<p>I can tell you that harvard is the most famous and most prestigious university in the world, but it's not difinately the best. I would say that Moscow State University, Oxford, Cambridge have the most rigorous curriculums and requirements. they don't relay on subjective factors like essay, ECs and so on. They need only strong knowledge. They are the best. There are no legacy, quotas for URM and other unfair things in their admission process.</p>
<p>I'd debate that Oxbridge only require strong knowledge, and they actually do have an essay as part of the application. ECs are also valuable, as is the candidate's personality - domestic applicants often have interviews spread over multiple days with faculty.</p>
<p>And actually, there are quotas for Oxbridge - search any UK news site, and you'll find there's been a lot of controversy over Oxford and Cambridge having quotas for state school applicants.</p>
<p>
[quote]
There are other places in the across the globe (namely in Asian and European countries) doing just as phenomenol things and training the students of tomorrow (especially in applied sciences). I think we can agree that the students at Harvard and IIT are top-notch and will shape the future of this world.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Definately. Altough, my belif is that ultimately, it's the person, not the college that ends up making the difference in this, and there's no suprise that Harvard and IIT have plenty of people like this.</p>
<p>
[quote]
They need only strong knowledge. They are the best. There are no legacy, quotas for URM and other unfair things in their admission process.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This doesn't make it "the best." If that was true, then Caltech, who puts much less emphasis on this than any other top US college, would be the best in the US, but it isn't necessarily true. My parents graduated from an Eastern European college that was a complete meritocracy, but that doesn't make it stronger than the colleges I will attend.</p>
<p>
[quote]
This doesn't make it "the best." If that was true, then Caltech, who puts much less emphasis on this than any other top US college, would be the best in the US, but it isn't necessarily true. My parents graduated from an Eastern European college that was a complete meritocracy, but that doesn't make it stronger than the colleges I will attend.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I agree. But.. I consider HYPM, Oxford, Cambridge, MSU of the same level, and if to choose from them I wouldn't pick up Harvard. Caltech, yes, doesn't pay much attention on those factors, but it's not so famous and so distinguished.</p>
<p>HarvarAlum an Jacobian, while debating the strength of the math programs is valid, IIT is known primarily for its engineering, and I am certain that the engineering curriculum at IIT trumps those of both MIT and Harvard. </p>
<p>Other prestigious universities in Russia and China have also been mentioned. I do not have enough knowledge about any of these universities to debate one way or another, but I am certain that their alumni have not made the technological impact that IIT alums have made. They have president/CEO/founder positions at companies such as Oracle, McKinsey, and Sun Microsystems, not to mention incredibly high positions at all the top tech companies in the US. These high positions are not exceptions, they are the norm. This is IIT's expertise, and this is where it is making a difference. I challenge Harvard, Oxbridge, and any university from Moscow or China to come up with an equally prestigious list of leaders in the tech industry.</p>
<p>I am not debating which school is a better university. It is obviously Harvard. However, drawing from my knowledge of the two universities and from my personal relationships with alumni from both universities, in my mind it is equally obvious that IIT engineering trumps Harvard engineering, and it can be seen in both the schools' curriculum and the achievements of their alumni.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
HarvarAlum an Jacobian, while debating the strength of the math programs is valid, IIT is known primarily for its engineering, and I am certain that the engineering curriculum at IIT trumps those of both MIT and Harvard.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Maybe, I know little about engineering programs. </p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Other prestigious universities in Russia and China have also been mentioned. I do not have enough knowledge about any of these universities to debate one way or another,
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>When I read this, I thought to myself, "Man, it is so refreshing to read the post of someone who doesn't debate something they don't know! I have an awful lot of respect for this guy..."</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
but I am certain that their alumni have not made the technological impact that IIT alums have made. They have president/CEO/founder positions at companies such as Oracle, McKinsey, and Sun Microsystems, not to mention incredibly high positions at all the top tech companies in the US.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>And when I read this, I realized the poster is irrevocably and passionately biased in favor IIT, and completely deaf to reason.</p>
<p>If you don't know ANYTHING about these other universities, why the hell are you debating their respective merits against IIT? </p>
<p>I know current or former students at each of the international universities I mentioned. In most cases, I know the math and physics education at these schools too. </p>
