Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)
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Admissions, admission criteria
Weightage to class XII scores/ 2013
80% IIT entrants from just 3 boards
Hemali Chhapia TNN
The Times of India 2013/07/11
Mumbai: For long, when it came to getting into IITs, signing up with the right coaching centre was what mattered more than which school board you attended. But the new entrance exam system, which gives weightage to class XII scores of candidates, has changed the rules of the game in one fell swoop.
The list of candidates selected last week for the IITs showed that a vast majority of the successful candidates – more than 8,000 out of 9,700 – or over 80% came from just three school boards: the CBSE, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab state boards.
“More than 5,500 students come from the CBSE board. Then, there are close to 1,800 of them from Andhra Pradesh and another 750 from Punjab,” said JEE (advanced) chairman H C Gupta, about this year’s list. There are 30 other boards in India from where a small count of students has qualified. “There are anywhere between five and 10 to over 100 students from some other boards,” Gupta said.
NEW EQUATION
8,000 of 9,700 students selected came from three boards — CBSE, Andhra Pradesh & Punjab
Of these, 5,000 are from CBSE, 1,800 from Andhra and 750 from Punjab
CBSE has sent more students than other boards in past too. In 2011, of 13,196 qualified candidates, 56% were from CBSE
Statistics from the IITs show that in JEE 2010, of the qualified candidates, 58% were from CBSE, 36% from state boards and 6% from ICSE. While 3.5% of the CBSE candidates qualified, it was 2.3% for state boards and 2.7% for ICSE
SC| ST students
Cut-off lowered/ 2017
Oct 16 2016 : The Times of India
IITs have reduced Class XII cut-off for SCST candidates from 70% to 65% in JEE Advanced 2017.
Foreign students: 2017
Somdatta Basu, 10% extra IIT seats for foreign students, Oct 16 2016 : The Times of India
Exams To Be Held In Six Countries
Up to 10% additional seats in each IIT course can now go to foreign students. Casting the enrolment net for foreign students wider, the IITs will now hold their entrance exam at six international centres instead of just one so far.
“Foreign candidates will have to qualify the JEE advanced examination for an IIT seat. The Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) for entry to MTech courses will be held in these six countries as well,“ said an official. Foreign candidates, however, will not have to take the JEE main examination.
Induction of foreign students will not mean less seats for Indian students. “The 10% intake is in addition to the existing seats available in each of the 23 IITs,“ the official clarified. Also, 20,000 more candidates will be eligible to write the exam after clearing JEE main, thus taking the total number to 2,20,000.
The examination will be held in six countries outside India -Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, UAE, Nepal and Singapore. The number of foreign students can't exceed 10% of the total seats in each course offered by the IITs and ISM-Dhanbad. There will also be no quota in this category .
Facilities for 2017 admissions
“Various interactive fea tures are conceived to make the process of registration, fee payment, result announcement, choice filling, etc, less strenuous. Features like short video tutorial and SMS services will be used extensively to help the candidates,“ said a senior official.
From 2017, candidates who register late for the IIT-JEE advanced exam will also be charged a late fee of Rs 500.
The registration fee has been increased to Rs 1,200 from Rs 1,000 for girls and reserved category students, and to Rs 2,400 from Rs 2,000 for others. Students from Saarc countries will pay $135 and those from other other countries $270. The late fee for them is $80.
In another change, candidates applying under PWD category with dyslexia must submit a certificate from a doctor specialising in psychiatry and associated with Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) or Dyslexia Associations. The medical certificate must mention the word `severe'.
Consultancy projects
2012-15: IIT-M leads
Manash Gohain, IIT-M beats peers in consultancy earnings, Sep 19 2016 : The Times of India
Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IITM) bagged consultancy projects worth Rs 173.56 crore over the last three years, way ahead of other Indian engineering institutes.
According to the Union HRD ministry's National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) report for 2016, Roorkee and Delhi are ranked second and third among the IITs vis-à-vis the worth of consultancy projects received. Together, the three IITs earned over Rs 396 crore through such projetcs. In all, eight branches of the premier institute earned more than Rs 5 crore individually in consultancy projects over the past three years.
The fact that it was the first IIT to set up an `Industrial Consultancy Centre', way back in 1973, is perhaps the reason why IIT-M has emerged as the preferred choice for industry and government organisations for consultancy projects. “Our Industrial Consultancy Centre was set up way back in the 70s, when it primarily dealt in civil, ports and automobile engineering. Gradually , it diversified to other areas, including pharmaceuticals,“ professor Bhaskar Ramamurthy, IIT-M director, told TOI.
According to the NIRF 2016 rankings, the institute is also the top-ranked engineering institution in India.
At IIT-M, over 45% of the faculty are engaged in industrial consultancy and “in the next four to five years, we aim to take this to 60%“, Ramamurthy said.
In all, 92 projects have so far been accepted by the government under the Uchhatar Avishkar Yojana (UAY), rolled out with an aim to boost research while giving students of premier institutes a more market-oriented mindset, at an expense of Rs 282 crore.
Dropout rate
2012-15
Source: The Times of India
The Times of India, August 6, 2015
The Times of India, Aug 06 2015
4,400 dropouts in 3 years at IITs and NITs
As many as 2,060 students dropped out of the 16 IITs over 2012-15, HRD minister Smriti Irani told Lok Sabha on Wednesday , listing inability to cope with academic stress as one of the reasons. At NITs, 2,352 dropped out in the same period. The IIT dropout count was highest in 2014-15, with Roorkee accounting for 228 students and Delhi for 169.
