Indian Institutes of Technology - Definition

Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are the premier educational institutions for science and technology spread all over India . At present, there are seven IITs, in Kharagpur, Mumbai, Chennai (IIT Madras), Kanpur, New Delhi, Guwahati and Roorkee.

There are about 1500 undergraduate and 2000 graduate students in each IIT (except for IIT Guwahati which is about half this size). The IITs are very well respected worldwide. The IITs have an acceptance rate of 2% i.e. out of every 50 students appearing for its IIT-JEE (Joint Entrance Exam) every year, only one gets selected. This makes them some of the most difficult colleges in the world to get in to, as even Harvard has an acceptance rate of 8%. The IIT-JEE is arguably the toughest entrance exam in the world and it tests the applicants' knowledge in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. Students start preparing for this exam from the 9th grade onwards and take the exam at the end of the 12th grade.

A student/alumnus of the Indian Institutes of Technology is informally known as an IITian. In early 2004, the IITs and the IIMs were struck in a controversy with the then ruling BJP government branding them as institutes of elitism, where people from weaker sections of the country found it tough to enter.

History

In 1946, Sarkar Committee was setup to explore setting up technical institutes of higher education for post-war industrial development of India by the Indian Government under a special act by the President. The recommendations of the Sarkar Committee were modelled along the lines of great US universities, notably the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The first IIT was born in May 1950 in Kharagpur, West Bengal at the site of Hijli Detention camp. Four other campuses were subsequently founded at Mumbai (1958), Chennai (1959), Kanpur (1960), New Delhi (1961). In 1995, a sixth campus at Guwahati was added and most recently in 2001, a seventh campus was established in Roorkee by upgrading Roorkee University, one of India's oldest engineering institutions, into an IIT.

Today, IITs offers undergraduate, integrated postgraduate, postgraduate and doctoral degrees in over 25 different engineering, technology and business/management disciplines.

Notable Alumni

Notable Praises

• Lesley Stahl of CBS on 60 Minutes: "Put Harvard, MIT and Princeton together and you get to an idea of the status of IITs in India."
• N.R. Narayana Murthy, founder Infosys: "My son wanted to do Computer Science. But to be in the IITs he had to be among the top 200 in the country. So he chose Cornell."
• N.R. Narayana Murthy, founder Infosys: "I do know cases where students who couldn't get into Computer Science at IITs, they have gotten scholarship at MIT, at Princeton, at Caltech."
• Vinod Khosla, Venture Capitalist: "When I finished IIT Delhi and went to CMU for my master's, I thought I was cruising all the way through Carnegie Mellon because it was so easy, relative to the education I had gotten at IIT Delhi."

List of fictional IITians

• Asok, character in the Dilbert comic strip
• Hari, Alok and Ryan fictional charaters in Chetan Bhagat's Book on Life of three simple students in IITs, "Five Point Someone ? What not to do at IIT !"
• Hemant Rai, the groom in "Monsoon Wedding"

Books on IIT-ians

The IITians: The Story of a Remarkable Indian Institution and How its Alumni Are Reshaping the World

IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) is India's biggest and the most powerful brand, and arguably the toughest and the most influential engineering school in the world.

Since the first IIT was set up in the 1950s, thousands of initiates have walked out of the campus gates of IIT Kharagpur, Mumbai, Chennai and elsewhere to become leaders in their chosen fields. In India, they head many of the biggest and most admired professionally managed companies. Abroad, they lead giant corporations, and their feats figure in the folklore of Silicon Valley. The power that the alumni of this one bunch of undergraduate schools wields in business, academicia and research is comparable to that of Cambridge and Oxford in the heyday of the British Empire.

Sandipan Deb, himself an IITian, delves into his own experience and those of scores of alumni to try and explain what makes IITians such outstanding achievers. In part, it may be that they cannot be anything else: only one in every hundred applicants gets admitted. Harvard, in comparison, takes one in eight. The unique village-like campuses peopled only by the super-bright and the intensely competitive hone the IITians' skills further. No wonder then that when they leave the campus, IITians look upon themselves as special people, capable of competing in their field with the best in the world. And, as their record shows, succeeding.

IIT: India's Intellectual Treasures - Passage Through the Indian Institutes of Technology by Ranjan Pant & Suvarna Rajgurua.

A behind-the-scenes look into India's prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), which are India's intellectual gift to the world. The book and the companion documentary highlight the history and evolution of the IITs and the extraordinary contributions of its graduates around the world.

External links

• Indian Institute of Technology (Brand IIT) (http://www.iit.org)
• IIT Delhi (http://www.iitd.ac.in)
• IIT Madras, Chennai (http://www.iitm.ac.in)
• IIT Kanpur (http://www.iitk.ac.in)
• IIT Bombay (http://www.iitb.ac.in)
• IIT Kharagpur (http://www.iitkgp.ernet.in)
• IIT Guwahati (http://www.iitg.ac.in)
• IIT Roorkee (http://www.iitr.ac.in)