<p>^ Pretty ambitious plan, I must say. Cornell is very transfer-friendly, and has great engineering and business programs, so definitely apply there.</p>
<p>Good luck! :)</p>
<p>And yeah allow me to vent my anger a little. Universities at USA actually care if student is a super computer programmer who has contributed to the development of firefox and battlefield play4free or has developed two robots(well they do dont do much and are basic ones but still) or if he can play the guitar really well or if he paints well and also attended underwater basket weaving classes or if he is a great orator. But IIT is like you got frigging 112 rank you loser, cs is closed at 97 take something else that doesnt intrest you, oh you know btw the biggest package(pun intended) last year was from electronics and communication.</p>
<p>@PD yeah cornell is on my radar but my inability to pay is a big deterrent. Do they offer tata scholarship to transfers as well?</p>
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<p>No, they don’t. The US college application process is very superficial. You game it, you win. You have a hook, you win. Anything else, and you lose. They really wouldn’t give a flying **** about you if you’re an asian male requesting financial aid, who is interested in CS/Engineering, unless you have a very prestigious international distinction, for example.</p>
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<p>No idea about the TATA scholarship. Sorry.</p>
<p>It was just an exaggeration, who gives **** about underwater basket weaving. I mean to say they would care for an asian male blah blah who has done something extraordinary in one field and has a mediocre sat score. One hook in any field is enough. Here there is only JEE they dont give damn about anything else. You cannot say see admit me i’m the National Cyber Olympiad champion.</p>
<p>Nomad, there are reasons why IIT admits students the way it does. The chinese also have their Gao Kao but that applies to every university and it is a pre-requisite for going to university. And honestly you dont have the right to say who gives a **** about underwater basket-weaving, because anyone can equally say who gives a **** if you made two simple robots or designed a stupid game. There are also many arguments against the american system of doing things. It tends to be extremely arbitrary. Ill admit it, I have been favoured by the US system. There are people in my school, a lot better and more dedicated to physics and math; a lot more accomplished, but didnt get through because maybe I appeared more interesting. I do not deserve Caltech to be honest, im just lucky and I feel bad at taking someone else’s place just cause I could write better. </p>
<p>I understand you being bitter about the CS 97 vs your 112 thing. But honestly there has to be a cut-off somewhere. For the amount of money that the govt spends on the IITs, they can only have that small number of seats. And I am sure if you tried for a different IIT, you couldve gotten your CS. </p>
<p>The IIT’s represent a great value proposition and you shouldnt underestimate them. I can assure you that during a SURF or a UROP, you will probably not find yourself a patent as an undergrad. It is unheard of and your research supervisor will probably take the credit. Which is why you should just go to the US for PG and do doctoral studies. This is when people get their patents and start their firms.</p>
<p>Okay Okay things are flaming up here, let it cool. The question was whether i should transfer or not and not whether the indian system is better or the us one. And as for underwater basket weaving i didnt say that it was said by mit admissions website.</p>
<p>I’m bitter because like other us colleges they should allow declaration of major in the second year, and it should be based on interest. No one says to you in mit dude you got a low sat score you cannot opt for mechanical engg as your major.</p>
<p>I know that thats why i mentioned patent after PG. And you atleast get some exposure to research in UROP or SURF where as at IIT you have absolutely no opportunity.</p>
<p>IIT is a great college, with great professors and stuff. What i meant to say was it is not a match for me. The student culture, the educational system, and other things make a college experience are not what i wanted from my college. But lets see i havent started taking classes, but still i heard from my seniors who are enrolled there. The dorms, The mess, Other facilities all are not that good too.</p>
<p>PS: I was wrong after a recent chat with a friend who got air 94 it turns out that cut off was 90 for cs!! :O</p>