<p>You, however, admit to knowing anything, but say, "Oh well, IIT is way better than them regardless."</p>
<p>Stupid, stupid, stupid. </p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
These high positions are not exceptions, they are the norm.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>No, they aren't. High-ranking jobs in industry are not the norm for ANY university, not Harvard, and not any international university. </p>
<p>Don't make things up. </p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
I challenge Harvard, Oxbridge, and any university from Moscow or China to come up with an equally prestigious list of leaders in the tech industry.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>I might have taken you up on this offer if you had actually provided any type of list of "leaders". </p>
<p>You haven't.</p>
<p>Instead, all you've done is noted in passing three companies where IIT students hold prestigious positions. </p>
<p>Believe me, I can do much better than that for a school like MIT, Princeton, or Caltech, let alone Harvard or the best international institutions. </p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
in my mind it is equally obvious that IIT engineering trumps Harvard engineering, and it can be seen in both the schools' curriculum and the achievements of their alumni.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Uhh....maybe.</p>
<p>I am indian, 3 of my cousins go to IIT, in my terms, IIT = RAW Studying, i used to see them study literally like 24 hours a day to pass the IIT exam.. But what they and many other asians do not posses is Free Thought, which leads to Being an inventor or a great philosopher.. People who get into harvard are more than Just hardworking , intelligent beings.. They are able to think "outside" the box.. Thats is why in the last 50 years Europeans and Americans have being doing the inventing and us asians have been doing the "following"</p>
<p>Also people who get into harvard i can call truely "Special".. remember just being able to Do math thats has been already Taught does not make an individual a genius.. But rather doing math noone has ever done before makes a genius.. People who live in soceities like America and go to universities like harvard produce genius, namely bill gates. thats why i credit harvard being greater than IIT.</p>
<p>also from that artcle
<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/19/60minutes/main559476.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/19/60minutes/main559476.shtml</a>
"Murthys own son, who wanted to do computer science at IIT, couldnt get in. He went to Cornell, instead. Imagine a kid from India using an Ivy League university as a safety school. " </p>
<p>thats what money can buy you in america :)</p>
<p>also my uncle who is an IIT grad at Bombay(considered one of the best IITS in india) makes about 80,000 a year working as a computer programmer in NJ.. which is fairly low for his qulaficiation</p>
<p>
[quote]
Other prestigious universities in Russia and China have also been mentioned. I do not have enough knowledge about any of these universities to debate one way or another, but I am certain that their alumni have not made the technological impact that IIT alums have made
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is your biggest mistake. You try to determine the superiority of university judging by its alumni. its wrong. The students and the level of education given are the factors. For example, harvard gives only 4 math courses, while MSY gives 25. The curriculum is much stronger, much broader and deeper. the students have 8-10 hours of studying per day. They don't entertain, they don't enjoy, they STUDY. And who said that it's easy?</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>I challenge Harvard, Oxbridge, and any university from Moscow or China to come up with an equally prestigious list of leaders in the tech industry.<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>How about Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft? - Harvard men both. Scan through this list:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nndb.com/edu/473/000068269/%5B/url%5D">http://www.nndb.com/edu/473/000068269/</a></p>
<p>There among all the dozens of famous authors, actors, and world leaders there are plenty of business and technical leaders --> inventors, physicists, and CEOs.</p>
<p>you fellows debating the merits of harvard vs "oxbridge" vs IIT vs princeton in terms of technology are all WAY, WAY, WAY off base. do you actually know anything about science, technology, and engineering? you're missing two important words: stanford and berkeley.</p>
<p>Here is a list of IIT tech business alumni from wikipedia.org</p>
<p>Vindi Banga Chairman, HLL
Ajay Bharadwaj President, Biocon India
Arjun Malhotra Co-founder, HCL Technologies
Arun Sarin CEO of Vodafone
Ashok Soota CEO and Founder of MindTree
Avi Nash Advisory Director, Goldman Sachs
Ajit Jain President, Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group
Bharat Desai Chairman and CEO, Syntel
Gururaj Deshpande Co-founder Sycamore Networks
Kanwal Rekhi CEO Ensim Corporation; Ex-CTO Novell
Madhu Sudan Nevanlinna Prize, 2002
Manindra Agarwal Clay Research Award, 2002
N.R. Narayana Murthy Co-founder and Chairman of Infosys
Nandan Nilekani Co-founder and CEO of Infosys
Rajat Gupta Managing Director, McKinsey
Rakesh Gangwal CEO Worldspan, Ex-CEO US Airways Group
Ravi Uppal Vice-Chairman and MD, ABB India
Ronojoy Dutta Former President,United Airlines,President and CEO Air Sahara
Dr. Sadanand D. Joshi President, JTI Inc.
