<p>IIT students might fantasize about MIT because of it’s foreign glamour but I know students of both schools and I think they’re pretty equal academically.</p>
<p>Putturani, there is no doubt that students at IIT are of the highest calibre. And to many on CC, that is the main criteria for determining institutional quality. But in all other ways, MIT is significantly better than IIT.</p>
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<p>Excellent way you’ve phrased it. I’ve mentioned before my S and I have compared ourselves with each other many times and while I may have been slightly superior in solving problems in the text books, his skills in what’s useful in the real world, and dealing with people, are an order or magnitude better. If he had a choice between going to IIT or his current university, a notch below MIT, I would have strongly discouraged him from going to IIT, even though to me, those were the best years of my life.</p>
<p>^^ ok, I think I agree with that.
Of course, MIT has more money as well and IIT is unfortunately plagued by political things once in a while :(</p>
<p>Much of the conversation taking place here is ludicrous. Yes, MIT has more funding and thus better research facilities, but I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that the average level of knowledge, in terms of physics/engineering at the least, going into, and coming out of, IIT is much higher than that of MIT.</p>
<p>Think about the rigor of the exam the students have to take to get in. Think about the acceptance rate. You can see, in many MIT acceptance threads, students who got into MIT, but placed between then 50th and the 60th percentile on the IIT entrance exam.</p>
<p>Also, look at many of the leading technological firms in the US; they are lead by Indians, many of which, if not most, graduated from IIT. </p>
<p>Some of the arguments provided in this thread lead me to believe that CC not only has the top 2% of the high school society but also the bottom 2%. I mean really… I fail to understand how the level of power that the resident nation possesses significantly affects the education you are to receive.</p>
<p>Those of you bringing up the average salary of graduates need to cite your sources and understand the context that you are talking from. I’m an Indian, thus I am naturally a little biased, but even I, who has lived in both US and India, know that the costs of living are different. It may be possible that an IIT graduate makes USD 40,000 a year but that translates to Rs. 120,000 a month in India, which is a lot of money compared to the costs of living there.</p>
<p>Each school has its benefits and its flaws, thus it is impossible to comment on which is better. It is hard to comment on whether an IIT degree or a MIT degree will take you further but it is easy to say that either way, you will succeed. You may get a better/more enjoyable education at MIT, but at IIT you will come out with more technical knowledge.</p>
<p>I, personally, think that this debate is futile and I would advise all other posters to think a little before they most. If I said something wrong, I am open to opinions.</p>
<p>Jebar, MIT is the world’s #1 Engineering institute. IIT is among the top 20, but so are Imperial in the UK, Ecole Polytechnique in France (tougher entrance requirements than MIT and Caltech, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the faculty, facilties or curriculum) and US Engineering schools such as Carnegie Mellon, cornell, Georgia Tech, Michigan and UIUC.</p>
<p>Yes, that is where the funding and research prospects come in. If IIT had the same funding and research facilities as MIT, then I can say without doubt that IIT would be #1 on that list, provided the list wasn’t biased in any way, as is the common case with said lists.</p>
<p>I like MIT more. Go America!</p>
<p>“If IIT had the same funding and research facilities as MIT, then I can say without doubt that IIT would be #1 on that list”</p>
<p>How do you know for sure Jebar? The same can be said of many top Engineering programs? Why not Polytichnique in France or Imperial in the UK? Why not a Russian university? Why not Berkeley? And who is to say any university can do more with its money than MIT?</p>
<p>Here’s my opinion</p>
<p>Time of Enrollment: Most IIT students are smarter than MIT in academics i.e. Mathematics and sciences. However, MIT student body is more well-rounded in terms of EC’s. </p>
<p>Time of Graduation: MIT students are more practical than IIT ones. However, in theoretical part IIT’s are still smarter</p>
<p>Hence, both universities have their own niche. Both are highly regarded as dream institutes in their respective countries. We are just comparing apples with oranges here. </p>
<p>However, if accepted in both, I would chose MIT because it is in US, better managed, and more internationally known. </p>
<p>Final point: Why is MIT more internationally known? 1) It is in US 2) It is easier for international students to get into MIT than IIT (3% acceptance of MIT is still higher) 3) MIT has more varied majors than IIT</p>
<p>Let me clear your misconception about acceptance rates.</p>
<p>MIT Acceptance Rate: Students get their scores (SAT, GPA, etc.) and then they see if they can get into or not. Then they apply. The students who apply are really nice. Out of these good students the acceptance rate is …(what so ever)</p>