<p>It all depends on what we want from education. I don’t want what the IIT and this whole system of Indian education provides. Super-duper lucrative jobs? A plethora of luxury? No. Accomplishing something at a global level in scientific research and dedicating my life to science? Hell yeah! I am well aware of what **** can reality do to my dreams, but studying in US (UK etc.) will give me more chance of converting my dreams into a reality, than studying here. From what I perceive education and science as, I can never qualify the JEE (and I don’t want to rather, why would I if I don’t want to be an engineer?) with the mindset I possess and yet I might have more scientific knowledge than the toppers themselves. In India, nobody cares (besides of course, my parents, otherwise I wouldn’t even have been a member of this website.) about what I want to do, they treat me as an immature kid incapable of governing himself, and I am not! Same with innumerable Indians all over India. Those who wanna be engineers, or the ones who care only for the money, just let them do what they want: prepare for the competition. But please spare some of us.</p>
<p>And I’d also like to mention that although IITs (and the other ‘world class’ institute of learning) might be called prestigious throughout the world, they lack the thing that they actually have created divides in the community - failures and achievers. Don’t try to pretend that you don’t know that’s the case, I know how we are intimidated (and brainwashed) in our coaching classes. </p>
<p>Another thing, I have often heard it being enunciated that IITians are smarter (book smart) than their counterparts in USA, UK etc. That’s a well misused quote. If there’s was a education system like ours, where they had to undergo 2-3 years of rigorous coaching classes for almost everything they wanted, they’d well be as book smart as we are apparently seen as. Same with China, and Japan. But isn’t it surprising that they still manage to bag the nobel prizes and all top positions? More research facilities someone would say. We have an enormous number of universities in India, much larger than them. Perhaps even they don’t have more than the cumulative funds of all the USA unis combined (have to do with the economy thing I guess, their is more than ours, so hence, more funds). But a big idea doesn’t need funds to get RECOGNIZED. And here, we just don’t get recognized. Nobody cares, except a few people who can’t do anything. All they want is an AIR 85 or something or an admission in the IAS (which has nothing to do with personality and being knowledgeable instinctively, you can learn all sort of these things at the multi-million-business coaching institutes nowadays, especially the mock interviews (rolleyes). That’s the major problem with this country. Talking about the poverty thing, IITs are pushing the rich and poor more apart rather than decreasing the equality (rich are becoming rich at a more than ever rate, while poor are becoming rich, but at a very very low rate). I can elucidate my points even more but it’s not the right place. As for now, I JUST WANNA LEAVE.</p>
<p>I know I sound very very aggressive, but that’s the feeling I get when my conscience, freedom and perception are smothered everyday. I can’t do anything about that.</p>
<p>Nothing is escalating here. Nomad, Im not sure if you’ve done any research before but it seems you havent. I can assure you that going for PG from IIT and thus not having done SURF(which you can do as part of any college) or UROP doesnt disadvantage you in the least.</p>
<p>Let me paint you a picture of how research is like at the undergrad level. For the most part, it usually only involves, 1) getting coffee for the prof who’s your supervisor; 2) researching existing literature on your research topic, not understanding a ****, and redoing experiments that someone has already done before and arriving at less erudite conclusions because you really are too incompetent to comprehend what the guy has done and finally 3) Doing really dumb donkey work for your prof which involves dealing with reams of data, requiring the intellect of a donkey. Of course your lack of understanding improves by the time you reach years 3 and 4 but lets face it, the guys writing cutting edge, original papers are doctorates mostly or post grads at the very least. When you’re an undergrad, you really know very little about the kind of math and physics that to the writers of the paper is obvious. In fact, many papers are so complex that honestly only a very few people in the world fully comprehend what it means. Now unless you’re some extreme prodigy, its difficult to write such papers in UG.</p>
<p>People who graduate IIT and then go do extremely well for PG in their grad schools so you dont have much to worry. Im only saying this so that you dont overly pressurize yourself. I also heard that if you get your kind of gpa combined with your rank, you can transfer to CS within your IIT after the first year? And if im not wrong, if you choose a different IIT, rank 112 or whatever is plenty good enough to get CS.</p>
<p>I don’t think TATA scholarships pay for transfers. If I read it correctly, they lock you in for 4 years when you are admitted and so don’t have money for other plans.</p>
