[AZT]

WhiteHat jr had this mythical kid called Wolf Gupta who they used to run ads about. Apparently Wolf (aged between 9 - 13) was placed in Google at a package of between 2 - 150 cr . The company got roasted so bad for this.

[ajayc123]

Like in all purchase decisions due diligence and grapevine based information needs to be factored in to arrive at the right choice, and not be blinded by the fast tongued sales experience.

I have experienced the Byju's sales experience where the sales staff (MBA fresh graduate) had visited our place and spent a couple of hours to interact with us to make a sale of a tablet based program. We had made the purchase but after consuming the content, the child was not satisfied, and we managed to return the product within the return window. Came to know that the sales guy had left Byju's within a few months.

Such instances also help us to really help us reflect and help refine our approach to buying decisions. Under the subtle unsaid pressure of the spouse, and the general feel good created by the hot marketing talk, there is a temptation to get swayed by the 'Why not?' philosophy, often leads to a purchase decision, but I still think that 'Why?' clubbed with a rigorous slow review leads to a better purchase decision.

For example, there are pockets of excellence even within these institutes, but the mission of the new age startups to scale rapidly is what takes the toll.

The premier batches in some of these institutes are taught by the founders some of who are themselves IIT graduates with decades of teaching experience or hire engineering graduates (including from IITs and RECs), but these are the ones who have grown organically over decades and not scaling like the new age starups who simply focus on unethical marketing and acquisitions.

We are in the age of white lies (did this inspire Wolf Gupta to choose the name of his company) where even respected companies like Toyota are able to claim a 25 km pure EV range of their strong Hybid subtly via media without batting an eyelid. I am still waiting for expert comments on the 25 km thing in another thread, but hopes are not bright.

[Samurai]

Even Wolf Gupta has made it to IIT Bombay...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wolf-gup...alSubdomain=in

I wonder who created the profile, is it Byju's or someone is poking fun at them.

[jkrishnakj]

When I was doing my class 12, it used to be ‘Brilliant tutorials’ advertisement and classes that you see all over madras and other cities in TN. One of my classmates enrolled for distance education those days and all he had was a huge box of ‘Brilliant’ books that he couldn’t make head or tail of.

My son finished class 12 and has just joined an engineering course. Thankfully, as parents we never asked him or pushed him for JEE Mains and neither did he ask us for additional classes. It worked for him.

My nephew visited home some days back and his mom has already pushed him to Allen, and he’s only in class 8 now. My son was telling him not to waste time on such classes and I could see the mother of the class 8 giving a look to my son.

Aside, clearly, the students who get the ranks are offered ‘Big’ money from the institutes who have a huge marketing budget.

It’s bad! It’s a menace and it’s a pressure effect that snow balls across various homes/parents/children.

Aside2 - for all the hype that we hear for the IIT’s or the NIT’s, please take one look at some you tube videos of the hostels. Most parents will cringe.

[binand]

Originally Posted by jkrishnakj

When I was doing my class 12, it used to be ‘Brilliant tutorials’ advertisement and classes that you see all over madras and other cities in TN. One of my classmates enrolled for distance education those days and all he had was a huge box of ‘Brilliant’ books that he couldn’t make head or tail of.

I'm not sure what your friend expected from a correspondence course (as distance education was known in those days). I also subscribed to Brilliant's course and was pretty much in the same boat as your friend. But they also organised quarterly contact programmes. For me it used to happen at Kochi (~200 km from my hometown) and those trips there were the high points of my otherwise mundane existence of the time. And after the first one something clicked, eventually leading to decent performances at the PETs and a career that has proven to be rewarding 30 years on.

[androdev]

Originally Posted by jkrishnakj

Aside2 - for all the hype that we hear for the IIT’s or the NIT’s, please take one look at some you tube videos of the hostels. Most parents will cringe.

Ha ha, I would argue that it's the only good part of IIT/NIT. Builds character :-) Academic blocks can safely be removed from these institutions. Most institutions benefit more from their rigorous selection process and co-living of bright ambitious people than the so-called faculty and academic programs. Remove the rigorous selection process and co-living - these institutions will be as mediocre as any other.