Dropout in IITs has been the highest (757) in 2014-15 Among IITs, the one in Roor kee faced 228 dropouts, the maximum, followed by 209 in IIT Kharagpur, 169 in IIT Del hi and 72 in IIT Bombay. Drop out in IIT Roorkee is on the rise. It was 159 in 2012-13 and 188 in 2013-14. Among the ol der IITs, there has been no dropout from IIT Kanpur since 2012 and only eight in from IIT Madras in 2013-14.
In the last three years (2012-15), 2,060 students have dropped out of 16 IITs In the same period, 2,352 stu dents dropped out of 30 NITs.
Giving this information to Lok Sabha, HRD minister Smriti Irani said reasons for dropping out “may be attributed to shifting to other colleges, personal reasons, medical reasons getting jobs during post-grad uate courses, inability to cope with academic stress etc“.
Irani said the institutes were taking remedial measures, including counselling and additional coaching for weaker students. HRD ministry has told Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) that carried out joint counselling for admission to IITsNITsISM and IIITs to return bulk of non-refundable acceptance fee tuition fee to students who haven't joined courses and also told them to take necessary steps to fill up 3,200 vacant seats expeditiously .
Directive to JoSAA says that if a student withdrew before the course starts, the fee collected from the student, after a deduction of the processing fee of not over Rs 1,000 may be refunded and returned by the institution to the student who has withdrawn.
Among NITs, the ones in Rourkela, Kurukshetra, Jai pur and Calicut have wit nessed maximum dropouts.
Irani told the Parliament that both IITs and NITs have initiated several actions to minimize dropouts. In case of IITs, there is an adviser who monitors the academic pro gress and advises students about their academic per formance. Progress of such students is continuously monitored through class tests, laboratory tests, assignments, mid-term, endterm and supplementary examinations. She said additional classes are arranged for academically weaker students, at times during summer vacations. IITs have started student mentorship programme, peer assign ment learning, guided progress scheme etc. To arrest dropping out of students, NITs have the provision for additional coaching for weak students, special coaching for SCST students, two mid-term examinations per academic year, quarter classes and special examinations, provision of tutor guardian and motivational lectures.
IITs' right to set academic standards
While IIT Roorkee has had to re-admit students from reserved categories despite their failing to maintain required grades, the Uttarakhand HC had supported the IITs' right to set academic standards, HRD minister Smriti Irani told Lok Sabha.Irani told the House in response to a question that IITs have extensive support systems to help students overcome barriers such as language and their progress was tracked on a monthly basis.
Faculty
A shortage of teachers
43% of teaching slots in IITs lying unfilled Engg Students Prefer Jobs To Pursuing PhDs
By Atul Thakur, TIMES INSIGHT GROUP, 2013/03/30
New Delhi: At a time when ‘skill shortage’ is bemoaned by industry, nearly half of all teaching positions in IITs and over half in NITs are lying vacant. This was revealed recently in response to a question in the Lok Sabha.
It’s not only newly created IITs and NITs that face shortage. Old IITs have over 40% of their teaching positions vacant and the situation in old NITs is even worse with 57% of faculty jobs finding no takers.
In eight older IITs (including IT BHU and Roorkee University — now converted into IITs) the sanctioned strength of teaching staff is 5,356 but there are only 3,158 teachers in regular positions, resulting in 41% vacant seats. With 57% vacancy, IIT-BHU has the worst figures. It is followed by IITDelhi (50%), IIT- Kharagpur (48%) and IIT-Guwahati (42%). For the remaining four IITs, the vacant teaching positions range between a low of 19% of the sanctioned strength for IIT-Kanpur and 38% for IIT Roorkee.
A parliament question inquiring about the shortage of faculty was answered on March 13 where the ministry noted the reason for shortage as lack of PhD candidates in engineering. It also said that students preferred corporate jobs over teaching. No regular teacher in 10 new NITs New Delhi: Of the 5,891 sanctioned teaching posts in 20 old NITs, only 3,083 are filled by regulars. The 48% gap between required and employed teachers is much higher than vacancies in the IITs. NITs at Warangal, Patna, Srinagar, Jamshedpur, Kurukshetra, Agartala and Raipur have over 50% vacancies in teaching positions. NITs at Calicut, Silchar and Rourkela are the only institutes where vacancy is less than 40%.
Considering the shortage of academic staff in old and reputable colleges, one would assume the condition of newly created institutes would be worse. Yes and no. Data throws up some surprises. Four of the eight new IITs are on a par or even better than most of the older institutes. IIT-Hyderabad has only 1% teaching positions vacant while the corresponding figures are 26%, 46% and 57% for IIT Patna, Indore and Ropar respectively. The remaining four new colleges have more than 60% vacancy while IIT-Bhubaneshwar doesn’t have a single regular teacher against a sanctioned strength of 90.
Once again, the new NITs do even worse. There isn’t a single regular teacher in the 10 new NITs. According to the NIT Act and IIT Act, these institutions are declared as institutes of national importance and government spends thousands of crores of rupees to encourage technical education. For 2013-14, the budget estimates an expenditure of Rs 3,670 crore on IITs and of Rs 1,719 crore on NITs.
To make up for the shortage, the institutes are resorting to contracts, adjunct, visiting faculty and online mode of teaching. It was also recently reported that the government is planning to engage trainee teachers who will be selected from the top 15% of students from these institutes.
Faculty posts lying vacant in 16 IITs
Chethan Kumar, December 07 2014
A Report by the Human Resource Development ministry says that over 37% of faculty posts in the existing 16 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are vacant. Only IIT-Gandhinagar has 99% of the sanctioned faculty members working. The 16 IITs have 4,308 faculty members against the sanctioned 6,944. IIT-Kharagpur, long considered an ace, reports a 46% shortage. The overall student faculty ratio stands at 16:1.