<p>Eminemfan, I understand you feeling smothered and oppressed in this system. It is overly competitive no doubt. But there is a reason for that. Ours is a really large country. And it is poor. The IITs are government institutions; there is no doubt that if they were private, they’d have a lot better facilities and produce a lot more research. But in this country, research as part of IIT isnt as lucrative because our govt cannot afford to pay such high salaries and as a result, due to lack of incentives, very few people actually engage in research. </p>
<p>As for whether IITians are smarter than their equivalents, well sure they are. Do you have any idea how easy it is to get into MIT or Caltech if you’re american? Compare that with how insanely hard people have to push themselves to reach an IIT or a Tsinghua. Large, developing countries will have greater competition for their education. That is the fact of the matter. Now if you want to head out by all means, but dont hate on the system. Its not easy to just demand nobel prize winners. And as for the Nobel Prize, well you’re wrong. Its very rarely that someone gets a nobel prize just for an idea. Rather that time is long gone. Now to get a nobel prize you need massive labs spending ludicruous sums of money. And thats why we dont produce nobel prizes 1) Lack of incentives to research and 2) Lack of money and resources.</p>
<p>Okay, mysticgohan, even if I concur with your response - most of your points are absolutely correct, and in a fantastic way - but could you answer my few humble queries? :)</p>
<p>Firstly when you say this,</p>
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<p>I really want to reiterate my earlier point that if they had an education system equivalent to ours (consisting of at least a 10 hours a day’s study required - and an incalculable time indulging in coaching classes and tuitions practicing the same things over again and again, we’re more exam-oriented) they could’ve very well been as book smart as us. Their education system makes them street smart indeed. You’ve to obtain one essential thing on the expense of another. I have more than often seen Indian (and Pakistani as well) people humiliated on forums because they don’t have the least sense of what banter means, and even posts of people as old as 21 manifest incredible sense of immaturity (not saying that all people as just the same, but the percentage is much higher in our country) in their opinions of the simplest issues. Once I came out of that ‘immature’ stage, I myself realized that. Howewer, they know more bookish and factual stuff than them. But when it comes to expressing their own opinions, they seem like asinine people.</p>
<p>Secondly, ours is poor country (even if we’re one of bigger economies - the so-called, superpower), I totally agree. But what exactly has eradicated poverty in the last few years? (I’m not including the super-rich, btw) It may seem that people are more well-off today as say, ten years ago, but then, haven’t the prices proliferated by a huge amount as well? So basically doesn’t that mean the average middle-men is about the same position as he was yesterday? I’m no economics expert but my logical reasoning tells that to me. My friends on other forums as well as in RL mention countless of times that IITs and IIMs are a ladder for the poor to get out of their lives of squalor and moribundity. But what proof do we have that they have actually did it? Instead millions of rupees are paid to the coaching classes (which do not actually care about our careers, only money, it’s a multi-billion business) while only a handful of poor (the elite poor, as the ones at KOTA might call them) make it to the stars. Besides why are we all reliant on Btechs, MBAs, IAS etc. for jobs? As far as I know only a handful amount of degrees or jobs are considered prestigious in India. Don’t give me the unemployment pretext. If we want to increase employment, we HAVE to engender employments in new avenues and fields, increasing the MBA jobs won’t do much for a massively-unemployed nation. Again, those who I have argued this with tell me it’s risky. But how?</p>
<p>Lastly, don’t you think something is very very overly wrong with our education system? Yes, we have achieved to be a paragon of a highly growing country, but have we done so outside just building infrastructure or starting multi-million businesses? Social awareness, especially the virtue of hygiene are alarmingly missing from the society. And don’t blame it on the poor only, it’s the educated ‘ignorant’ class as well that is rendering our street and sewers overflowed with garbage (you need to visit the area where I live, quite developed and posh they say ;)). Hypocrisy at it’s peak: more than the developed countries (and we celebrate when we reach closer to the US in the GDP sector or growth rate). Something is seriously going wrong, isn’t it?</p>
<p>I don’t really feel these things, which I have repeated to myriad fellows time to time, would serve any purpose here. But, for you seem a nice, mature fellow, I am willing to discuss my thoughts with you.</p>
