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So many opinions and perspectives.

Here I see three main differences:

1. How to be a good student
2. Need for a good teacher
3. Getting a correct perspective

An objective of a good student can be well achieved by reading the correct text books. Though a book cannot replace a good teacher, but in the absence of the latter serves as a very good teacher. Good books also many a times motivate students to think. With internet, awareness is good and one can get pointers to good text books easily. (This according to me can solve 60-70% of the main problem). Availability of beautifully written text books and open source softwares can help student grasp the basics very well.


10 minutes of right guidance/discussion can solve 24 hours of self study. But that may not be possible all the times. So a good teacher is always good to have. But not having one does not mean, that situation is lost (its bad though).

Then come the questions of choices. I do agree that many streams of core engineering many a times do not provide the right career options. Hence the student is forced to get on to other avenues. Non CS/EE students shift to S/W development. (Even CS/EE do get into it, but they still have choices). Such students get into S/W and excel in the same because of their logical ability rather than anything else. The core degree just becomes a mere ticket.

Non CS/EE students although may have options in their core discipline, but somehow the lure of an nice office/world travel etc is too much for any one to be lured into it. Please pardon me for saying this, there may be genuinely interested people also in the same group.

This skew in IT jobs would be a self correcting one and in future will correct itself when demands change. But the time for this correction may be too late in the game to fix our career timelines.


Thinking as a habit has already been discussed. Our system as a whole does not inculcate thinking. We at least as a parent can embed this in our progeny.


A good recruiter does not look for what the student "knows" but given a situation how he/she is able to apply himself/herself. But this also assumes that the student is aware of some fundamentals which he is taught.

Guesses don't work. Negative marking takes care of that. I mean, if you're relying heavily on guessing, +3/-1 ensures that even if you get one out of four correct, you'll get the other incorrect, thus ensuring 0 marks.

Besides, there is almost no chance of a guess working in the types of questions where multiple options can be the answers, and they're highly scoring for those who get them right (+4, compared to +3 for single answer types).

As far as the elimination part is concerned, the options are very cleverly chosen, to match answers obtained by those with weak concepts. In fact, now that you mention these other strategies, this is actually a pro of objective exams. There are plenty of tricks you can use to get correct answer without knowing the underlying concepts, but these require very sound logical and reasoning ability, and I guess you'll agree, those who can use such tricks surely deserve a seat in the best colleges, even if they didn't prepare as well as others.

I'll give you an example - Inorganic chemistry, as you may recall, is all about mugging up everything - salts, their reactions, tests etc. Parts of it, I totally skipped. In my JEE exam, we got a paragraph on salt analysis, something I didn't remember at all.

The thing with paragraphs is that all three questions are related, based on the same experiment or mechanical situation. So, I, without reading the paragraph, figured out the only possible combination that could fit the situation (Like if the salt is a silver salt, the precipitate can only be silver chloride), and I got the entire paragraph correct. 12 marks! :D

Surely you'd agree that giving chance to people with such abilities is a strength of the objective pattern.

What he meant was that competition for Masters in IITs is nowhere as fierce as Bachelors, and hence people from tier-3 colleges can get into IITs at Masters lever, but they are nowhere as good as B.Tech. IITians, who beat 5 lac students to get into IITs.

Thanks. :) I didn't get a good enough rank to get CSE/EE at IITs, which were my preferred branches, but I did well in AIEEE and BITSAT, so I'm going for CSE at IIIT-Hyderabad, which, due to its emphasis on research at early stages, is said to be one of the best institutions for CSE.

Not really the same as subjective is it where there is no guesing at all possible. One has to show how the answer was arrived. Anyways, negative marking is good but not necessarily foolproof. If I can eliminate 2 answers out of 4, I can go for a 50% probability to 'guess' the right answer. So, my point still holds good. The 'subjective' + 'objective' format is way superior to the 'only objective' format. Note, I am not advocating 'subjective' format only.