As part of its election promise, BJP had planned to establish IITs, IIITs and NITs across the country. In November, the NDA government an nounced setting up of IITs in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Chhattisgarh and Jammu.But, before moving ahead with the plan, the government needs to tackle the faculty shortage immediately. Going by the faculty matrix in the existing IITs, the Centre will need 100 faculty members per 1,000 students in the new institutes. Assuming each of the five new institutes gets about 200 students, then the government has to hire 100 faculty members.
As admitted by the present vice chancellor of the Hyderabad University, Prof Ramakrishna Ramaswamy: “We’re failing to replace teachers who are retiring or resigning even in places like the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, IITs or some other top institutes.” Echoing the view, Rao had said: “The problem has to be viewed holistically. It needs immediate attention.” The situation in IIITs is equally bad with a student-faculty ratio of 29:1. IIITs in Allahabad, Gwalior, Jabalpur and Kancheepuram have a sanctioned strength of 282 but have only 166 faculty members — a shortage of nearly 42%. The 30 NITs across the country, too, are facing a shortage of 28%.
Family backgrounds
Where the students come from
2016: Delhi, Jaipur, Hyderabad The Times of India, June 23, 2016
Hemali Chhapia
Delhi has pipped Jaipur, which traditionally topped the charts and cornered the lion's share of seats at these institutes. Three Maharashtra cities --Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur --figured in the top 10 cities for the first time, said experts.MP's Indore and Bhopal will send 805 students to the IITs.
Mumbai has improved to fourth position on the chart from sixth position last year.Lucknow is a new entrant to the top club. In the last two years, Jaipur, Delhi, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Patna and Mumbai, in that order, sent most students to the IITs. This time, out of 14,385 candidates who qualified to join the IITs, those from 15 cities comprise 50% of the students who made the cut. Till last year, fewer cities dominated the list and half of those who qualified for the IITs came from only eight locations.
The city-wise data has been analysed by the IITs, based on the communication address provided by the aspirants. Most students, said faculty , provide their perma nent address so that no correspondence is lost.
“We were noticing the slow rise of Delhi since a few years. Mumbai and its satellite towns, too, have a better rank. But if one goes by the absolute numbers, we see that there has been an overall drop in candidates from all these cities,“ said a JEE chairman.
Each of the top three cities in this year's list--Delhi, Jaipur and Hyderabad--historically saw about 2,000 students qualify for the IITs each year. But the distribu tion of students is rather different this year. Interestingly, Vijayawada which saw 1,448 students qualify in 2014, witnessed a meteoric drop in the candidate count this year.
Fall in numbers from the big metros has been accompanied by an increase in students from smaller towns and many more cities have sent students to the IITs this year.
Interestingly, Kargil will send 10 students to the top engineering colleges and so will Latur, which has seen 24 candidates qualify .
Orai in Jalaun of Uttar Pradesh, too, did well with 26 students qualifying for IITs.“While diversity adds richness to the classroom, each edition of the JEE hopes to be more inclusive so that students from every corner of the country can make it to our campus,“ said another JEE chairman.
IIT aspirants: class character
1/3rd IIT aspirants are kids of public sector, government staff
Yogita Rao, TNN | Jul 14, 2013
Aspirants whose parents were in the public sector or government service formed almost one third of the total candidates, around 5.06 lakh, who registered for the joint entrance exam.
MUMBAI: Most aspirants for the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are either children of government employees or whose parents hold public sector jobs, while children of businessmen and farmers lag behind. But data on IIT aspirants and successful candidates reveals that doctors' children performed better in the IIT entrance tests than those whose parents were engineers or government employees.
Aspirants whose parents were in the public sector or government service formed almost one third of the total candidates, around 5.06 lakh, who registered for the joint entrance exam. But their success rate was just 5.8%. On the contrary, out of the 7,067 doctors' children, 9.92% made the grade, the highest among any other professions.
While children of government staffers stand at third position, those whose parents are into teaching/research also did better with a success rate of 5.21%. Among girls too, the highest success rate of 5.74% was seen among doctors' children. But most girls, or 54,576 of the 1.69 lakh registering for the test, were children of government employees.
"More doctors send their children into engineering as a qualification in the medical field takes about nine years while one can become an engineer in just four years," said JEE (Advanced) - 2013, chairman, H C Gupta.
Tata Institute of Social Sciences professor Bino Paul believe that about a couple of decades ago, before globalization, the trend was different. "IITs remained heavily elitist before and during globalization. However, in the globalised world, brand IIT is facing a challenge from institutes in the Ivy League. The highly networked group prefer to send their children abroad even for undergraduate studies. Students who are in international schools, with higher resources, now have global aspirations. IITs miss out on these chunks," he said.
IITians: family backgrounds
Over 50% of IITians' mothers are graduates
The Times of India, Oct 11 2015
Hemali Chhapia-Shah & Yogita Rao
Over 50% of IITians' moms are grads, but stay at home
The Class of 2019 at the IITs is largely the story of an Indian urban middle-class home where the woman spent her early years earning an education and then stayed at home to raise her family . The tech schools have never given out information on mothers of the candidates who are picked.
But this time, they have released data that shows most mothers are at least graduates and largely homemakers.
Of the 9,974 students who have gone on to join the IITs, the mothers of around 2,250 are postgraduates; another 3,200 are graduates (in all over 50%). The literacy rate among fathers is much higher.
As many as 6,690 of women are stay-at-home moms.Most are financially dependent with an annual income of less than Rs 1 lakh. Barring 1,400 fathers, everyone was educated enough to show their children the path to take, and 1,550 fathers have an annual income of over Rs 8 lakh.There is no information provided on the incomes of mothers of 5,749 candidates and fathers of 1,400.
“Educated mothers definitely help in the preparation that students have to make for IIT. The fact that a majority of mothers are graduates proves the point. However, these days, students are exposed to a lot of information and with help from various quarters -school teachers, coaching institutes -even first-generation learners do well in competitive exams,“ says Meenal Mohgaonkar, mother of city's second highest scorer in JEE (Advanced), Ajinkya.
