Are there Alternatives to IITs

In the series of blogs about various questions that I get asked in this admission season, the question that I am discussing today is:

I have a good JEE advanced rank, and can get a good combination of program/institute. But I also have admission offer from another top place, both within India and abroad. What should I prefer.

One issue is that of foreign universities, both US/Canadian universities, as well as places in Singapore, HongKong, etc. The other issue is that of choice within India, IISc, IISERs, CMI, IIITs (particularly Hyderabad and Delhi), Ashoka University, etc.

First of all, I am extremely pleased to see that a couple of students from within the top 1000 have declared that they are not going to join IITs. Here is the list I know so far (many thanks to contributors):

The JEE rank 4 joined Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. (Based on comments on this blog.)

The JEE rank 5 wants to study Mathematics. And he is planning to join Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

The JEE Rank 10 wants to study a combination of Computer Science and Physics. And he is planning to join University of Pennsylvania.

The JEE Rank 38 wants to study Physics and Maths from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  (Based on his profile on quora.)

The JEE Rank 446 wants to study a combination of Maths and Computing. And he is planning to join Chennai Mathematical Institute.

The JEE rank 498 joined Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. (Based on comments on this blog.)

The JEE rank 811 joined Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. (Based on comments on this blog.)

(If you come across any story of anyone in top 1000 not joining IIT system, do let me know, through comment, or email.)

I am also aware that every year some students who couldn't get admission to old 5 IITs in Computer Science have been joining IIIT Hyderabad and IIIT Delhi instead of going for newer IITs. Of course, many prefer IISc Bangalore and a few even IISERs for science programs over the science programs in IITs. At below 3000 ranks, students start considering other places which will give them a discipline of their choice, including BITS, NITs, IIITs. I think it is important for the parents to know that IITs are not the only places worth studying in, and any time, someone in the top 1000 ranks decide to study outside IIT system, it strengthens that message. Eventually, if we start taking alternatives seriously, the stress of JEE will come down and it will be a great thing for the society.

I digress. Let us come back to the issue of foreign universities. There are multiple parameters that we need to consider. On the positive side, any of the top 50 (or even more) US universities would have a better teaching-learning experience than any IIT. You can choose your courses. You can choose your major/minor. You can do multiple subjects. The infrastructure will be better. The faculty interest in teaching is likely to be higher. The quality of Teaching Assistants will be better, and so on. On the negative side are a couple of issues. The primary one is cost. It is just too expensive and unaffordable for most, and I am not in favor of taking a large loan for higher education which will force you to take up immediate job and that too abroad to repay that loan. The second reason is cultural. Most 17 years old in India have had no freedom at home. They have had very little exposure to different cultures even within India. And there is doubt if such persons would adjust quickly enough in a foreign land. But, of course, if you have family and friends near the place you are considering, who can help you settle in the beginning, this reason will not be very important. A reason related to costs and RoI is that while the quality of education in IITs may not be as good as many of the foreign universities, the membership of Alumni Association is hugely valuable.

So my own summary is that if you can easily afford (no loans), and you have admission to a good university, and you are not considering a job in India immediately after your education, and you think you will be able to handle vast cultural differences, then go for it. If the answer to any of the conditions is in negative, take admission in an IIT.

Comparison of IITs with other institutes within India is really about the specific interests that you have which may be satisfied more by a non-IIT institute than an IIT. If you want to study a combination of Maths and Computing, for example, most IITs would offer this through their Mathematics department and even CS courses will be taught by Maths faculty (but do check each program, there is a lot of variation), and CMI does a fantastic job of offering such a program. At CMI, Maths faculty teach Maths courses, and CS faculty teach CS courses. A few alums of CMI that I know have been extremely happy with their experiences. In case of science programs, IITs force you to choose the program at the time of admission and change of program is very difficult, while IISc and IISERs give you a broad based education and offer flexibility. Programs like Information Technology and Social Science (and also, Computer Science and Design) in IIIT-Delhi offer you a unique combination not available anywhere else in the country. So, if you are one of those few students who know what they want to study, then you must select the best place to study that discipline (or combination) without worrying about the IIT tag. Membership of Alumni Association is valuable but not to the extent that you kill your passion for it.

Added on 13th June, 2017:
Thanks to Prof. Amit Sheth who reminded me of this talk by Malcolm Gladwell who explains "Elite Institution Cognitive Disorder" which means that we are so enchanted by association with Elite Institutions that we forget our self interest. The toppers of average institutes perform better than average students of elite institutions is the main argument. Here is the youtube link for the video.

He also has pointed out this excellent article by Hunter Rawlings in Washington Post. In one line, "The value of a degree depends more on the student’s input than on the college’s curriculum." This also points to hard working students getting more out of education at an average place than students not working hard at a top institution

What these two excellent articles are intending to say in the context of this blog article is that there indeed are lots of alternatives to IITs. You only need to make sure that you work hard.
 