Shanker Agarwal Alaskan Pipeline, Miami Metro System
Som Mittal CEO Digital GlobalSoft
Victor Menezes Senior Vice Chairman, Citigroup
Vinod Khosla Co-founder Sun Microsystems
Ambuj Goyal GM IBM Lotus IBM
C. Mohan IBM Fellow, Almaden Research CenterIBM
Ramesh Agarwal IBM Fellow, T.J. Watson Research CenterIBM
Vyomesh "VJ" Joshi Kanpur Executive Vice President, Imaging and Personal Systems Group Hewlett Packard</p>
<p>Here is a list of tech-business alumni from coureur's site:</p>
<p>Donald J. Carty CEO of American Airlines 1998-2003
Albert V. Casey CEO of American Airlines 1974-85
Kenneth Chenault CEO of American Express
John Doerr Silicon Valley venture capitalist
Bill Gates Cofounder, Microsoft Corporation
Louis V. Gerstner CEO of IBM 1993-2002
Trip Hawkins Founder of Electronic Arts, 3D0
Loring Knoblauch CEO of Underwriter's Laboratories
Scott McNealy Co-founder, Sun Microsystems
James McNerney Chairman and CEO of 3M
Henry B. Schacht Former CEO of Cummins, Lucent
Jeffrey Skilling Disgraced CEO of Enron
Rick Wagoner Chairman, CEO of General Motors</p>
<p><<And when I read this, I realized the poster is irrevocably and passionately biased in favor IIT, and completely deaf to reason.</p>
<p>If you don't know ANYTHING about these other universities, why the hell are you debating their respective merits against IIT?</p>
<p>I know current or former students at each of the international universities I mentioned. In most cases, I know the math and physics education at these schools too.</p>
<p>You, however, admit to knowing anything, but say, "Oh well, IIT is way better than them regardless."</p>
<p>Stupid, stupid, stupid. >></p>
<p>I am NOT attempting to compare the quality of their universities, I merely made a statement, perhaps a brash statement, that IIT alumni have made a bigger impact in the tech industry. I did NOT say IIT is way better than them regardless. </p>
<p>Also, I request that you refrain from insulting me. I have not agreed with everything you have said, and you have also made statements that lack support, but I have never disrespected your intelligence. It's simply not necessary. </p>
<p>I have provided a list of noteable alumni in hi-tech business for both universities. Coureur, you pointed to a list of hundreds of names, but that included many very respectable names in many non-tech fields. I am not debating Harvard's superiority in this area, because I believe there is nothing to debate. Harvard is superior in almost every other major and every other industry. However, comparing noteable alumni from IIT compared to those from Harvard in the hi-tech area, it is clear both are very strong. </p>
<p>Now, let me point to another set of rankings, the US News College Rankings:</p>
<p>Harvard is not in the top 3 in ANY of these engineering fields, let alone in the top 10. For graduate schools, it is ranked twentieth in the United States. Twentieth! Since this is the case, why is it so hard to believe that IIT can provide a superior education in this field. It has already been stated by previous posters that IIT students study a ridiculous amount and have their nose to the grindstone for their 4 years in college. This is not the case at Harvard, where MIT students are known to take classes at Harvard to boost their GPAs. As kingduke stated, even in America, Stanford and Berkeley (and MIT) are considered to have much stronger engineering departments. So why is it not reasonable to say that IIT has a stronger engineering department than Harvard. </p>
<p>Now, I have posted alumni lists for IIT and Harvard. Can we see them for the other international universities?</p>
<p>iv4me, what is your point? That Harvard doesn't beat IIT in absolutely every deparment? Well, that's true. But when the score is 25-1 or something around that, it doesn't exactly reflect well on IIT. But if you insist, we can compare engineering departments for other big US schools. </p>
<p>Here is the list for Stanford:</p>
<p>Robert M. Bass, (MBA 1974) President, Keystone, Inc.
Sergey Brin (M.S.), Google co-founder
Ray Dolby, audio engineer, founder of Dolby Labs
David Filo (M.S.), Yahoo! cofounder
Carly Fiorina (1976), CEO of Hewlett-Packard from July 1999 until her forced resignation in February 2005.