<p>IIT Acceptance Rate: Students sit in the exam- IIT-JEE and it is said that they have applied, but actually they have just appeared for exams and they don’t know their results. </p>
<p>Suppose if a person gets his IIT-JEE score like SAT and then apply for Admissions then the acceptance rate will be like 90% or higher in IITs/</p>
<p>If u wan’t to compare acceptance rate then you should say:
MIT Acceptance Rate: Total no. of students admitted by MIT X 100 /Total No. of students who took SAT in the world (Which is the system in IIT)</p>
<p>Like in SAT score, if someone knows that his IIT-JEE score is 50 or 100 or 150, then he will not apply- (And about 90% students who appear for IIT-JEE score this much only and are considered applicants)</p>
<p>So, acceptance rates can’t be compared, and if those are to be- then its 90% IIT and 8% MIT.</p>
<p>1: In terms of admission, IIT is far less competitive than Tsinghua University or Peking University in China and the Chinese college entrance exam and Subject competitions in China are much more rigorous than those in India. Think about who always wins international Olympiads, not even a comparason. Therefore Tsinghua>IIT. </p>
<p>2: There’s a recent news that the person who got the Highest Score on the Chinese college entrance exam in Beijing got rejected by all 11 U.S. universities he had applied to. What does this mean? Being good at test taking is far from being good at real Academics. Scholarship is about understanding, connection and innovation. Being familiar at writing out test solutions doesn’t mean anything. This makes any top American Universities >> IIT.</p>
<p>As of 2010 AD, any top American University>Top Chinese Universities>=IIT. This is consensus among the educated.</p>
<p>1: In terms of admission, IIT is far less competitive than Tsinghua University or Peking University in China and the Chinese college entrance exam and Subject competitions in China are much more rigorous than those in India. Think about who always wins international Olympiads, not even a comparason. Therefore Tsinghua>IIT. </p>
<p>2: There’s a recent news that the person who got the Highest Score on the Chinese college entrance exam in Beijing got rejected by all 11 U.S. universities he had applied to. What does this mean? Being good at test taking is far from being good at real Academics. Scholarship is about understanding, connection and innovation. Being familiar at writing out test solutions doesn’t mean anything. This makes any top American Universities >> IIT.</p>
<p>As of 2010 AD, any top American University>Top Chinese Universities>=IIT. This is consensus among the educated.</p>
<p>Your logic is completely flawed. First of all your statistics are wrong. Tsinghua has a 50% acceptance rate according to their own website. Secondly, more people with VERY high scores get into top universities in the US, and get rejected by IIT than vice versa thus, using your logic, IIT>top universities.</p>
<p>Lastly, there is no way you can possibly say that the education system in China is more rigorous than in India without proper justification, especially when people are studying 7 hours a day on weekends for insignificant UNIT TESTs when they are 12 years old.</p>
<p>“…more people with VERY high scores get into top universities in the US, and get rejected by IIT than vice versa thus, using your logic, IIT>top universities.”</p>
<p>JebarPolsky, that is not true whatsoever. It is a mathematical impossibility. Do you realize that MIT, Stanford, Caltech and Berkeley (the top 4 Engineering universities on earth) combined accept roughly 800 international students each year and matriculate only 450 of those. That’s from the entire World. Tell me, of those 800 accepted, how many do you think come from India? 150? Maybe 200? Certainly not more. Universities have quotas on international students, particularly from countries like China and India. Are you telling me the IITs accept only 200 students each year? American universities could not care less about test scores. MIT and Stanford reject 70% of applicants with perfect 2400 on their SATs. Those universities are looking for outstanding students with leadership skills and creativity. </p>
<p>Some larger elite programs, such as Cornell, Georgia Tech, Michigan and UIUC accept more international students, but even those combined will accept fewer than 3,000 international students each year. Of those, roughly 500 are Indian. In other words, the top 10 Engineering programs in the US accept fewer than 1,000 Indian students. I am sure many of those are rejected by the IITs, but tell me, how many Indian students apply to those top 10 Engineering schools? 25,000? Maybe even 50,000? I am willing to bet more than 1,000 of those are admitted into IITs.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, I phrased that wrong. I was comparing international admissions of IIT to top colleges specifically - not all of them treated as one. Furthermore, IIT only focuses on engineering so it is wrong to compare that international admissions for an engineering school to one that caters to a variety of majors. You should compare admissions figures of engineering at specific top colleges when compared to IIT. Then you will find that IIT has more.</p>
<p>Compared to top Chinese universities, IIT doesn’t even come close, in terms of the criteria that IIT fans usually use. </p>
<p>Admission rate:
Tsinghua 3500/ 10,200,000= 0.035%.
IIT 2%. Doesn’t EVEN COME CLOSE!</p>
<p>Best test takers?