Mohgaonkar, a radiologist who was working as the head of department at a private medical college in Nashik, moved to Mumbai with Ajinkya to ensure he gets the best coaching. She added that mothers also help in relieving stress as the preparation period is pretty long and the mental state is never consistent and students go through several ups and downs.
Remaining in the box of mother and homemaker was probably more of an ultimate choice than desire, given the societal conditions.
Majority: Urban, not coached
The Times of India, Aug 23 2016
75% of those in IITs are from cities An industry has sprung up around coaching institutes for IIT entrance exams, but students who selfstudy may fare better. In 2016, 5,539 students (52.4%) out of the 10,576 who got admission to IITs had studied on their own. Those who went to coaching centres comprised 44.5% (4,711) of successful candidates.
The remaining 2% either took individual tuitions or did correspondence cour ses. The trends from JEE (advanced) in 2016 were analysed by IIT-Guwahati. A detailed analysis of 2016, JEE (ad vanced) by IIT-Guwahati shows that IITs are still urban-centric with 75% of successful students coming from cities and the rest from rural areas. It also shows in the occupation of parents.
Of the 36,566 who qualified for admission into IITs NITsIIITs and other government-funded technical institutions, parents of 10,200 are in government service followed by 5,814 in business, 4,097 in private jobs, 3,213 in agriculture, 2,018 in public sector, 1,700 in teachingresearch.
Parents of 327 students practised law, 59 are in the pharmacy sector and only 21 are architects.
Rajasthan known for its IIT coaching centres in Kota has contributed the maximum 1646 students this year.An IIT director pointed out that Tamil Nadu which once contributed a lot to IITs is surprisingly not among the top 12 states.
Students going to CBSEaffiliated schools have done the best (5,849).
IIT-Guwahati also did an analysis of educational qualification of parents whose children qualified for joint counselling to IITsNITsIIITs and other governmentfunded technical institutes.Little over 1,000 were illiter ate, 5,090 matriculate, 14,619 graduate and 8,893 postgraduates. Educational data of over 5,000 parents was not available. Analysis also shows that parental annual income of 6,929 successful students was up to Rs 1 lakh.
Female students
2015: Number of girls, zone-wise
The Times of India, Jun 18 2015
Marginal rise in no. of girls qualifying JEE
Yogita Rao
IIT-Delhi zone has bagged two of the top three slots in JEE (Main) 2015. While Satvat Jagwani from Satna in Madhya Pradesh, who appeared from the Kanpur zone, bagged the AllIndia Rank (AIR) 1, with a score of 469 of 504, Janak Agrawal and Mukesh Pareekh, both from Indore (Delhi zone), got AIR 2 and AIR 3, respectively .
IIT-Bombay zone, which had slipped to third position in terms of overall performance in 2014, was No. 1 this year while other top zones -IIT-Madras and IIT-Delhi -saw a steep fall in the number of candidates who qualified.
More than 26,456 or 22% of the 1.17 lakh students who appeared for the exams across the country qualified for 10,000-odd IIT seats. Last year, around 27,172 or 20% of the 1.3 lakh students had made it to the general merit list. Around 11% of the total students who have qualified for IITs are girls.
In 2015 successful candidates must either fall in the top 20 percentile of their respective boards or score 75% and above in their Class XII exams, to be eligible for the IIT seat, said an IIT-Bombay official.
IITs will conduct a joint seat allocation process along with the NITs for the first time this year. The detailed procedure has to be released by IITBombay.
Of the 3,049 girls who passed for JEE (Main) 2015, Indore's Krati Tiwari with AIR 47, is the topper. The number of girls qualifying in the exam saw a marginal rise from the previous year's 3,009. OBC topper Majji Sandeep Kumar from Vizianagaram also got an AIR of 10. Chinmaya Sahoo from Pune is the topper in the OBC and disabled category .
The IIT-Madras zone, home to the coaching hub in Andhra Pradesh, has bagged five of the Top 10 merit ranks in the country . The region, which had 50 of the Top 100 rank-holders last year, saw only 28 students fall in the top list this year. The Delhi region, which had the maximum succeeding candidates last year, saw a drop in the numbers--from 6,528 to 4,511.
Bharat Khandelwal, with an AIR 5, is the topper in the IIT-Bombay zone. He managed a score of 440 in the test.
2015: an increase
The Times of India, Aug 20, 2015
Yogita Rao
More girls now make it to IIT
The number of girls admitted to IITs has gone up marginally in 2015 too, from 8% 2014 to 9% in the 2015 batch. Though, in absolute numbers, girls on the elite institutes' campuses have gone up by 40, compared to 2014, gender disparity continues to be a problem.
Of the 9,974 students allotted seats in 18 IITs in the first joint seat allocation process, only 900 are girls.
Of the total students who qualified for IITs this year, only 11% were girls. After seat allotments, only 900 got in to the premier institutes.Of the total candidates registered, the number of girls is close to 18%. Before the twotier exam was introduced in 2012, the number of girls registering for the joint entrance examination was steadily on the rise. From around 24.3% of the total registered candidates in 2008, it had gone up to 33.3% in 2012.
Professors attribute the poor representation of girls on engineering campuses to the mindset of people. Pradipta Banerji, director, IIT-Roorkee, said girls are poorly represented only in the undergraduate programme, though their success percentage is usually on par with boys.
"There are not many girls taking the JEE (Main), so we get fewer students for JEE (Advanced). But at the postgraduate level, we have more women on the campus. In fact, 44% doctorate students on the Roorkee campus are women. Of the total student population, they constitute around 15%," said Banerji, adding that people are unwilling to send their girls to a residential campus.
