1. AVERAGE STARTING SALARY PACKAGE IS NOT 30–40 LAKHS PER ANNUM, IT’S MUCH MUCH LOWER: Yes, there are a few who have over a crore as their first salary but the average (excluding the extremely high and extremely low salaries - yes, that’s the statistically correct way to find the average) is pretty normal. I passed out in 2005 from IIT Delhi and while there were students placed at 50 lakhs package, do you know what the average salary was - 4 lakhs only! My starting salary was 3.3 lakhs which after 6 months on switching the company became 4.2 lakhs. After 3.5 years in the 2nd company, it went to about 10 lakhs (that too including bonus). I’m that average you want to know about! Now after 10 years, the average of the starting salaries might have come up to 8–9 lakhs or so.
2. MOST IITians FEEL VERY UNDER-CONFIDENT IN FRONT OF HOT GIRLS OF OTHER COLLEGES: I was the Cultural Secretary in Vindhyachal House. I, with my 3 friends went to meet the Cultural Secretary of Miranda House, Delhi University, for conducting ‘socials’. She was that typical DU totta wearing hot pants and we somehow managed to complete the meeting and finalise the socials. For years, we three boasted about meeting this hottie and getting respected for being an IITian. Later we came to know that they felt so proud of being in the company of IITians and used to boast in front of other girls. Even after knowing this, we remained under-confident and very shy. Recently, at 34–35 (at 29, I quit my corporate career to devote my entire life to films as Actor Writer Director) I started becoming extremely confident with hot girls, even with the tv and film celebrities (not big ones, don’t know them personally yet, but moderately successful celebrities) but it was not because of being an IITian but because of being content and happy with myself even when alone. When you don’t push too hard for something, it comes to you organically and the process is beautiful. IITians cannot realise this tip while in the college, they’re too shy with girls.
3. MAJORITY OF THE STUDENTS CALL THEIR SENIORS BY THEIR NAMES, PREFERABLY BY THEIR LAST NAMES: Very few IITians call their seniors Sir. Even many freshers call the final year students by their name. I was called Lal, not ‘Lal Sir’ by majority of my juniors. However, after I passed out, most of the new batch of juniors always called me Sir, probably because they entered when I was gone so I might have been like an oldie for them :).
4. NOT EVEN ONE-THIRD OF IITians WORK IN THEIR OWN ENGINEERING FIELD: Yes, they prefer going into finance, consulting, software, business (in non-technical fields) and many other career options. Those who’re really serious about their technical field, they generally go to the US to do a MS or a PhD. Only when an IITian goes into a totally unfathomable field like entertainment, people say that you wasted a seat. However, the truth is that if you’re a mechanical engineer and if you are doing anything other than a mechanical engineering job, business or consultancy, you’ve wasted a seat - technically speaking. Personally, I feel ‘jab jaago tabhi savera’ - whenever you realise your true calling, just go for it instead of being entangled in the social pressures of following your formal education. Know that Mahatma Gandhi was a lawyer and if he thought about wasting a seat, we would have probably been slaves for much longer. I know Mahatma Gandhi worked for a greater cause than working in business consulting after doing law, but you know what I mean :).
5. THERE ARE QUITE A FEW GIRLS WHO ARE VERY HOT, SEXY AND OBVIOUSLY BRAINY: It is just a myth that all girls at IITs look ugly. That’s so not true even if we ourselves don’t want to believe it. Now being in the film industry, I know few IIT girls who have won fashion contests and are professional fashion models and actors.
6. IN EXTRA-CURRICULARS WE CAN GIVE A RUN-FOR-MONEY TO ANY INSTITUTE IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY: I remember NSD professors coming to judge our inter-hostel Hindi play competition (9 plays). They were absolutely shocked the level at which the students operated even though there was not a single drama teacher in the institute. All plays were directed by the students themselves without an iota of formal training. Before announcing the results, they expressed this and told very confidently that 2 of these 9 plays are so good that they can be staged as a professional play anywhere in the world! We had two lawn tennis All India top 20 ranked players studying there. We had exceptionally talented dancers, artists et al. Some of them learnt these extra curricular activities at IIT itself and within a couple of years became damn good. The typical image of an IIT guy being boring, studious, with a chashma is not true ...