Life at IIT: 'It’s up to you, the college provides all the opportunities'

Harleen Bedi | Shiksha.com

Getting into IIT is a dream for engineering aspirants in India. What's so special about being an IITian and student life on the campus? Let's hear it from Kanav Goyal who did his B.Tech in CSE (Computer Science Engineering) from IIT-Delhi. He graduated in 2011 and since then has been working with a consulting firm, Opera solutions, as an Analytics Specialist. Here is what he had to say about his life on the IIT-D campus.

My first week at IIT was spent in orientation; it gave us an idea what the culture is all about. The academics at IIT are just a small part of it, there's a lot more to IIT beyond academics. This was very clear during the orientation, when all the different departments, like cultural activities group, sports activity group, introduced us to the activities and things we can learn and practice at college.

In this sense, the message is clear from IIT that you're not here only for studies and you need to explore all the opportunities you get. So it’s up to you, the college provides all the opportunities, it completely depends on you how much you want to use those to grow.

When I entered college I was totally into academics, I didn’t do much apart from studies. But I realized that there's much more to life. My first year was spent mostly in exploring the different clubs and activities. I tried a lot of activities like fine arts, debating and other clubs.

In my second year I represented my hostel in the fine arts club and I was also part of the placement cell on campus. At the end of the second year I became the department representative. In third year I was the part of the hostel management team, being the library secretary of my hostel.

Sort of. I had 38 rank in the IIT-JEE so I had the option of choosing whichever course and campus I wanted. I chose CSE at IIT Delhi. CSE course has the best faculty and peer groups. So the classroom consists of the top rankers from all over the country. The kind of interactions you have with such people is on a different level. When you meet people of such caliber you realize there's so much you don’t know. You might have been a topper your entire life, but when you meet people who are better than you, it’s a very humbling experience (it was for me, definitely).

Actually it’s a mix of the herd mentality and the current job scenario. A student who has just finished 12 years of school education wouldn't know much about the streams. But they see the trend over years, like most of the top rankers chose CSE, so they will also go for the same.

Some people from my batch actually wanted to study CSE out of interest, but many had chosen it because all the previous top rankers had chosen CSE.

The academics are not difficult but are thorough. So it’s up to you whether you want to use up only 10% of all that or 100%.

The CSE department is very rigorous in matters of academics. We had to write assignments regularly, so it wasn’t like we had to study just before the exams. These assignments had deadlines and we had to turn them in time. There were very strict control lines to make sure you didn’t copy the content. The faculty makes sure we don’t just learn the theories but are able to apply it all in real life.

Initially it was very hard to juggle between exploring stuff and academics. In the first semester I did a reasonable job and focused only on academics as that was what I was there for. But then in second semester I started exploring other activities, so my academic records experienced a little set back. But I had to balance things. Whenever I felt the activities are taking a toll on my studies, I took a step back.

Yes, I did. Enjoying college life means different things to different people. Some people may define it as roaming around and hanging out with friends. My definition of college life was making the best out of it. I made sure I’m not losing out on my academics at any cost. So that was my basic focus and I slowly added many layers to it. That is why when I started my career, experience at IIT really helped me out.

The four years of IIT are like four life stages of a man. First year is like childhood- you go out and explore the world, you play around. The second year is like teenage- you try and understand yourself, your capabilities, and what all you can do. Third year is the adulthood- you know what you can do, you know your limits and you build onto that. And the fourth year is like nirvana- you've done everything you could and you sort of relax. It’s like living a complete lifetime.

Most of the people consider IITians nerds who don’t know anything about life outside academics, but this is wrong. I’ve interacted with so many people at IIT and they all range from being classical dancers, musicians, artists…you can’t categorize an IITian as just a nerd, he has so many layers to him that if you start peeling you won’t still reach the centre.

I also want to add that people go by the headlines that an IIT guy bagged a 4 crore job; I would say that is only just hype created by media. I mean some people do get very good job offers but a $100,000 package in US converted to Indian currency would be around 70 lakhs but it is similiar to getting 15 lakhs in India. Majority of the students get packages around 5-15 lakhs.

Then what happens is that the expectations of the family and parents increases that our son will bag a job of 30-40 lakhs at least; this is just an unnecessary complication. Even if the person gets a good job by the IIT standard, say of 15 lakhs, it would appear nothing compared to the exaggerated amount popularized by the media.

Definitely. In the consulting industry your fundamentals need to be really clear, so the academic background I had in CSE is very essential for the kind of work I’m doing today.

You need certain traits in your personality to able to interact with and understand the client. You have to keep up with people both from within your company and from outside. The kind of work I did for the college clubs helped me a lot in functioning in the corporate world.

Also we had the assignments with deadlines in place, where we had to deliver results on time. So even before starting with the job, I already knew how to get the work done on time.

The four years at IIT totally change your life. As the cliché goes, I went there as a boy and when I graduated, I was a man ready to take on the world. IIT teaches you, apart from the academics, how to take on the challenges life presents.