yourself a genius just because you managed to crack the JEE Advanced, then, everyone else in your batch is entitled to, too. This, compounded with the CGPA system for grading students, sometimes, leads to a palpable competition and jealousy among the batchmates, which can prove to be both beneficial as well as disastrous. It is, now, largely up to the student how they deal with this competition. Do they stand strong or do they break down?

You can read a contrary view to this article here. 

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