Samer Hamadeh, Vault.com cofounder
Bill Hewlett (1934), Hewlett-Packard cofounder
Vinod Khosla (MBA), Sun Microsystems cofounder, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers partner
Philip H. Knight (MBA 1961), founder and former CEO, Nike
Robert Mondavi, vintner
David Packard (1934), Hewlett-Packard cofounder
Larry Page (M.S.), Google co-founder
Charles R. Schwab (1959, MBA 1961), founder, chairman, and CEO of Charles Schwab Corporation
Peter Thiel, PayPal cofounder, Clarium Capital founder
Jerry Yang, Yahoo! cofounder
Reed Hastings (M.S. 1988), Netflix founder </p>
<p>It's actually far more impressive than IIT's list. When you have the founders of Yahoo, Google, and Hewlett Packard on board, you know your company's going to have some presence in Silicon Valley. </p>
<p>And MIT:</p>
<p>Barry Blesser -- audio engineer, one-time president of the AES
Manuel Blum, computer scientist, recipient of the Turing Award in 1995 for his studies in computational complexity theory
Dan Bricklin -- co-inventor of Visicalc, the first WYSIWYG PC spreadsheet program
Whitfield Diffie -- pioneer of public-key cryptography and the Diffie-Hellman protocol.
Donald Douglas -- co-founder of McDonnell Douglas
Carly Fiorina -- former CEO of Hewlett-Packard
William Clay Ford, Jr. -- Chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Company
Cecil H. Green - co-founder of Texas Instruments
William R. Hewlett -- (Master's degree) co-founder of Hewlett-Packard
Mark Horowitz, B.S. and M.S. 1978-- founder of Rambus
David A. Huffman -- computer scientist known for Huffman coding used in lossless data compression
Steve Kirsch -- inventor of the optical mouse, co-founder of Frame Technology Corporation (the original company behind FrameMaker), founder of Infoseek Corporation
Raymond Kurzweil -- inventor and entrepreneur in synthesized-music keyboards, OCR and speech-to-text processing
Daniel Lewin -- founder of Akamai
Jack Little -- entrepreneur, co-founder of The MathWorks, which created and sells MATLAB
Hiram Percy Maxim - Inventor of the "Maxim Silencer" and founder of the American Radio Relay League
James McDonnell -- co-founder of McDonnell Douglas
Robert Metcalfe - entrepreneur, founder of 3Com; inventor of Ethernet
Robert Noyce -- integrated circuit pioneer, co-founder of Intel
Ken Olsen -- founder of Digital Equipment Corporation
John S. Reed -- Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange
Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. -- automobile entrepreneur, CEO of General Motors
Robert A. Swanson -- cofounder of Genentech
Andrew Tanenbaum -- computer scientist and creator of Minix, the precursor to Linux
Andrew Viterbi -- inventor of the Viterbi algorithm and cofounder of Qualcomm </p>
<p>This list pretty much crushes anything else there is to offer.</p>
<p>I would like to point out that some of the members on your list have attended those universities as graduate students, coming from IIT.</p>
<p>tetrahedron: the IMO should not be looked at when comparing math majors. please, most people in india have never heard of IMO(I just asked my cousin who is preparing for IIT).</p>
<p>Stop comparing IIT and Harvard. It's not leading us anywhere. Both are great institutions. Everyone's looking at the 'average students'. What happens if we look at the below average students. IIT's lower students are better than Harvard's lower students. This is true for sure.</p>
<p>IITers see their education as a ticket to financial security. Harvard see their education a ticket to becoming a smart well rounded individual. So its not really fair to compare the two, the motivation for the students are different.</p>
<p>
[quote]
tetrahedron: the IMO should not be looked at when comparing math majors. please, most people in india have never heard of IMO(I just asked my cousin who is preparing for IIT).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Then again, most people in any country in the world have never heard of a group or a ring, or analyis. On the other hand, I expect a math major to have heard of it. The fact that you have asked your cousin has very little to do with this discussion. I have already shown my claims - that IMOers become extremely succesful research mathematicians, and thus, when looking at a class of math majors, it's easier to predict success when we have plenty of IMOers, especially the succesful ones.</p>
<p>
[quote]
What happens if we look at the below average students. IIT's lower students are better than Harvard's lower students. This is true for sure.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So, back to making claims with no evidence whatsoever. </p>
<p>
[quote]
IITers see their education as a ticket to financial security. Harvard see their education a ticket to becoming a smart well rounded individual.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Do you really know what each student's motivation is? No, your cousin doesn't serve as an accurate source. Please don't generalize or stereotype.</p>
<p>"Do you really know what each student's motivation is?"</p>
<p>rofl, its easy to tell because MANY MANY IIT students come from Poor backgrounds.</p>
<p>Then again, so did Ramanujan, and I'm not so sure money was his motivation ...</p>