[Samurai]

The biggest victims of these scams are average students. May be Kota kind of tuition factories might push many average teens to score high, since they literally have to live and breath coaching in those towns.

However, I am not sure if OTA training via android tab can push an average student similarly. Yet, the parents end up paying very high to achieve very little.

I was an average student all my academic life. I never scored above 65%, just to make it clear. I know these days 80% is considered average. I never liked memorizing facts, which means I had no hopes of scoring high in Indian school system. I would only learn by understanding conceptually. While this played havoc with my academic scores, it did help me a lot once I started working.

My parents were not graduates, so they didn't know anything about IITs, they had no FOMO. The only tuition I attended were regular supplementary tuition that most kids took those days. Even my engineering college was very ordinary, the teaching was very bookish and aimed at memorizing facts. However, I developed the habit of picking my own books and ignoring syllabus recommended books. So I barely squeezed out of engineering while maintaining 61% average.

Despite all this averageness, within 3 years of graduating, I was working along with many IITians in one of the most premium tech company in US, the one that invented Unix, C, C++, etc. A guy with IIT B.Tech + US MS + Phd worked next to me, doing very similar work. I had a 3rd tier BE and nothing more. That colleague openly lamented why he sacrificed 15 years of his teen and early youth to reach the same position as someone average, who got there while fully enjoying his teen and early youth years. It is not a big mystery; work experience is a great equalizer. If you enjoy the work, you can learn quickly and perform as well as most IITians. I have worked with plenty of smart people in IT with excellent college pedigree. But the difference in our performance/ability was never so great as to justify sacrificing entire teen years at the altar of IIT-JEE. After the first couple years, I never really struggled to get jobs. In IT, average students can have a good career.

Knowing this, I never pushed my son towards academic rat race. He even went away from STEM, taking up B.Com (analytics). However, while studying programming and data science as part of his course, he caught the programming bug and won a few coding competitions. So he refused to attend any of the campus placement interviews focused towards taxation and accounting. After B.Com, he has joined MCA. And he is happy he discovered a career he truly enjoys.

[PreludeSH]

With coaching kind of becoming mandatory, what does that say about our education system and the expertise it has ?
Its another point that even IIT/IISc don't figure in world top 200 ranking

I used to be so annoyed with my M.S assignments initially, they forced me to think a lot

[sdp1975]

Given the lack of well paying jobs and rampant unemployment in our country, it's hardly surprising that parents and students queue up for these coaching institutes. I keep reading of a large number of IT jobs, but the fact is that IT employs less than 1% of the labour force in India. I've had relatives from middle class families who passed out of private Engineering colleges and remain unemployed. Out of 15 lacs engineering graduates passing out every year, 2.5 lacs find jobs, and these are mostly in IT. Core jobs have diminished over time. The problem isn't as much with the education system as with the lack of jobs and the large population of the country. There are graduates employed as security guards in my apartment complex.

The world over, merit is determined by performance in examination systems, which in turn determine admission to the top instututes. It could be the IITs, NITs, IIMs, AIIMS, National Law schools, or for that matter MIT, Standford, INSEAD and so on. Studying in a reputed institute reasonably guarantees a decent job from a campus placement. Outside it's a struggle. I've seen job posting postings from Apple and Adobe on linkedin asking for degrees from "reputed institutes". Other factors ( like salary experience etc) being equal, someone from a premier instutute will get a preference in these jobs. Or have an edge in getting admission to a foreign university. The craze for Engineering and IITs arise because the salaries are good, especially in technology. I frankly find Engineering or programming to be quite mundane and I'm in it just for the money.

As a parent, I'd certainly like to see my kids get admission to a premier institute in whatever discipline they choose to study in,although I don't believe in pushing them hard and see them struggle.

[binand]

Originally Posted by PreludeSH

Its another point that even IIT/IISc don't figure in world top 200 ranking

Rankings are usually along three axes: publications and citations, faculty/student ratio and domestic/international ratio (of students and faculty).