Choosing College or Discipline

A very common question that I get asked is this: I can get admission to Discipline 'A' in College 'X', and Discipline 'B' in College 'Y'. I think that in general, graduates of Discipline 'A' do better in life, but College 'Y' is a higher quality institution in my opinion. What should I choose.

My answer to the question is no different from lots of others who have answered this question on quora or other social media platforms. That is, if you have passion for a discipline, study that discipline. If you are not interested in any particular discipline, choose what you consider to be a better college. One would hope that this is by now a settled matter. After all, you know whether you have a passion for a discipline or not. Most of our school going children do not have enough exposure to develop a passion, and therefore, it really means that you should just go to a college which you yourself feel is better.

But this simple answer is never the end of counseling session.

But what if he starts liking the discipline 'A' and feels sad that he is not studying that. Well, if he can start liking discipline 'A' without ever studying it formally, he can also start hating the discipline 'A' when he actually studies that. If you had chosen 'A' in 'X', what if he started liking College 'Y' and feels sad that he is not studying in that. There is no end to "what if."

What if, he does not know that he has passion for discipline 'A' but he has that. Hmm! One can have secret passions, so secret that they themselves don't know that they have them. (It is like in Hindi movies, the hero keeps thinking that he is "only friend" with heroine till there is a possibility of separation, marriage with someone else, etc., and then suddenly realizes that he did have this secret love for the lady.) Well, I can only advice based on facts on the table, and not based on secrets that may only come out after the admission.

What if colleges 'X' and 'Y' are really not that different, almost same. Well, then choose the discipline which is, in your opinion, somehow superior. But, they are not exactly the same, what if they are different by a small amount. Well, maybe you should visit both colleges and that would clarify things to you. Oh! But travel is so difficult that we prefer to remain confused.

And you can call their bluff very easily. The choice they are seeking is really not between a discipline and an institute, which as many have stated would be trivial to resolve. I always ask these people, what about Discipline 'C' in College 'Z' where it would be undeniable that College 'Z' has far better perception of quality than Colleges 'X' and 'Y' and every single time, the parents would reject that. They really have a secret optimization function which is based on values of both variables.

The reason for all this confusion is that we have never been taught to articulate a problem definition properly. A in X or B in Y, which is better, is an extremely poorly defined problem. It does not state, for example, what does the person mean by "better." (And that is why, in our open house at IIIT-Delhi, our Director, Prof. Pankaj Jalote always asks potential students and parents to think about why they want to go for college education.) Without some sort of understanding of "better" the discussion is completely meaningless. In other words, one can give proper advice only if that secret optimization function is made known to the advisor.

The reason why we don't discuss the meaning of the word "better" is very simple. There is often a divergence of opinion (on why college) between the student and parents, and they don't wish to argue with each other in front of a third party like me. Often, the parents have a simple definition of "better" which is "more money" but they realize that perhaps it is not politically correct to say that. They will keep sprinkling words like "quality," "personality development," and "happiness." It would be so much better if they could first have a discussion within home and figure out what they want out of college education. If money is the only thing that they want, so be it. (I would be the wrong person to advise in that case, but we are a country of astrologers. So should have no difficulty in finding thousands of advisers.)

There really can be several reasons to study in a particular college. Expectation of a good job is a good reason, but frankly that gets satisfied by a large number of programs in large number of colleges/universities. Beyond a good job, one could look for more money, or to satisfy one's interest in learning, or could consider personal growth and many other things.

So the confusion is at two different levels - what should be the optimization function, and second, given an optimization function, what combination is the best. Both are difficult problems, but without an attempt at solving the first problem, the second problem is unsolvable. So please spend some time thinking of the first problem, and your confusion will reduce and you will be able to take a better decision.

What would I do if I had JEE Rank 1?

Yesterday, we had our first Open House at IIIT-Delhi. And these are always fun events. Nice to meet potential students, feels good when their anxieties give way to a smile. Increasingly one finds that they are quite aware of their options, many of them have done their homework and are asking relevant questions.

There was an important difference between last year and this year. Both years I fielded questions for about 90 minutes. Last year, it was exclusively parents asking questions. This year, for the first 80 minutes, I answered only potential students. I announced in the beginning that we would prefer only such students in IIIT-Delhi who can ask questions in the class. So if they come from families where parents don't allow any questions to be asked, they might as well seek other opportunities. Further, I will take questions from parents only if there is no student asking a question. I know some of the parents must have been mighty upset and they may force their wards to not seek admission to a college which prefers students over parents, but we can only hope that there aren't many of them.