<p>Firstly, when I say Indians are smarter on the whole than Americans, I dont mean natural intellect. I am referring to the manifestation of the natural intellect spending years honing itself. Yeah I mean olympiad winners arent all super precocious talents, they’re very assiduous workers too. As for how asinine people from our country can be, well sure, just as much as anyone else. You must understand that a lot of americans arent any better. A very small minority attends HYPS and all those. By smart I include propensity and proclivity to work hard and if our system enforces that then so be it. But the result is that we’re a lot more qualified.</p>
<p>Secondly, whoever is under the impression that poverty has been eradicated is extremely delusional. India is a poor country and shall be so for at least a few more decades. Haha and eminemfan the economics is very simple. Growth in GDP refers to real growth in the output of the economy adjusted for inflation which means yeah rising prices are accounted for. There is no doubt that the income gap is widening as represented by a rising Gini coefficient. However, that doesnt mean the poor arent better off. Sure they are, not as much as we’d like them to be but life is definitely better than it used to be. Eradicating poverty is an issue of such immense magnitude that one can only pray that we have enough fortune to be able to combat it one day. Economic growth though certainly helps. And to answer your job about employment, you’re being too myopic. MBA’s only represent management jobs. If everyone becomes managers then who is there to manage? The job of a manager is to ensure smooth functioning of the process of production of goods and services in a company. Just because MBA’s and Btechs represent a large share of the remunerative jobs, doesnt mean they are the only jobs in existence. </p>
<p>Your concern seems to be the structure of India’s economy. It is an economy that is heavily services based rather than manufacturing based. This makes our economy an anomaly amongst developing nations. There are benefits associated with being services based that involve the issue of trade reliance and maintaining comparative advantage as well has high yield from capital but ill not go into that. In all countries it is the highly skilled jobs that offer better pecuniary benefits, but the difference is that in India labour is cheap because of its abundance. Maybe you’re concerned by the fact that its cheap but thats where we get our comparative advantage from. At this stage of development we cannot expect to pay our labour so much because that would be a massive impediment to our export based growth. Again, its rather technical but rest assured, our country has very able economists who are working on all this now.</p>
<p>Also you need to understand the difference between education and civic sense. As to why we lack civic sense, well its perhaps because we dont feel a sense of ownership to the infrastructure provided by a government that is not actively involved in the lives of the educated people. Ours is a socialist govt and the middle class dont feel an attachment to the govt and are apathetic to the state of the country which leads to misuse. Their apathy perhaps stems from the fact that the govt’s role and influence isnt felt intimately and in a country as large as ours, it is difficult for someone to think they can change something. </p>
<p>As for hygiene, I understand your concerns but these are the vices of being a developed country. The government doesnt have enough resource to undertake projects to eradicate all the muck that plagues the underbelly of Indian society. The govt is corrupt no doubt but in a poor country that is natural. The govt cannot afford to pay big sums to politicians seek incentives elsewhere. Its simple human behaviour. Unfortunately, in order to achieve something extraordinary, we have to curb our most primal instincts and dispositions for that is what makes us human 
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<p>Damn Im being to didactic, Ill get thrown outta this thread :s</p>
<p>I’m not yet fully convinced, although most of your points impress me very much. I’ll PM you soon collecting more of my points. This debate is unsuitable for this place.</p>
<p>Oh, no! continue! I was loving it :D</p>
<p>Haha well, this thread is strictly about college! All you rascals mind it ;)</p>
<p>@iamthebist - You loved watching me getting owned? 
(jks)</p>
<p>The reason I prefer it to be discussed over PM is that I deem that my points are very different. My perspective, at least for the last one year or so has been such.</p>
<p>But seriously, this is about college admissions. And the topic we’re debating upon is a matter of opinions, so it’s pretty hard to see eye to eye with each other for us. But nevermind, superb points bro. :)</p>
<p>Well Emfan, dont worry too much about jobs and stuff. Just read a hell lot and enjoy yourself. Btw Caltech has the most amazing astronomy and astrophysics program I think we run a few pretty big telescopes and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab too 
I suggest you apply here.</p>