Indian universities can't match the last two what with our domestic intake needs and available funding.

As for the first, I have this article bookmarked:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...sity-rankings/

(There is also reputation among employers, but I think Indian universities score high in this aspect).

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by binand

As for the first, I have this article bookmarked:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...sity-rankings/

Same can be said of student academic scores and ranking in India. Those indicate the ability of the student to score marks by aligning with the scoring methodology and mastering the of art of exam writing, which is mostly about memory recall. It says nothing about the engineering skill of the students. I have been hiring fresh graduates for nearly 20 years, and never saw a correlation between high scores and programming skills. It was a random scatter plot.

[binand]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Same can be said of student academic scores and ranking in India. Those indicate the ability of the student to score marks by aligning with the scoring methodology and mastering the of art of exam writing, which is mostly about memory recall. It says nothing about the engineering skill of the students. I have been hiring fresh graduates for nearly 20 years, and never saw a correlation between high scores and programming skills. It was a random scatter plot.

I imagine everyone hiring in India sees the same. This is probably the reason why there is an IIT/"premium institute" and everyone else dichotomy here.

[ppc_rgs]

I never believed in tuition system. I'm within top 5 in the class and wanted to join B.Tech after school in late 1990's. At that time, there used to be a common entrance exam in Tamil Nadu for engineering admissions, conducted by Anna University. I appeared for that exam and didnt get decent rank to get free seat as they are called then. I studied statistics and doing well in my career.

In malls, Byju's and the likes put up stalls in front of Fun City kind of play areas and start pushing for demo sessions. My answer is always a firm NO. Cuemath had the audacity to offer coding class for grade I students. Really?

[hondatoyotafan]

This acquisition and marketing of rankers is nothing new in the coaching industry. One of my cousin studied in a rural junior college and was bright enough to get a top 100 rank in JEE. Next day all the top coaching institutes famous in coastal andhra were at his doorstep for getting test series and exam series signed up which were nicely back dated. He happily signed and pocketed the cash. He was also made famous atleast for the next 2 years with his photos all over the newspapers.

Originally Posted by Samurai

Despite all this averageness, within 3 years of graduating, I was working along with many IITians in one of the most premium tech company in US, the one that invented Unix, C, C++, etc. A guy with IIT B.Tech + US MS + Phd worked next to me, doing very similar work. I had a 3rd tier BE and nothing more. That colleague openly lamented why he sacrificed 15 years of his teen and early youth to reach the same position as someone average, who got there while fully enjoying his teen and early youth years.

I was an above average student till 10th and so my parents shipped me off to a famous IIT coaching centre in Hyderabad which was like the 2nd option of people who could not get to the no 1. I tried to get into the no1 again but still failed. But my marks in their 'entrance' test qualified me to be interviewed by their promoter/owner. He told me blank on my face that i lost the race already and will never make it to IIT. So after the 1 st year i could not take the stress and i bailed out to normal coaching in the second year. Made it to a tier 2 deemed university and came out with BE. Post that i worked in a big tech company in the US where i had many colleagues from IIT. Although they were a intelligent bunch they were doing the same coding and analytics work. Even now i have reportees from IIT. They even ask me for tips on how to make it.

[PreludeSH]

Originally Posted by hondatoyotafan

I was an above average student till 10th and so my parents shipped me off to a famous IIT coaching centre in Hyderabad which was like the 2nd option of people who could not get to the no 1. I tried to get into the no1 again but still failed. But my marks in their 'entrance' test qualified me to be interviewed by their promoter/owner. He told me blank on my face that i lost the race already and will never make it to IIT. So after the 1 st year i could not take the stress and i bailed out to normal coaching in the second year. Made it to a tier 2 deemed university and came out with BE. Post that i worked in a big tech company in the US where i had many colleagues from IIT. Although they were a intelligent bunch they were doing the same coding and analytics work. Even now i have reportees from IIT. They even ask me for tips on how to make it.

Most times in our life it will be like. "When do you work hard and what you work hard at that awards you". There is no other way the world can measure you. Some people lose interest despite ability and some people excel with hard work.