Not cracking the IIT

It is the IIT results season. The usual newspaper stories - who topped, which institute churned out most toppers and of course, the advertisements for the coaching institutes. A neighbourhood girl of mine had not cracked it and it brought me memories of my brother.

I am not from the technical line - am in administration and services with a commerce background. But I can share the story of my brother who tried, did not get (more importantly, did not fret) and then cracked IIT later.

My brother studied for the IIT in the late 90s - the usual preparations, breaking his head, late nights, multiple books etc. and when the results came, well, he wasn’t above the cut off.

He did feel bad about it - he had close to a year for that and spent all his time studying. Well, there is life beyond any one specific way to success. If success is to be measured only in terms of qualifying for IIT, then a few hundreds are the successful and intelligent ones, whereas millions are not! Is it so? Obviously not.

My brother did not fret, did his engineering from a college in Madras and went on to work in a top PSU. (Most importantly, he did not waste another year waiting to crack it again, which I find ridiculous unless you have the financial support and the heart to take another failure to do it)

And his chance to crack the IIT again came. It is like having a goal and meticulously working towards it. He worked like a cold predator, cracked the IIT entrances for the Masters for very elite branch - growing on the strength of a job as well as abandoning the fear of failure and got into that niche course whose batches every year only a very few Indians are part of! Needless to say, he aced the course. This did give him satisfaction that he could crack it, an even tougher entrance than the other.

However, life would have gone on even if he did not get into it. It was part of some self actualisation for him perhaps, and hence it was a self measuring goal.

There is life beyond the IITs. It is not the only measure of intelligence. In fact there is a school of thought that the Government does not have any business running elitist schools of technology and management. This is debatable and the very fact that it is, shows some merit in the argument.

We have lakhs of engineers who come out of engineering colleges and work with different companies, sometimes even creating start ups entities of their own. Just look up the internet for success stories. In fact there are such stories every other nook and corner of big cities.

In a suburb called Mylapore in Madras, almost every other family has an engineer working abroad. A handful are from the IITs; the bulk from various engineering colleges. Many such places abound all over India.

What does the IIT give you? A pedigree? Can’t you create one for yourself? I think you can! There is no badge for you to be advertised. I have nothing against the assembly line churning of IIT success stories by some institutes, but for those who did not get it, use the study as a stepping stone for something different. Remember, in every stage in life, before you pursue something, remind yourself and be fully aware of what is your end game - What is a BTech in IIT going to give me that a BE in some college cannot? Yes, there will indeed be something of value, which is why we still have the clamour for the IITs. But is it worth it? Is it going to make such a difference? In today’s day and age, with multitude of options and plethora of avenues, I find this argument a non-starter.

I am sure it will get you somewhere. In fact, I believe not getting into IIT could even be to make you do something different.

Go, have a crack at that!