Comment by rick_2047 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rick_2047 | Hacker News Reader

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Where I live (India) most of the MBAs are Engineering or Science Graduates. This year only 9 people from business and 1 from arts got into IIM-A. Its a common choice among Engineers to take up MBA after there Graduation (BE/BS/B Tech).

It kind of annoys me though. Its fine if you are doing an specialization in something like Project Management, Computer Management, E-Commerce or something like that. But it just bugs me if you take up finance or banking. WTF? If you wanted to do finance or banking why the hell did you waste the one seat of Eng/Sci student. In a country where there is already a shortage of Quality Engineering studies, these people take there education from IIT and then join IIMs taking up banking or finance. This is a total waste of the Rs 900,000/- the government is spending on each IIT student. I just hate to meet someone working in a bank and them mentioning "I did an B Tech in Electrical from IIT then went to IIM".

Either I am missing the node joining finance and banking with engineering or this is really just the product of the herd mentality students here have. Its a trend now to go for MBA and they would take any branch if they get into an IIM, "Why bother, its IIM!!!".

Good point. Although, I have to add that the trend has already reversed. Most IITians now consider IIMs beneath them. "Only mediocre crowd goes to IIMs" says a recent fresh graduate from IIT Kharagpur.

The reason is that IIT grads are now able to get the same jobs and roles as the IIM grads - McKinsey / BCG / Goldman Sachs / and other investment banks have been regulars at IIT campuses for quite a few years now. Their reasoning goes that why not catch this talent early instead of getting the same bunch of people from IIMs a few years later.

It's indeed sad that there is not enough money in the core engineering disciplines yet.

The problem is not money in this case. There was never the equal amount of money in Engineering that they have in business. The problem here is that there is not passion amongst the engineering graduates in general towards there discipline. Most join engineering because there peers are joining or there parent told them to. It is indeed sad that students think in pure monetary terms rather than there passion. I have seen many engineering undergrads who wanted to go into fine arts and joined up just so because there "uncle" told them to.

What's an IIM and IIT? How much is 900k Rs?

IIM : Indian Institute of Management. These are the most premium B-schools of India supported by Indian government.

IIT : Indian Institute of Technology. These These are the most premium tech schools of India supported by Indian government.

900 000 Indian rupees = 19 758.6 U.S. dollars

IIT - most selective school on the planet. Much more competitive than Harvard.

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.

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.

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.

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