E.X. International Olympiad:
China team was ranked Number One in Eight OUT OF TEN international mathematics olympiads competitions from 2000 to 2009 while India was ranked 20ish on average. In fact, any six of the hundreds of Chinese math competitors in the provincial level can possibly get the 20ish rank.
In terms of students’ test taking skills, IIT doesn’t even come close. </p>
<p>Hours and hardworking?:
It is common for Chinese high school to start at 6:40 am and end at 11:00 pm, after which there are still homeworks. For my own high school ,we go back home once per month for TWO DAYS only. It’s also extremely common for children to learn science/math olympiads BEFORE they go to ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.
Therefore in terms of hours and hardworking, Chinese students are definitely not less.</p>
<p>But why would Tsinghua and its students consider MIT a better counterpart, while its admission rate is lower and its students more skilled at test taking? Because the above criterias means little when it comes to Academics. Scholarship is about discovery and innovation, or knowledge creation. Being able to score high on tests only means that you can write out solutions for problems ALREADY SOLVED, which is…far from real academics. Academic rankings don’t rank how much your students get in their test, they rank how much knowledge you have created, how much paper, patents and what’s the influence of them (citations).
In this regard, IIT, as a University, loses completely to any Top American University.</p>
<p>Until very recently, it’s generally true that the only undergraduate students that MIT admits from Asia are those who won Gold Medals in International xxxx Olympiad. For example, in 2006, the Chinese IMO team had six participants, five Gold Medals, and four of them are Perfect Scorers, and all of the four and only the four got admitted to MIT and all went there. Another three Chinese students admitted that year were three Physics Gold Medalists.</p>
<p>Another recent news, the second Indian Girl who was qualified to participated in IPhO is going to MIT. (<a href=“http://www.mynews.in/News/International_Physics_Olympiad:_Mumbai_girl_Aakansha_with_4_others_will_represent_India_N56027.html[/url]”>http://www.mynews.in/News/International_Physics_Olympiad:_Mumbai_girl_Aakansha_with_4_others_will_represent_India_N56027.html</a></p>
<p>In fact, MIT is the only top American college that you can get into with test taking skills alone, but you have to be IXXO gold medalists, generally speaking. For HYP, even IXXO winners have little chance, if they are just good at taking tests.</p>
<p>I was going through the thread, being an Indian, i can clearly give tongue to that MIT is way better than IIT.</p>
<p>Going back to some of the posts, people arguing about the acceptance rate?</p>
<p>If the acceptance rate is low? Does that make a college better?, and if a certain class of student gets through the IIT-JEE exam, does that make him INTELLIGENT? Can you measure INTELLIGENCE?</p>
<p>The answer to the question, is a straight NO.</p>
<p>Infact, its good that MIT’s acceptance rate is higher than IIT’s, atleast they give a chance to interested students who really want to pursue engineering!</p>
<p>And If IIT was such a great college, INDIA would have been way better than America. Cause engineers as in, are directly or indirectly involved in the development of a country, more than the people from any other field. </p>
<p>But the truth is AMERICANS are way practical, sensible, intelligent and moreover they know how to get the work done, and undoubtedly they are technologically advance than INDIA.
Unlike most of the Indians, they don’t study for degrees.</p>
<p>IITIANS may be literate, but its not always probable that they are EDUCATED!</p>
<p>And it’s not always, that real intelligent students, who have the spark to do something great, and possess an unmeasurable kindle, love for the subject, may get through IIT-JEE.</p>
<p>If i am not able to understand FRENCH, does that make me DUMB? The same way a person cracking the IIT-JEE exam isn’t a genius. He’s/She’s just a HARDWORKING student, who managed to understand and then crack the examination in a better way than the one’s who weren’t able to.</p>
<p>Imagine a scenario, a ship is in the MIDDLE of the ocean, there is no connectivity, and the ocean is struck by a TSUNAMI? If at that very instance, an IITIAN in the ship isn’t able to come up with a solution and save others life, his degree is USELESS. And at that very moment, his higher mathematics, higher physics is actually of no-use, neither his academic excellence will come into play, nor will his IIT-JEE score!(many will argue on that!)
His aptitude, presence of mind and attitude will come into play, which has nothing to do with cracking an IIT-JEE exam!(many will argue on that!)</p>
<p>So i think, if you look out for overall development, practical-knowledge, extra-curricular activities and with that academic accomplishments, MIT is faaaaaaaar better than any IIT.</p>
<p>And that’s a bitter truth!</p>
<p>Yes, can you imagine the type of students that go to IIT? Indians who have studied their entire lives for standarized tests, not doing anything else or even studying certain subjects! Having a social life, playing sports, pursuing your interests, and basically doing anything outside of test prep actually hurts you!</p>