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Your comment inspired me to do some research, and the first page I found was this one: http://www.kamalsinha.com/iit/acceptance-rate.html

Given your comparison to Harvard, I thought you might be interested in this paragraph:

>While it seems true that admission rate at IITs is less than even the most selective US school like the CalTech, it does not mean IIT recruits students of higher caliber. In a country like the USA, educational resources were well developed and the enrollment capacity for engineering majors is kept about the same as the number of seniors intending to enter those programs, if not more. It means less desparation. Moreover, there are lot of top-notch schools schools of about equal caliber which decreases their selectivity figures. My guess is that the top 50 engineering schools in the USA exceed IITs in almost all respect and another 100 or so other schools are not far behind.

[mvp]

glen is probably referring to the ratio of the number of successful applicants to the total number of applicants - which is about 1% ( about a decade and half ago, maybe even less now).

I don't know whether it makes any sense to compare the calibre of students coming from colleges in different countries with vastly different cultures in the absence of results from common tests.

However, these people are definitely among the best from a populous country where education has a status closer to religion and is also a ticket to earn legal income disproportionate to efforts expended.

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Yes, I knew that's what he was referring to. But the comparison to Harvard was obviously intended to imply something more, thus my quote.