Hey, I didn't say objective was easy. However, one can get more help by coaching which focuses on such techniques and providing a lot of practise for the same, rather than subjective probem solving which given the scope of syllabus and breadth, is somewhat, less coaching affected. I do not really believe that those who can use 'tricks' deserve to be in the top colleges. Those who understand concepts clearly, and can solve problems in real life deserve to get into the top colleages.
Please note that in real life, the engineer is not going to be given 4 answers by almighty where elimination will help find the solution or make the right design or architecture. So, while such tricks and ability to solve objective questions fast is a one capability, I prefer this be only part of the exam - subjective solution making must be more important than this 'trickery'.


Yes, but it isn't the predominant criteria to reward when the best of the best are to be chosen. It can be one criteria, and kudos to you for using your grey cells :-) I would still go for 2/3rd subjective solutions as I explained above. Let me tell you that it was much more difficult for someone to get in through the old format regardless of any 'trickery' due to the mixed format. So one had to atleast do a bit of both...

Congrats. I didn't join IIT either since my subject of choice was CS or ECE. So, i went after my heart and no regrets :-)

Good oneclap:.

Oh OK, I did not get it clearly through the earlier statement.

Spike

Yes. A better paying job. Plus I wanted a job in Bombay which I was getting here. Plus the growth in finance in much faster. You too are a professor?

Weren't you aware of these factors before joining an IIT course? Wouldn't a good commerce degree from a good college in Bombay a better option for you? I may sound harsh but IMO you took away the seat from a guy who probably would have had more interest in an engineering than you. But then again, it is not just you. The system is like that. A finance company preferring an Engineer to a BCom guy for example is to be equally blamed.

I believe this all ties down to our mindset that the brightest students go for Science, the next tier goes to Commerce and the bottom tier Arts. So a bright student who is genuinely interested in Arts (and probably no love for science) falls to peer or family pressure and ends up doing engineering/MBBS. The result a bad engineer or even worse, a bad doctor.

Nope, I am a regular IT guy who is here due to my genuine interest :D

Guys I keep on hearing this ego boosting crap of B.Tech students but it just takes years of rescission to bring them to ground. It happened in 2001 I got 4 IIT-K B.Tech electrical in my team and again in 2009 and belive me or not it is not that those who do M.Tech are waste or something just that they never had right coaching to clear J.E.E and ended up in state level college and then many of them clear gate to get an M.Tech.

In my personal experience good guys from non-IIT colleges are as good as the guys with big hallo around the head.

sgiitk : Sir you remind me of my father ( retired now) who used to turn away brilliant students aspiring to do PhD.

I really respect this. This means you are not depending on some outside factor like college pedigree to support your career. You have confidence in your own ability, and are willing to follow your heart. I had a couple classmates, whom I thought were brilliant, accepted just about any branch in order to get into KREC (Now NIT-Suratkal). I thought it was dumb, still do.

Oh, let's not beat up on him. He just did what most people do in our country.

Nobody is denying that. We are just saying that good guys (from IIT or otherwise) don't bother doing M.Tech and PhD from IIT. Only pedigree seekers tend to do that. At least this is the case in IT. Of course, there are always exceptions. This topic has been addressed before here: http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifti...ml#post2033105

This is true for MTech for not for Phd. In India finding Phd candidate itself is difficult.
Only guys who want to be promoted as professors in academics look for a Phd today as a necessary requirement.
I rarely come across guys who just want to do a Phd for fun or those who want to learn the art of research formally.

Phd in western countries are good even by the "sense" of institution. (At least many institutues at that, as students are motivated to think).
Guide is important, but the overall institution and its environment may bootstrap the student to an upward spiral.


In India, its purely on the guide. If his/her research group is good, you can complete a Phd very soon.
The institute itself may not provide enough motivation to the student. That is where the difference is.