Unfair policies to hit girl education — MKSS
A professor from IIT-Bombay agreed that students on IITs come from a pan-India population and therefore it is difficult to expect a quick change in mindset. IITs had reduced the entrance test fee to half for girls, said Devang Khakhar, IIT-Bombay director and chairman of JEE (advanced). Last year, of the five students from IIT-Bombay who bagged the top offer from a social networking site during placements, two were girls.
Number of seats
5% increase in 2017
Somdatta Basu, From 2017, IITs to have 528 seats more, Oct 24 2016 : The Times of India
The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will implement a 5% increase in their total student intake from the next academic session.
The decision to increase the number of students -from 10,572 in the current academic session to 11,100 the next year -was taken at a recent meeting of the Joint Admission Board (JAB), which is the highest decision-making body of IITJEE (adanced). The meeting was attended by the chairpersons of all IITs.
While this increased number was to be absorbed by all 23 IITs, several of the older institutes said they wouldn't be able to immediately increase their intake with their current infrastructure. The country's premier engineering and tech scho ols have also decided to admit 10% more foreign students, over and above the total student strength.
“We are in no position to admit extra students despite the government wanting each IIT to increase intake,“ said a senior IIT-Kharagpur official.
“Even if we build accommodation, classrooms and other infrastructure from government funding, it takes many years to build world-class laboratories which offer state-of-the-art facilities,“ the official said.
Offshore IITs
Shevgaonkar's illegal IIT in Mauritius
Dec 29 2014
IIT-D could not show proof of MEA nod for offshore campus
The possible reason for the resignation of IIT Delhi director R K Shevgaonkar could be his alleged involvement in illegally setting up an offshore campus of the institute in Mauritius, top human resource development (HRD) ministry sources claimed on Sunday .
Shevgaonkar did not respond to repeated attempts by TOI to contact him.
A top HRD official insisted Shevgaonkar was cornered on the Mauritius issue. “We were asking him questions to which no satisfactory reply was forthcoming,“ he said.
According to him, Shevgaonkar had taken the proposal of an IIT D campus in Mauritius to the IIT Council which told him that the Institutes of Technology Act that governs IITs do not enable creation of offshore campuses.However, he said, Shevgaonkar went ahead on a memorandum of understanding with Tertiary Education Commission of Mauritius. The proposed institute was to be called International Institute of Technology Research Academy. Claiming that IIT Delhi director R K Shevgaonkar had to resign after he tried to set up an offshore campus in Mauritius, a top HRD ministry source said, “We asked the director what is the commitment -financial or non-financial -from IIT Delhi to the proposed campus. We also asked him to show any authorization from the HRD ministry . He could not produce any paper.“
IIT Delhi was also asked if it had the clearance of the ministry of external affairs. “IIT Delhi claimed they had MEA permission but again could not produce any evidence,“ the official said. Last month when HRD ministry found that MEA clearance was not there, it issued a circular to all higher educational institutions that prior permission of MEA and HRD would be needed for any offshore campus. HRD sources said even the copy of the MoA that was provided by IIT Delhi has two pages missing. “Maybe it is an inadvertent error but we asked for the missing pages three weeks back and they are yet to be received,“ a ministry official said.
The ministry said even as none of the clearances were available, Shevgaonkar went ahead and gave an interview to a Mauritian daily in which he said students of the new institute will get the same degree as those at IIT Delhi.
Meanwhile, a senior member of the IIT Delhi board said, “Whatever be Shevgaonkar's alleged involvement with the offshore campus in Mauritius, there is no denying he was under tremendous pressure from the HRD ministry. Such pressure does not come in writing. If views of department of personnel & training and finance ministry were being sought, why was a meeting organized between IIT officials and BJP leader Subramanian Swamy for settlement of his salary dues.“ But BJP member Shrikant Sharma denied any pressure on Shevgaonkar to resign.
Foreign students
The Times of India, Aug 22 2016
Akshaya Mukul The Joint Admission Board (JAB) of IITs decided that students from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Singapore, the UAE and Ethiopia will be allowed to directly appear for the JEE (advanced) test, skipping the JEE (main) that Indian students have to take.
In any case, he said, foreign students would not eat into the seats meant for Indians. The principal reason, however, is to make it to the list of top international educational institutions. “In all international rankings one of the key parameters is international students and IITs lose out in a big way despite scoring well on other parameters,“ another official said.
“Foreign nationals will be given seats under super numerary category ,“ he said, adding IIT-Bombay was entrusted with the job of implementing the programme. Exam centres will be set up in these countries.
While Pakistan has been left out due to home ministry's objection, the choice of Ethiopia as the only co untry from Africa has evinced a lot of curiosity. Justifying the choice, Gautam Biswas, director of IIT-Guwahati, said, “For the last many years, we have got a large number of Ethiopian students in post-graduate courses. IITs are popular there.“
IIT-Guwahati had eight MTech students from Ethiopia. The UAE, an official said, was selected as people of various nationalities reside in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
The cost of admission will be recovered from the foreign student and the government will not bear any expense on account of foreign students. They will be given the same facilities as Indian students.
Placements, Campus-
2015, 2016
Hemali Chhapia, Happy placements for IITs this Dec?, Nov 03 2016 : The Times of India
Indian Institutes of Technology are forecasting a happy placement season this December. Pre-placement offers (PPOs) are up by 25-30%, compared to last year, and the tech colleges have witnessed a rise in companies signing up to recruit their graduates.
Seasoned companies have taken the PPO route this year, the ones that had earlier hired students as interns and now want them on the rolls.American Express India, Vodafone, Accenture Services, Visa and Capital One Financial Services are among those that have offered PPOs to several IIT-Roorkee candidates.At IIT-Kanpur, Barclays, which used to visit the campus, has offered PPOs to candidates, but has not confirmed its participation in the placement season. HUL is another such company.
