<p>I think nothing captures desperation more than a truly funny joke I learned in my last semester in ye olde country… </p>
<p>The economy was so bad in the country that nobody could get a job. So, finally this new graduate BS EE guy swallows his pride and gets a job with the local circus as an electrician. His first assignment was to change a light bulb over the lions’ enclosure. He gingerly climbs and replaces the bulb, but slips and falls right into the lions’ cage.</p>
<p>The lions, hungry as always, rush and surround him. Our EE friend turns to the sky, spreads his hands and wails … “What a horrible death you set up for me, oh Fate. Me, an Electrical Engineering graduate of Flagship National University”</p>
<p>At which time, the lions all pause and one of them goes “Not to worry… We’re all Mechanical Engineering graduates from Flagship National University too”.</p>
<p>“Elite US schools are willing to do outreach precisely to look for the diamond in the rough kids from Inner City Central High, because they recognize test scores aren’t everything and that personal characteristics are important too. Does IIT do the same?”</p>
<p>A little different than that. A certain percentage of places are reserved for members of “scheduled and backward castes” (I think the percentage is 22.5%, but someone else might have better information). However, they still need to get through the 12th standard, and the first “weed out” test (they get an extra 5 points as I remember) to be allowed to sit for the exam. Twenty years ago, this may have meant that those with a less privileged background (and perhaps less gifted) were admitted. (the usual complaints with affirmative action). Now, it is not so clear, as the positive effects of AA have been that many more kids from these backgrounds are striving to make it, and admissions for them have become significantly more rigorous. There is significant resentment about this among some members of the upper castes.</p>
<p>But, no, if you don’t get through the test, you don’t get in. (However, you can take it up to age 25.)</p>
<p>turbo, that’s an elitist view, and complete hogwash. </p>
<p>I know way too many people whose SATs were way below 1400, who went to less-selective colleges, and whose college education and diploma have served them well - and served the American economy well. </p>
<p>The mass education of GIs after WWII is widely credited with contributing to the long postwar economic boom. Those GIs were not especially well prepared for college, but they worked their butts off. I know, because my dad taught many of them, and he had immense respect for those guys (not to be sexist, but most of them were guys). </p>
<p>I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but if I was, I’d suspect that all this nonsense about too many college grads, especially in non-STEM fields, was part of a master plot to dumb down the American public so that the already wealthy can keep their privileges. But then, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, so I won’t claim that. </p>
<p>And taking that one step further, Annasdad, if I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d think that there was a master plan to get the US companies to outsource large portions of their production and support services overseas (including IRS services), then have a large influx of trained engineers and tech folks to come in and take over the data center/infrastructure and IT applications support of the US companies on US soil while watering down the salary structure here as well. But I am not a conspiracy theorist either.</p>
<p>About the dropout rates from the Elites, it’s about 5 percent. I would expect it to be 0 percent.
Its not a dropout rate- its the rate of students at a particular college who graduate there- a few TRANSFER out to other colleges, for various reasons, mainly “fit”.</p>
<p>I’d be a Walmart greeter already if it were not for embedded Linux making all my decades of Unix useful again :-). Nothing like the boss assigning me for a month’s work that I did literally in a day using Qt Designer :-)</p>
These are pre-2006 figures. The 22.5% is for scheduled caste and scheduled tribes. There’s an additional quota of 27% for OBCs (Other Backward Castes), and I believe there is a quota for people with disabilities like those who had leprosy, for example. The requirement to qualify to get in depends on which category - the OBCs being close to 90% of the bottom general category student scores, SCs and STs need to score about 50% of the bottom common merit list scorer. </p>
<p>In actuality, there could be a larger % if a substantial number qualified in the open category, as these would be in addition, or there could be a smaller % if not a sufficient number could muster the “discounted” score. I believe the latter has been the case and there is a sub-category who conditionally qualified to get in with lower scores than these but put in a one-year prep to catch up.</p>
<p>Right, turbo. We DO have the luxury of choice. In the US, one can achieve success a bunch of different ways – not having a degree from a certain select group of schools doesn’t consign you to flipping burgers. That’s precisely why our system is superior IMO.</p>
<p>Are there inequities? Yes. Are kids in poorer school districts in the US poorly served? Yes. Is that shameful? Yes. But to hold as a gold standard a system full of such inequity that only 15% make it to high school – and it’s up or out, meaning that normal bright s students are still out of luck – and that not going to certain schools dooms your future – oh, please, give me a break. That’s no gold standard either.</p>
<p>Thanks, Dad of 3. Good to have updated information.</p>
<p>On a side note, I have seen (in my 34 years) huge benefits to the country from the reservation of places (think affirmative action) for IAS officers. These are non-political government civil servants, very highly trained, who keep the wheels of both the national and state governments turning while the political parties squabble. It is their particular experience of life among the poor and those discriminated against that basically provides any voice to the powerless in the engines of government. (Of course, their posting are often manipulated by party officials, but the overall impacts I have personally witnessed are very good indeed.)</p>
<p>“Nor does it do anyone any good to flood the market with college graduates. Raise the admissions standards to the tune that one needs a 700+700+3.5 to attend Directional State U, (snip)
High Schoolers will study (to learn) when there is more at stake. Likewise, their parents may become a lot more involved if they know that it’s either 750+750+3.75 or Walmart.”</p>
<p>But why should it be? What kind of utter nonsense is it that unless you’re 750+750 material, you shouldn’t get to go to college and/or have a nice job/life? What a narrow, win-lose mentality.</p>
<p>Of course I’m comparing cultural differences. Why, am I the first poster ever on CC to express dissatisfaction with a given culture’s norms? How many threads on CC are about how elite college admissions “should” be more like that of other countries?</p>
<p>And being the western, capitalist, free market kind of girl I am, it doesn’t escape notice that members of one culture go to considerable personal sacrifice to get a piece of the other culture because the opportunities in their culture are so limited. But amazingly that’s not a two way street.</p>
<p>The win/lose mentality has been brought upon us by the Powers That Be, the Globalizers, the Investor Class, and a few more Deities and semi-Deities. So, when said Deities decree that most US based software engineers are too expensive and must be replaced by Elbonians making a quarter of the cost, that leaves few choices for the parents of aspiring US based software engineers (who aspire to take the few US based positions) but to send their kids to the Pantheons of software engineering, be it Berkeley, MIT, CalTech, WhatHaveYou, and so on. So, the bar has been raised even though we were all sitting on our couches watching the Kardashians TV show.</p>
<p>In the early 1980’s, I saw my birth country’s economy decimated by the country’s collective desire to buy everything imported while producing nothing. That was part of the decision to pack and move here. Thirty years later, within a ten year time span we went from prosperity and the good old days (even counting the dot com bust) to outsourced central.</p>
<p>If you think that competition - the same competition that pits five or ten qualified applicants for a single position with 10-year depressed wages - will magically stop right outside various colleges’ and universities’ admission office, I hope you’re right. For everyone’s sake.</p>