We are not really in disagreement. See here: https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shift...ml#post2279847

Very true. I never mentioned about the quality of Phd. It can be good or bad anywhere.
Its just that that the odds of being in an ambiance that motivates to think is higher in a western university.

But having said there are also places which award degrees for the kind of topics that you mentioned in another thread.

Today the relevance of going for a Phd is at least on the rise, as there are industrial R&D firms and other houses who would accept a doctrate on his/her face value and compensate him/her accordingly.
Prior this was not the case. People used to go for ME/MS/Phd because they did not get a job or they had plans of IES/IAS. At least its not the only reason now.

Pedigree seekers are still around, but I think its fine as long as they do justice to what they study.
A person at some point in time should experience an institution (may not be educational alone) where he feels he is empowered to think.

Hey, Since I see a lot of recruitment and industry people here, this is a life changing choice I have made and I want to be sure before I take a plunge.

I have done a Diploma In Automobile Engineering, Finished with a BE with HONS in Automotive Engineering too from Coventry University and got a 2:1, Now I am planning to take up an MBA in Engineering Management from Coventry University as Coventry is good for these kind of courses and secondly not many Universities in UK have this course.

Did I make the right choice ? My University starts from October. What is the pay packet I am looking at ? Will the Automotive Industry get me good jobs ? any further pointers.

Let me be clear that I do not hate Civil engineering. Infact I like it a lot. But the fact is - Engineering jobs are not as high paying as Finance jobs (except Computer Science/Electrical engineering).

What are the chances that a Big Investment Bank was going to even interview a commerce graduate without any kind of past work experience. The job I am doing does not require in-depth financial knowledge. Yes, ideally I should have taken commerce if I wanted to work in finance but here is the catch - No one knows before hand where he wants to work or not. IIT is just a launchpad to getting good jobs or further studies. Probably it is wrong as very less people go into research which is what IIT is supposed to be. But this is how the things are. With new and new IIT's opening up the standard of IIT is going down.

Degree (B.Tech / B.Com or even MBBS) does not mater for such jobs. Only thing that matters is, how tough it is to get a place in that degree + institution.

E.g. it does not matter that you are doing B.Tech Comp. Sci. from IIT Mandi (Himanchl Pradesh.). All that matters is, what was your AIR in JEE.

Since getting an AIR of 10, 100, or 500 is extremely tough, such students would be either very bright or extremely hard-working. And if they keep their CGPA consistently good, these are usually good candidates.

Similarly B.Com or BA History (Hons) is very tough to get into some collages. Companies DO hire from such places with packages similar to IITs.

Look at this short list, seems quite a few BA and B.Com students made it to Google interviews.

St Xavier's College - Placement Cell: GOOGLE FINAL LIST

And quite a few got the job (some even declined) :
St Xavier's College - Placement Cell: GOOGLE STATUS

Hey Saanil

don't fall into the trap of trying to explain yourself - you don't have to and you can't.

IIT is not supposed to produce people for research - no matter what people think. And other universities are not supposed to produce junk - though many do seem they are entitled to.


You did what you thought was right for you, and why can't engineers go into finance? After all you probably remember more maths now than most of the commerce graduates would have ever cared to learn in the first place (that is precisely why you get paid better).

You appeared in the exam, were selected, studied for 4 years and passed and then decided (for whatever reasons) that engineering was not for you - you don't have to explain your decision to every tom, dick and harry in the world and you shouldn't.

And those who think you took away somebody else's seat should first ask the other universities why are their educational standards so damn poor.

EDIT: " ideally I should have taken commerce" Well ideally, at the age of 16-17 you could have made a choice - going out too much, enjoying your time, or slogging to make sure you get some of the best education in the world. If ANY commerce college in India could hold a candle to an IIT some could have claimed you made the wrong choice. The fact is, in UG education none come close. Very few outside IITs know that every semester a good fraction of IITians actually fail one course or the other, with some failing more than one - purely for academic reasons. Is it your fault then that the guys who did go to other colleges had poor standards?