“Across IITs, we have seen that PPOs are on the rise,“ said IIT-Madras training and placement advisor Manu Santhanam. Last year, this in stitute received 69 PPOs and this year it has already received 64. “We expect the number to go up. The rise in PPOs is the fallout of the internship process getting streamlined.“ he added.
Earlier, students and their departments used to apply for internships; it is now a centralized process co-ordinated by the placement cell. The final recruitment season looks positive with 230 companies having 320 profiles registering for placements .
At IIT-Bombay, 125 PPOs have flown in, compared to 150 last year. Rakesh Patel, placement team member, said 270 companies had registered and the figure is likely to touch 320. At IIT-Roorkee, a little more than 110 “quality“ PPOs have been offered and 30 are in the pipeline. That is a 30% rise from last year's 85. “These are very good PPOs, not those offered by start-ups,“ said placement head N P Padhy. Nearly 300 companies are expected to land up on campus for the final placement process.
IIT-BHU has seen a 32% jump in PPOs to 94, from 71 in 2015. IIT-Kharagpur has received 150 PPOs and is inching closer to its last year's mark of 170. Some new companies have confirmed participation in the placement process, said placement chairperson of IIT Kharagpur, Debasis Deb. The institute is expecting 250 companies to arrive on campus for recruitment, which begins, from December 1. Around 1,950 students are gearing up to sit in the placement process.
(With inputs from Somdutta Basu, Shreya Roy Chowdhury and Preeti Biswas)
Seeking employment abroad
A weakening of the trend
Hemali Chhapia, Jan 17 2017: The Times of India
Brain gain: IITians turning down int'l offers?
One leg of an IITian is in India, the other in Air India, went a popular wisecrack in the late 1980s and early '90s.Every year, hundreds of freshly minted engineers from these highly rated institutes would fly westward. This time, the template followed by several graduating classes was disrupted as many turned down international job offers.
Not even 200 of the approximate 10,000 students from IITs took up positions outside India last year. Fifty students, who make up the largest contingent, will be leaving from IIT-Bombay , followed by 40 from Delhi, 25 from Kharag pur, 19 from Kanpur, 13 from Madras, 17 from Roorkee and five from Guwahati. In 2012, 84 IIT-B students had accepted international job offers.
“Compared to 20 years ago, a very small percentage of students go abroad today . This is contrary to the general perception,“ says IIT-Delhi director V Ramgopal Rao. “Twenty years ago, 80% of the BTech class used to go abroad. Now these numbers are insignificant.“
The count was larger last year, though not dramatically different. While the first phase of placements have concluded, the ensuing edition is unlikely to have international companies flying down to campuses.“When we asked companies why they were coming to campus with fewer offers, they said that their requirement was lower and profiles too had changed,“ said professor Kaustubha Mohanty , convenor of the AllIIT Placement Committee.
But that may not be the en tire story. Deepak Phatak, chair professor at IIT-Bombay, said, “A large number of our students are not seeking jobs outside India.“
In fact, Phatak was concerned about the quality of graduates when international offers started dwindling a few years ago. “So I conducted exit interviews and found that students perceive that the land of opportunity is here,“ he said. Moreover, with global companies setting up offices in India, students can join Google in Bengaluru instead of California.
In the early '90s, the outflow of computer science graduates to the US was so high that the World Bank, in a report, had suggested that an exit tax be imposed on IITians and other professionals leaving the country--this, it said, could earn the government over $1 billion per annum. This year, the US which used to attract most candidates has been pipped by Japan. For instance, 35 students from IIT-B are headed far east as compared to 10 who are going to the US.
Startups
IITs world no. 4 in creating $-bn startups
Ranjani Ayyar, IITs world number 4 in creating $-bn startups , Jan 28, 2017: The Times of India
Delhi Churns Out Maximum Indian Unicorn Founders
If you aspire to create a billion-dollar business in India, one of the IITs is your best bet. Sage, a UK-based accounting and payroll company , stated this in a research.
In a study that lists universities that have produced the most unicorn founders, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) bagged the fourth spot. US-based Stanford University claimed the top rank with 51 unicorn founders, followed by Harvard University with 37. The University of California came third with 18 unicorn founders and IIT followed with 12 founders.
Unicorns are startups with more than a billion-dollar valuation. India is home to 10 unicorn companies. From e-com merce giants Flipkart, Snapdeal and ShopClues to cab aggregator Ola, restaurant aggregator Zomato, classified ads platform Quikr, digital payments company Paytm, mobile adtech player InMobi, messaging app Hike and analytics company Mu Sigma, these startups have grabbed spots in the elite club and almost all the founders have had stints at one of the IITs.
Within the various IITs, it is Delhi that produced the maximum unicorn founders.Sachin and Binny Bansal of Flipkart, Sanjay Sethi of ShopClues, Zomato founders Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, Snapdeal's Rohit Bansal and Quikr's Pranay Chulet and Jiby Thomas (now founder of Webbutterjam Digital) are all products of IIT Delhi. Ola's founders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati went to IIT Bombay. Inmobi's founders Naveen Tiwari, Abhay Singhal and Amit Gupta studied at IIT Kanpur while their cofounder Mohit Saxena went to IIT Roorkee. “Good students and faculty is a given with IITs. What is probably the differentiator with IIT Delhi is the culture of the institute which has been cultivated over decades. They are more connected to the society and have a deep awareness of the problems that exist. Hence, they are able to look for solutions and become entrepreneurs,“ said IIT Delhi director V Ramgopal Rao, who is an alumnus of IIT Bombay .
