> Maybe india needs more "premier engineering schools" if the acceptance rate is so low. Harvard and MIT have acceptance rates near 5%.
The acceptance rate is not a "real" metric in the way that, say, the acceleration due to gravity is a quantity you can measure. Harvard and MIT do not have acceptance rates near 5%. They have an admission quota. If fewer people apply, more of those people are accepted. If more people apply, fewer of those people are accepted.
The reason for high acceptance numbers is that people perceive they are not Harvard/MIT material, and act on that knowledge by not applying to Harvard/MIT. Applicants need to clear a threshold well above the 95th percentile; the selectivity number is an illusion.
Definitely agree, for a country with close to 2B population, it is absurd how their education system is divided into "a couple exceptional schools and the rest are really bad"
As an Indian who didn't make it into the IITs (and instead attended a different school)"The rest are really bad" isn't entirely accurate:
- Facilities aren't that much worse than the IITs
- Student quality varies - there's smart/motivated and dumb/demotivated/burnt-out kids - unlike the IITs that has a much higher quality bar - but you have both kinds
- Faculty is the real difference.. since faculty in India (esp Engineering) isn't geared to research the quality can really vary wildly
- Basically - if you're great at what you do - academics isn't a great track in India unlike the US
The real question is how many serious applicant to they get?
I assume there are a lot of kids who simply won't bother applying to MIT and Harvard just because they know they aren't going to be competitive. But it sounds like the IIT entrance exam is almost mandatory (and used by other colleges?).
The acceptance rate is not a "real" metric in the way that, say, the acceleration due to gravity is a quantity you can measure. Harvard and MIT do not have acceptance rates near 5%. They have an admission quota. If fewer people apply, more of those people are accepted. If more people apply, fewer of those people are accepted.
The reason for high acceptance numbers is that people perceive they are not Harvard/MIT material, and act on that knowledge by not applying to Harvard/MIT. Applicants need to clear a threshold well above the 95th percentile; the selectivity number is an illusion.