<p>I'm not stereotyping... It is common knowledge that people perceive IIT as a ticket to financial security.. thats why so many people take the exam in india.. indian values are very different from american values, something you can't comprehend. indians have more family values and thats why parents take their kids to expensive IIT-tutoring(they cant afford it). They want a better future for their kids and IIT is perceived as a 'golden ticket'. My dad went to IIT in CS and he told me that over 75% of the kids hope to land jobs in US right after IIT, because they want to make money so they can send it back and take care of their family's wellbeing. (This was a while ago, now people just want good jobs and better life in U.S.)</p>
<p>Now, back to the IMO. No, you don't know what you're talking about. Less than 2% of people in India have access to a computer, and schools don't talk about IMO. You are acting blind to realities my friend. No it's not the 'top' way to tell if a school is good at math or not. you're not looking at a significant difference. And no, most people do not know what IMO is in India. The only thing that is important to most indians is, getting into IIT. that's it.</p>
<p>i know cases where students who didn't get into IIT accepted a slot at Harvard, MIT, Cornell, UPenn-Wharton. I have only heard one case so far of a kid who got into IIT and chose to attend one of these schools instead.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Let's talk about company recruiting etc. For the fields that IIT grads are interested in, they are getting into all the top companies in the U.S. IIT grads are sought after especially in the tech-field because in generalities, they have very very strong work ethic.</h2>
<p>For some one living in the US, I would suggest Harvard over IIT. For some one livign I would suggest attending IIT over Harvard(much cheaper, more opportunities for THEM).</p>
<p>Bill Gates gives 7.5 million a year to IIT. He doesn't give as much, if at all, to Harvard. I think the richest man in the world's opinion is greater than yours.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'm not stereotyping... It is common knowledge that people perceive IIT as a ticket to financial security.. thats why so many people take the exam in india.. indian values are very different from american values, something you can't comprehend. indians have more family values and thats why parents take their kids to expensive IIT-tutoring(they cant afford it).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>We're having a debate, so you're not making a point by telling me that I can't possibly understand. You're also stereotyping, and your defense of this is that it is "common knowledge" (altough Americans can't possibly understand.) Once again, what your dad told you, like it or not, is not sacrosanct without evidence. As you can see, I've provided evidence for my claims, why not do the same for yours.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Now, back to the IMO. No, you don't know what you're talking about. Less than 2% of people in India have access to a computer, and schools don't talk about IMO. You are acting blind to realities my friend.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Read my last post. I didn't claim that every Indian is very familiar with the IMO. On the contrary, I agreed, and stated that similarly, most of the public in any country doesn't know the least about mathematics. I hate to tell you, but I doubt that more than a few schools (exclude the TJ-type tech magnets and strong privates) in the US know anything about the IMO. Furthermore, your statement also holds true for China - but they win the IMO nearly every year. So I don't see what you are trying to say. Most Indians don't know about the IMO? True, same for most Americans, Russians, etc... Perhaps you are trying to say that most talented Indian mathematicians don't know about the IMO. If that were the case, I would agree with you. But it doesn't seem to be, as India has a well-established National Olympiad, as well as an IMO camp, team, etc...</p>
<p>
[quote]
know cases where students who didn't get into IIT accepted a slot at Harvard, MIT, Cornell, UPenn-Wharton. I have only heard one case so far of a kid who got into IIT and chose to attend one of these schools instead.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Right, but what does this prove? There are kids who apply to Harvard early and MIT regular action, then get rejected from Harvard and accepted to MIT. Does this mean that Harvard is worse than MIT? No. Does this mean that MIT is a safety for the Harvard reject? Again, no. Even if your claim had meaning, again your knowledge of individual cases doesn't say anything for the majority of cases.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Bill Gates gives 7.5 million a year to IIT. He doesn't give as much, if at all, to Harvard. I think the richest man in the world's opinion is greater than yours.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So I should perhaps stop having an individual opinion because Bill Gates is wealthier than I am? Doesn't sound like really intelligent logic. Then again, Gates gives more money to foundations against AIDS in Africa. Perhaps I should skip college altogether and join such an institution? </p>
<p>(Gates dropped out of Harvard.)</p>