Industry experts say that while earlier it was the rigour of the entrance exams and the competitive culture within the IITs that led to the creation of such firms, over the last 5-7 years, there has been a structured effort to foster unicorns. “Over last 5-7 years, each of the IITs have made significant strides in creating the right ambience to promote entrepreneurs. From bringing in seasoned alumni to assist startups to encouraging students and alumni to take the entrepreneurial plunge, setting up mentoring clinics and offering assistance of professors, a disciplined effort has been made to create the right structures to foster startups and their founders,“ said Suresh Kalpathi of Kalpathi Investments, an alumnus of IIT Madras who is involved with PanIIT Alumni Association.
According to the study , for over 60% of the founders, the current unicorn was the only company they had ever built. However, indicating that experience pays, the research said those who founded more than one company have, on average, a 34.5% higher valuation than those who founded just one company ($4.29billion vs $5.88billion). In terms of countries that are home to the most number of unicorns, US tops the list with 144 unicorns, followed by China with 47. India grabs the third spot with 10.
Preparatory programme
2015: IIT preparatory programme
The Times of India, Jul 26 2015
Hemali Chhapia
Three-fold jump in IIT prep course enrolments in 2015
In 2015, the IIT preparatory course has close to three times the number of students it had last time -63 -as also the year before that when there were 48 students. To qualify for the preparatory programme, students need to score a mere 31 marks of 504 (6.1%) and 1.54 marks of 88 (1.75%) in each subject. This is lower than the subjectwise qualifying marks for the prep course last year, which was three.
IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-BHU will have the largest count of prep course students with 36 and 32, respectively .Indian School of Mines and IIT-Roorkee come next with 26 and 21 candidates “It is heartening to see we have not had to draw up a preparatory list for scheduled caste students. But most students who will have to undergo the one-year bridge course are from the physically challenged category and those from the scheduled tribe,“ said a JEE (advanced) chairman.
Each year, IITs provide concessions to reserved category students.They lower entry levels, going to 50% below the last general category student's marks to do justice to the quota. But to reach the colleges' full capacity , scores are relaxed once again and students are selected to be coached in maths, physics and chemistry for a year before they can join the IITs after clearing an internal test.
As against the previous five years, there may not be enough students this year to fill the seats meant for reserved category students. In 2012, for the first time the elite technology schools did not hold any preparatory course for ST candidates. For the sixth consecutive year in 2015, no SC candidate had to spend a year doing the bridge course. More students qualified than the number of seats available.
Ranking the IITs/ The IIT of first choice
Which IIT is considered the best?
IIT-Bombay first choice for 44 out of top 50 rankers
Yogita Rao & Hemali Chhapia, The Times of India TNN | Jul 2, 2014
While 58 of the top 100 rankers joined IIT-B, the number has fallen a bit, compared to 67 in 2013.
MUMBAI: IIT-Bombay continues to be the top choice for the best of the young brains in the country. The institute has retained its position as the most sought-after IIT in the country, with Delhi and Chennai coming a distant second and third.
A number of factors have been responsible for this, ranging from importance given to streams over geography, from placement records to newer short-term courses on offer, tell students. Of the top 100 rankers in JEE-Advanced 2014, almost all have opted for IIT-B computer science as their first choice. But 58 were allotted seats at IIT-B in computer science in the first round, followed by Delhi, where 36 of the top 100 have been admitted (see c).
While 58 of the top 100 rankers joined IIT-B, the number has fallen a bit, compared to 67 in 2013. Thirty-six students were allotted seats at IIT-D, as opposed to last year's 29. IIT-B director Devang Khakhar said he was happy that 44 of the top 50 rankers have opted for the Powai institute. "Students may have placed more importance to the stream over the location and once seats in computer science were filled up, they looked at the other IITs," he said. IIT-B has 44 seats for computer science and engineering in the open category.
Of the top 10 rankers, nine have opted for computer science at IIT-B and the only female candidate in the top 10 ranks, Aditi, who got the seventh rank, chose to go for computer science at IIT-Delhi. Computer science was among the most popular choices at IIT-B and IIT-D followed by electrical engineering among the top 100 ranks. Only one signed up for a dual degree programme in computer science at IIT-D and the rest chose the flagship BTech programmes at IIT-B, IIT-D, IIT-M and IIT-K.
This year, the IIT-Madras zone, home to popular coaching hub Andhra Pradesh, cornered half the seats in the most elite club of the JEE (Advanced); 50 of the top 100 ranks were from the zone. But only four among the top 100 are headed for IIT-Madras, though up to 30% top rankers used to choose Chennai earlier. Food apparently is the reason behind the dip. "Students have often said IIT-M does not have the kind of food that Bombay or Delhi have. But all our students are good, whether they are in the top 100 or below," said an IIT-M dean.
Twenty years ago, IIT-Kharagpur was the engineering mecca but the oldest IIT did not receive a single student from the top 100 this year. Even the new kids on the block, IIT Roorkee and Guwahati haven't got a single student from the top slots. IIT-Guwahati senior officials attributed this to the low representation of students from the Northeast.
Graduate Employability Rankings: 2015
The Times of India, Nov 27 2015
Jhimli mukherjeepandey
IIT-Kgp grads most employable: Study
IIT Kharagpur was rated the most employable institute in the country by an international survey for higher educational institutions on Thursday . It is also the only other institute apart from IIT Bombay to make it to the top 100 of the global employability rankings.
Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), which released its first ever Graduate Employability Rankings on Thursday , placed IIT Kharagpur at 77 and IIT Bombay at 93. The other Indian institutes to figure on the list are IIT Madras (rank 119), IIT Delhi (160) and University of Delhi (175). The top five ranks were grabbed by Stanford University, MIT, Harvard University, University of Cambridge and Yale University .