But the real fun starts after the formal part is over and some parents want to talk face to face. And most of them are never happy with my answers, and have a way to extract irrelevant information from me. One of those silly questions is, "treat my son as yours and advise him as you would advise your son." Well, it so happened that my daughter was also in 12th class and was looking for college admissions. And whatever advice I have been giving her, she has chosen to declare publicly that I am quite abnormal since I have been telling her right from her 1st grade that marks, schools, college degrees are not what would define her, but her values and compassion towards fellow beings. Can I give the same advice to your son? Choose whatever college and program and I would love you just the same. And the onus is on you to do the homework and ask questions, and I will find the right person to answer those questions.

No. That is not what they came to hear. So the question changes slightly. Assume you were in 12th class and have all the options available to you. (The boy apparently is expecting a very good rank in JEE Advanced.) What would you study. This is again a silly question because my interests could be vastly different from your interests. My optimization function in life could be vastly different from your optimization function in life. So how does it matter, what would I study. But the lady insisted.

I responded that I would choose Ashoka University. Would you prefer Ashoka over IITs. Of course, I will. And they felt that I was joking and not willing to help them and all that. But I was dead serious. You see, my father had studied three subjects at the Master's level - Mathematics, Political Science and History, and we had lots of books in all these subjects at home. I would read many of them and developed a love for these three subjects. I don't know how and why, but somewhere in school, I started liking Economics, even though I didn't study it formally. When I was seeking admission in 11th class, the question of careers came up. I was told that there are only three careers that can lift our family out of relative deprivation. They were engineering, medicine and chartered accountancy. Besides, only those kids took social science subjects in high school who didn't do well in 10th class. Did I want to study with such peers.

My father wanted me to become a doctor, but I flatly refused. I couldn't draw free hand and biology meant that every week we would be seeing something in the microscope and drawing that. (Yes, schools had labs then which were taken seriously.) And I wasn't excited by the prospect of dissecting a frog. Admission to Delhi College of Engineering was certain given my school performance till then. And I was told, once admitted, almost everyone got a degree in due course, followed by a job. But becoming CA involved lots of tests over the next few years and every exam had a very small passing percentage. So went with the safe choice of career. Also prepared for JEE, just in case lady luck smiled on me (which she did). So that is how I chose my career. But today, things are different. India of 80s and India of 2017 offer vastly different choices, and I am convinced that studying liberal arts would lead to a happy career as well. And hence I would follow my passion and choose Ashoka.

This didn't impress the lady. So she changed the question again. Assume you are JEE ranked 1 and you are forced to consider only programs in IITs. No Ashoka, No IIIT-Delhi. What would you choose? How would my choice help your son take a decision, but anyway, I would choose BS (Economics) at IIT Kanpur. And the reason is clear. I am interested in Economics among all the disciplines offered by IITs, and whatever little I know about Economics programs at different IITs, I think Kanpur's program is the best. But the lady is just feeling more frustrated. This is not the reply she was looking for. She, of course, had a very clear idea of what program she wanted to force her son into, and was hoping that I would say the same thing. But it wasn't happening.

So the question changed again. Assuming that I have no particular interest in any discipline but I know a lot about curriculum, faculty, pedagogy, life at different IITs (notice how people talking to me have learnt to avoid mentioning "placement" in their questions), and I am still JEE number 1, what will I choose.

I promptly responded, "IIT Gandhinagar." And she was completely flabbergasted. Why IITGN? Well, I have been to that campus about 50 times in the last 8 years and I see so many happy faces, so much innovation, so much care and concern, good faculty, good infrastructure, and so on. But are they better than all other IITs, I am asked.

How did you choose your husband? Did you collect CVs of every single male, shortlisted some (based on age/caste/religion/language, etc.) and then employed some complex algorithm over all those remaining CVs to judge who would make you the richest (and perhaps even a bit happy) over the next 50 years. I certainly didn't select my wife like that. Sometimes you just know that this is right for you. All that can be seen is positive. All that can be felt is positive, and I don't have a smart algorithm to predict the future.

But I must give full marks to the lady for her persistence. So, let us change the question again. You are JEE Rank 1. You have no particular preference of discipline. You haven't been to any IIT and you don't know enough about either the disciplines or the Institutes. How would you decide.

Well, 35 years ago, I was indeed in such a situation. Not #1, but close enough that I could get admission to any program in any IIT. And I didn't know much about any discipline, and hadn't visited any IIT. What did I do. I actually visited IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi, and talked to a few students of IIT Kanpur. And traveling in those days in the peak summer rush was very painful. So may be you and your son should travel to a few IITs in which you may have an interest and then decide.

No, no, no. Let us assume that because of some constraints, it is not possible to travel.

Well, basically, you are saying that the only information that I have is the counseling brochure (now online) from IITs, which gives last year's closing ranks. If this is the only information I have then I will use only this information and just order all my choices in the same order as last year's closing ranks, modulate that list with my geographical preference (want to be away from home). In short, I will select CSE program of IIT Bombay.

This was music to her ears, and she felt happy. Now, she could tell her son to look at last year's closing ranks and fill up choices based on that, since Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi would have done the same thing.