New Delhi Times - Gaurav Bhatnagar reporting from New Delhi, India

Gaurav, your way of judging the things is really superb. I completely agree with your thoughts.

Yeah, that was my first reaction on seeing the rankings... Third, on what basis? Much as I love the alma mater, I doubt there is even a single meaningful dimension on which any IIT can beat Stanford.

BTW, I came across your site from http://thiyagarajan.blogspot.com/2005/06/you-cant-help-but-take-notice.html

I love the concept behind your TekUnity product - look forward to seeing you guys go places!

Hey there! So finally I saw you for the first time on my blog :).. and congrats on the new office and all that! and of course..the new look of this blog..

seems like you guys are doing really great..esp if one sees the second comment here! When I get back, m gonna get you all to CCD once more and get a good treat :)

Hey gaurav .. back on your blog after a while .. congratulations on your new office and completeing one year in india. Am sure you are destined for great things :).

Yeah the THES ranking was shocking.. IIT are a name brand now , which ofcourse helps our cause, i do not agree however that the curriculum shoudl be less rigorous. I think they have made is considerably easier in the last few years, making many tough CS courses ( like TOC, logic) optional. I think IIT ( esp D) lacks inpirational teachers and mayn students just look at passing the courses with minimum effort. and not to mention, our course coverage has become outdated .. coming here i realized that we never covered the new and upcoming areas like Machine Learning (although i did even do a course on it) or statistics. Our education system definately needs to tighten up and improve course standards .. many of us are still unprepared for the rigours of cutting edge science after a degree from IIT.

Hey gaurav .. back on your blog after a while .. congratulations on your new office and completeing one year in india. Am sure you are destined for great things :).

Yeah the THES ranking was shocking.. IIT are a name brand now , which ofcourse helps our cause, but i do not agree however that the curriculum should be less rigorous. I think they have made is considerably easier in the last few years, making many tough CS courses ( like TOC, logic) optional. I think IIT ( esp D) lacks inpirational teachers and mayn students just look at passing the courses with minimum effort. and not to mention, our course coverage has become outdated .. coming here i realized that we never covered the new and upcoming areas like Machine Learning (although i did even do a course on it) or statistics. Our education system definately needs to tighten up and improve course standards .. many of us are still unprepared for the rigours of cutting edge science after a degree from IIT.

agree with u..but who believes these ratings anyway!:P

ask us, the ones who are IN it:P

agree with u..but who believes these ratings anyway!:P

ask us, the ones who are IN it:P

Hey Gaurav,

Here's wishing New Delhi Times A very Happy Birthday.

Anyplans to celebrate :-).

Thanks for the kind comments guys. I am glad to see consensus on this issue 'coz sometimes I feel that IITs have been overhyped beyond belief. I agree with Bhaskar that the course content needs to be reviewed. I wasn't aware that courses like TOC are optional now (though I was personally terrified of that subject :)

Thanks Kirti :) No real plans to celebrate - way too much work at office!

I think the undergrad education is more or less fine at IIT (at least Delhi) (The grading system could probably be more reasonable). What is needed more is the revamp of the grad/doctoral education and research to be more practical and geared towards industrial applications.

Most of the big names from Stanford (Google, Yahoo, Sun etc.) had grad students as founders.. (though some of them understandably :D never finished their grad studies).As an undergrad you seldom have time to go beyond the very basics of what you are being taught. Only as a grad student you are in the unique position of being abreast with the state of the art in your field and having lots of time and being already broke which makes jumping into something new very tempting.

I think if the IITs can start working towards that and even if there are only a couple of major successes in terms of transfering technology from academia to industry, it will change a lot of things. A lot of
IIT students (esp. those interested in research in practical sciences as opposed to theoretical sciences) will love to stay back in India to work on these research projects. I think even the quality of graduate students that IITs gets from outside of IIT will also increase, and I am pretty sure in the longer term, we will start attracting talent from outside India as well. I already know of 1 or 2 american phd students applying to the IITs for professorships.. :D..

If nothing else, IITians are champs at the "rat-race".. one just needs to start a new trend and most will follow :D..

Yes gaurav you are right,there is no way
we can adjudge standford below IIT's,But
we must be proud of our great institutions
of which you are one of the almuni.

Gaurav whateer, Stanford is down or wat but point is we are in rank, its good for us, We must be happy that our IIT is coming in rank 3 in the world and thats good for us. THES can't give any rank like this, there must a panel who gave this rank so chear up and be happy

hallow
iwant to come in india for my higher studies but icant get some information from your sites iwant to know the best universities offering business corses according to ranks would you be kind enough to provide nme whit such information

As a PG(MTech) student of IIT B I do agree with the point of view of Puneet that its during the post graduation that a person is able to see the applications of what he/she has learned in the undergrad and that IIT's will definitely get the best of the post grads from India itself if they choose so and get out of their "undergrad" mentality.

The main problem in getting out of that mentality is that the teachers have already restricted their growth by accepting the reality that at present they don't have PG's as good as UG's. But you see the reason for not getting PG's and PhD's of high calibre is that such people don't stay here because they get more opportunities and honour(for those who are not from IIT's, PG's are called as "matkas" by their undergrad fellas coz most of them really are and the ones who ought to be there have gone to west due to braindrain; but still there are some exceptions though!)

Also another dimension to this issue is that the most of the teachers here are really one of the best from India or may be world(I didn't say world coz I haven't attended any classes other than that of Indian teachers). Believe me or not I think they deserve a lot more appreciation and pat on their back than even the students here. The fact that they choose to be teahers at IIT in their youth and not in an esteemed western university acts as a stimulus for their frustration for most of their life. I know all this coz I have observed and interacted with quite few of them.

Concluding this I would like to say that if IITs really want to be big players like stanford or berkeley then they must:
1. Rebuild the present education system which is neither completely western nor our own. Rebuild it in such a way so that "our" needs(Indian space research, military research etc) are met and see that innovations are coming out almost every year.

2. Instead of pure acads concentrate on originality and research based mentality.

3. Strengthening the PG and PhD education.

actually vinod khosla who co founded sun microsystems was an iit undergraduate...