With a score of 51.0, IIT Kharagpur rubs shoulders with the likes of University of Liverpool (score 53), University of Lancaster (52.9) and Pennsylvania State University (52).
IIT Kharagpur scored impressively in parameters like `graduate employability rate' and `employers' presence'.The fact that it managed the highest number of pre-placement offers for the 2015-16 session among all IITs drew the attention of QS. The survey also took into account the fact that it has the highest number of graduates among the IITs and on an average 1500 of its students get jobs every year with impressive compensation packages.
“The students of IIT Kgp are all talented. It is our in terdisciplinary approach and the compulsory indus trial internships that they go for which makes our stu dents ready for their new jobs,“ director P P Chakra borty told TOI on Thursday .
In its maiden project, the QS Graduate Employability Rankings survey analyzed over 44,000 responses from 1,239 universities. Experts took a year to conduct thor ough investigations before re aching their conclusions. The methodology included param eters like employer reputa tion, partnerships with em ployers, alumni outcomes employers' presence on cam pus and graduate employmen rate. The report was released at the Young Universities Fo rum in Melbourne.
2015, first choice: IIT Mumbai
The Times of India, Jul 08 2015
65 of 100 top students opt for IIT Bombay
Sixty-five of the top 100 rankers in JEE (Advanced) have picked seats in IIT Bombay , helping it retain its position as the most sought after campus ahead of 17 other premier IITs. IIT-Delhi, reports Yogita UP's Saroj brothers get colleges of choice, P 11 Rao, was the second choice with 30 students choosing it, a drop from 36 in 2015, followed by IIT-Madras and IITKanpur, who were at a distant third and fourth position with three and two students, respectively . More than one in four among the top 1,000 also chose the Mumbai campus. Sixty-five of the top 100 rankers of JEE (Advanced) 2016 have picked IIT-Bombay , helping it retain its position as the most sought-after campus ahead of 17 other premier Indian Institutes of Technology .
The figure from the first allotment round on Tuesday marked an increase over 2015, which saw 58 among the top 100 opting for the Powai institute. In fact, 2014 was the first time in years that fewer than 60 of the top 100 had picked Powai.
IIT-Delhi emerged as the second choice for aspirants, with 30 students choosing the campus, a drop from 36 in 2015. IIT-Madras and IITKanpur were a distant third and fourth, with three and two students, respectively .
Of the top 100 JEE (Advanced) rankers, 34 belonged to the IIT-Bombay zone and, therefore, the institute was an obvious choice. Interestingly , many of the 28 rankers from the IIT-Madras zone seem to have opted for IIT-B as only three chose the former.
“A majority of students perceive it as the top institute. At 18, most students make their choices based on what their friends and family would recommend. Computer science and engineering (CSE) and electrical engineering were the popular choices for students in the top ranks,“ said Devang Khakhar, IIT-B director.
The opening and closing ranks for CSE at IIT-B were 1 and 59, indicating that most in the top 60 have chosen the programme. At IIT-Delhi, it opened at 31 and closed at 102.At Kanpur it started at 26, and at 61 in Chennai. Admission o the electrical engineering programme in IIT-B opened at rank 9 and closed at 240. Elec rical and mechanical engi neering followed CSE as the sought-after courses at Powai and Delhi.
If the old favourites -Ma dras and Kanpur -have slid n the rankings, Kharagpur and the newer ones, Roorkee and Guwahati, have not man aged to get even a single student from the top ranks. IIT officials attributed this to the low representation of students from the northeast.
“Students' choices indicate that they do not pick institutes just for academics and campus life, but a lot of them are influenced by what is in store outside the campus too,“ said former IIT-Delhi director R K Shevgaonkar.
2016: IIT Bombay tops again
The Times of India, Jul 01 2016
Yogita Rao & Toyoja Upadhyay
IIT-Bombay got the cream of students in 2016 too, with 67 of the top 100 rankers choosing the Powai campus to pursue their BTech. In 2015, it was 65. IIT-Delhi retained its second position among the top choices of students, but toppers choosing the institute dropped from 30 to 28 in 2016. The remaining five candidates have chosen IITMadras. IIT-Kanpur, which usually gets two to three students from the top 100 ranks, was not the top preference for any of the 100 topper in 2016.
The Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) released results of the first round of allotment of seats in IITs, NITs and other centrally-funded technological institutes.
IIT-Bombay and IIT-Delhi, though, are the top choices of students with higher ranks, while courses in IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Madras have received more applications from the 33,500 students who registered for admissions in 2016. Each of the 1,341 seats at IIT-Kharagpur got 224 applications, while there were 221 contenders for each seat at Chennai. The contenders for every seat at IIT-Delhi and IIT-Bombay were 190 and 161respectively.
In the top 500, IIT-Kanpur was allotted to 56 students, a drop from 75 in 2015. Newer institutes like IIT-Hyderabad and Gandhinagar too got two and one student respectively from the top 500. Of the top 100, 37 belonged to the IIT-Bombay zone, and therefore the institute was an obvious choice for them. But the IITMadras zone, which had 30 students in the top 100, seemed to have chosen IIT-B too, as only five opted for the former.
The opening and closing ranks for computer science and engineering (CSE) at IIT-B was one and 60 respectively, indicating that most in the top 60 headed there. At IIT-Delhi the allotment in CSE started at 24 and closed at 111 rank.Admission to the electrical engineering programme in IIT-B opened at rank 9 and closed at 240. CSE was among the most popular choices at IIT-B and IIT-D, followed by electrical, mechanical and engineering physics. CSE, electrical, mechanical and civil engineering are the most popular among all IITs put together.
JEE (Advanced) organising chairman K V Krishna said students usually go by statistics of 2015, therefore there is hardly any change in admission trends.
See also
Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for IITs
There also are pages on individual IITs, e.g.
