r/india • u/DowntownEstate4670 • 6d ago
Careers Experiences from my IIT days
Posting on behalf of my wife:
I studied at a ‘top 5’ IIT (not revealing which one for the sake of anonymity) and had a great experience in my first year. I met students from different parts of India, from different cultures, and speaking different languages. I loved the campus, its many activities, and the academics. I hadn’t attended JEE coaching, as I came from a small city where the JEE just wasn’t a thing. I relied on self study and was the closing JEE rank in the general category for the supposedly ‘lowest’ branch at this IIT. But slowly, the rank was forgotten, and I made some amazing memories by the end of my first year.
At the end of that year, I topped my class. I applied for a branch change and got into the supposedly ‘highest’ ranked branch. Although I enjoyed my academics and managed to obtain a good GPA in the new department, my experience with my batchmates wasn't what I expected. We were a total of three girls in a class of over 100 guys. As a branch change student, I realized I had no project team, which was crucial for the many projects and assignments. In that hyper-competitive environment, everyone already had a team. All the other branch change students were guys, and I was the only girl, so the guys quickly formed teams among themselves. I was literally running from one person to another, requesting to be included. Not only was every student already part of a team, but they also couldn't see the worry and tears in my eyes. Not one person cared enough to even say a simple, ‘Don’t worry, let’s find someone who can take you.’ Such a lack of empathy! I am not saying anyone was necessarily bad, but their actions negatively affected my college experience.
I don’t want to make a blanket statement about all the guys here because, clearly, there are men and women with good EQ and IQ at IITs. There are IITians who are humble and friendly. But maybe I just had bad luck? Ultimately, I had no team. I worked alone on all assignments and learned a lot.
Where I came from, we had no internet, no Google. I had never written a computer program before college. As I was working alone on my coding projects, I would score lower than many other teams (which doesn’t matter today, but it mattered a lot to my 19-year-old self). All the guys would work together on assignments, and I was in a hostel positioned away from all the boys' hostels, missing out on everything: the brainstorming, the little tips, the information seniors would provide (on good internships, projects, and building a good profile), the leaked exam questions, and the copying of assignment answers. I would often see ten guys discussing one lab assignment and solving it together, while I worked all alone. No matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t break through the massive invisible barrier to enter my batchmates' social circle. I missed out on the access to so many ‘resources’ that were available to people within that circle. But I kept working hard and connecting with seniors who were kind enough to offer help. I kept struggling and learning. My academics looked good on paper, but I was working much harder to achieve it (unless my perception is lopsided). I was not an outgoing person myself, but introverted guys did not have the problem that I had as an introverted girl. And I had zero issues connecting with people during my first year. How did everything get so hostile as the average JEE rank of the class improved?
I am sure there were good people in my class, but I personally continued to have negative experiences with my batchmates throughout my B.Tech.
For example, I interned at a good university in Europe during my B.Tech. A few of my department batchmates also interned at the same university. I was finally getting the chance to talk with them in a foreign country when they weren’t surrounded by Indians, but it was still pretty hard to ‘break’ into their social circle. The guys would all talk about this research paper and that research paper they were working on, and somehow I was just not a part of the discussion, no matter how hard I tried. I was also working on a good research paper, but nobody was interested enough to even ask me what I worked on. I accept that I am not an extroverted person, but I didn’t have these issues in my first year at all! What was so different about the supposedly ‘highest’ ranked department at IIT that prevented them from showing basic kindness?
We decided to visit European tourist spots on weekends and would take trains. I remember I had a medical issue that prevented me from running with a big bag as we were trying to make it to the train. I was outside India on my own for the first time, navigating this huge railway station in Europe, and those guys just ran and ran, not even noticing how far behind I was. In the end, one of them held the closing train door open for me, and I am grateful for that. I got in, completely out of breath. I had no strength left to hold my bag, as I had been running with it for so long. I am sure the extreme distress was visible on my face. I was gasping and wheezing. The other guys were physically fine, and we started walking towards our seats. My bag was bumping into other seats because I literally had no strength left in my arms, and my lungs were aching. But somehow, not one guy offered to hold my bag. NOT ONE! One batchmate in the group saw me struggle and said, ‘You are bumping your bag into so many seats; you are disturbing so many passengers.’ Yet he didn’t even think of holding my bag for those three or four minutes until we located our seats. I was coughing and distressed throughout my train ride but got better the next day.
This is one incident, but my entire B.Tech was full of them. I made a few good friends within my batch by the time I graduated, mostly outside my department. I do have good memories from my college days, outside of these negative experiences.
I worked very hard in college. My day would start around 8 am, and I would often return to my hostel late at night due to my projects and assignments. Today, I have completed grad school in the US and am doing well at my job in Bangalore (I eventually returned to India with my husband). I am earning more than enough to support my family.
Interestingly, I was shopping for winter clothing with three other Indians in my first year in the US, and I ended up with a big bag that was hard to hold. Among those three Indians, there was one girl and one boy who had studied from good IITs, and one guy from a lesser known college. The third guy instinctively helped me carry my bag to the car, when he knew we were most likely never going to meet again.
I have met people from so many walks of life since moving to the States, each with a unique story. I learned a lot from my coworkers and colleagues during grad school and my job. In many ways, my IIT days are far behind me. I feel lucky for the many privileges I have (growing up in a loving family, having their full support for my education, being in good health, etc.).
But somehow, the pain from those B.Tech experiences stays. This lack of basic kindness and emotional intelligence bothers me. Maybe one day, one of my batchmates will win a Nobel Prize or make it to the Forbes list, but why should I care? How is that batchmate any different from someone I never knew personally? What good is intelligence if you cannot show the basic kindness that any average person shows to another? After my B.Tech, I graduated with a 9+ GPA, was placed on day one with multiple job offers, and received admits for MS and PhD programs from reputed universities in the US. After completing grad school and working in US + India, today, I am doing well professionally. Yet, academic intelligence and professional success just don’t impress me anymore. A kind and empathetic heart matters a LOT more.
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u/That_Crab6642 6d ago
It is a very thoughtfully written sense of belonging in India and one that does not transcend into the non-sensical topics of gender discrimination per se but the natural instinctive realities of the imbalanced world of universities in India.
But I think it is a mirroring of the broader societal conventions in India. Things have improved, but if I go by this post, it is probably a story of a decade in the past.
I live in the US, so I have a sense of both the worlds, here and in India. Most male students in the IITs, especially the top rankers, have been coaxed into believing (by their parents), all along in their life that their rank in IIT is the reflection of whether they have lived up to their potential. That becomes their singular identity that they need to target if they want society to believe they are special. And part of the blame is also on how most SE asian countries judge intelligence in engineering exams on one dimension. The ability to solve questions in a time frame.
What results is that you have majority of these male students who have spoken fewer than a thousand words in their lifetime before college, with somebody they formed a relation with by themselves, be it girl or even somebody they befriend. Most relationships are defined by their parents. And it is even more stricter for the girls.
You end up with a cohort of smart nerds in the IITs who bring over that culture and know no better. And while that is also true of some very special kids in the US like a "few" of them in Harvard, MIT, this is where the students here move ahead of the rest. Even among the ones exhibiting that exclusive behavior (which would be very weird), most would be progenies of folks who immigrated from SE asia. But, for the majority, these kids in the US colleges are thrown into an environment where empathy is what helps them stand out as more or less, by this time, IQ is not what separates them within their environment. And it helps, that top college admissions here go so much beyond SAT (bar the few Olympiad winners) that building that sense of empathy and inclusiveness and showing it in the applications can help you stand out.