akshayxyz Posted July 2, 2012 Posted July 2, 2012 Oye vilaayti hero! Saale, mein joh ek bolta hu uska converse kyun karta hai tu? I said - "Physics & Chemistry are not pre-requisites for many engineering branches (specifically CS)" and not the other way around. The curriculum point was to expose the 'cult' of the IIT system. When it comes to admission tests holy grail but when it comes to even more important things like curriculum the IIT's live in the stone-age. And since you bought the comparison to Stanford, MIT, Harvard lets do a fair comparison at all verticals. But, NO - we just want to conveniently compare where we are good and leave out the points where we aren't good. Abhi tere se baadmein ispar discuss karunga, pehle is seedhe ka "teda" argument dekhna chahta hu. Tu yeh sab chhod, mujhe bata tune Guy Fawkes ka display photograph chhodkar iss langur ka pic kyun lagaya. Woh pehle waala bahut sahi tha yaar! You have been throwing around random points from disconnected contexts. The original point of discussion was Entrance tests...and then whether PCM is sufficient enough a criteria to evaluate eligibility for Engineering schools - at least in Indian context. And further to that, I was amused at your 'claim' that succeeding in CS requires some special skills, that can't be tested by Physics/Maths/Chemistry - in absence of some other standardized metric. If you have anything sensible to discuss on that matter - then we can talk, otherwise... uchchalta reh bandaron kee tarah, ek context se doosrey pe. NO - I am not suggesting language as a test for the JEE. I am just putting forth the hypocritical attitude of the IITs. [1] Entrance Test - Holy Grail [2] Curriculum, Research, Overall growth - Apna Kaam Banta, toh bhaad mein jaaye junta No one claimed JEE is holy grail ( btw holy grail of what?). May be you should stop for a while and think whether your arguments are not out of some bitter experience? Point 2. Out of context. for the nth time, learn to stay in context. The fixation on Physics and Chemistry is also one such 'cult' preservation. There's zero incentive or encouragement for "change" in the IITs. It trudges along at it's own snail pace. You still don't get it. You are not debating a point - all through this thread you have been debating a body/entity - which is classical case of Ad-Hominem. You may have had some bad experiences with some IIT faculty, but that does not mean, everyone associated with everything IIT (in this case JEE) is chewtiya. PCM is the most common factor ( LCD ) across variety of boards in India - and is a fair enough metric to evaluate the potential of a candidate to be successful in any engineering stream of candidate's choice - while minimizing 'casualties'. It does not mean one has to be good in all of them, one can be super bright in Physics but average (not very likely) in Maths/Chem.. and he can still do very well in whatever stream he chooses to - be it CS, or Civil. A combination of subjective/objective tests has worked pretty well so far. It does not mean there is no scope of improvement.. but the radical changes proposed by Govt are ridiculous, and also you can not suddenly switch over to some SAT style standardized test - when you do not even have a plan to ensure that it is accessible to masses, and before that you will have to prove, it is good enough filter for the kind of students IITs want. Instead of just countering every point - why don't you go ahead and propose a better Common Entrance Test? Just be sure, your model covers at least as many aspects as this guy does: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK5zdEFpDYQ]Views on JEE by Sanjeev Sanghi - YouTube[/ame]
Crookbond Posted July 2, 2012 Posted July 2, 2012 ^ Before rambling "out of context" 100 times, make time to understand where I'm coming from. Currently, it seems you don't want to talk the ills about IITs and only focus on the admission test and call them geniuses. Fine go ahead!
asterix Posted July 2, 2012 Posted July 2, 2012 ^ I think, you might've to open another topic to discuss 'ills of IITs'. This topic is basically about IIT exam...
Crookbond Posted July 2, 2012 Posted July 2, 2012 Yes - and the alumni threatening to go to court was also posted somewhere along, I believe. Also, it would just make sense to discuss ramifications of an entrance test.
akshayxyz Posted July 2, 2012 Posted July 2, 2012 ^ Before rambling "out of context" 100 times' date=' make time to understand where I'm coming from. Currently, it seems you don't want to talk the ills about IITs and only focus on the admission test and call them geniuses. Fine go ahead![/quote'] Because as per basic etiquette of discussion/debates, you should try not to mix two unrelated topics. As I see it - Problems with curriculum, and Govt's retarded intervention in JEE (and IITs counters/proposals) are two separate topics - unless you can prove otherwise. You just tried to save your azz, by bringing in "ills of IIT" and myriad of other "problems with IITs", when your hilarity of your claims was exposed - "CS requires special skills, and eligibility of potential CS-UG candidates, can't be tested by PCM based entrance test". If everything is wrong with IIT professors, and you have better solutions for everything - why do not you show them the light? It should not be too difficult for you, as you can make people piss in their pants? [wait...most likely, it is you who pee & poo in your pants at the thought of "speaking against ill IIT profs/system", out of fear of losing/not-getting something precious (for you), you may be expecting from them? And perhaps that is one of the sources of your (irrational) bitterness] Edit: misread one character.
vipin Posted July 2, 2012 Posted July 2, 2012 Well' date=' I am pretty sure that IITB would've been higher even then. 90 looks a little bit implausible to me personally at least.[/quote'] Nah. Even in 2004, I remember D and B being neck to neck.
vipin Posted July 2, 2012 Posted July 2, 2012 Curriculum Revisions :- (1) The IITs review their curricula every 3 to 4 years. (2) We are doing curriculum revision for a major private university and are using MT/Harvard/Stanford and a few leading Indian universities(including IITs) as benchmarks. We found that the US University curriculum is very unfeasible in the Indian context, for one because of the degree of investment per student it would require, the infrastructure and the number of faculty that would be required, as well as the availability of expert faculty in some of the fields. The kind of curriculum we ended up with was very similar to the IITs. Research: Can we have data of $Million Invested /Impact Point of Research Achieved for the major universities ? We have some extremely erudite people here who should be able to get this.
vipin Posted July 2, 2012 Posted July 2, 2012 And the most obvious reason why the JEE consists of Physics, Chemistry and Maths is, that the CBSE/All State boards require Physics, Chemistry and Maths as compulsory subjects for students willing to pursue a career in the [Non-Medical] science stream. The above mentioned is irrespective of the medium of instruction. Which means that all students (including poor ones who have studied in local mediums) have accessibility to PCM. Essentially what we are arguing here is, weather students who had opted to take commerce or arts streams after Class 10 should also be admitted to Engineering. Which could be downright stupid or extremely essential, depending on your perspective.
Mariyam Posted July 3, 2012 Posted July 3, 2012 Since we are discussing the relevance/ significance of having maths in engineering, let me also tell you how :mad: I am at the current scenario for admission to Law colleges after the 12th standard. For the last couple of years, there is an exam called the CLAT. All the top colleges in the country- NLSIU, NALSAR etc grant admission to students on the basis of scores in this test. The pattern is as follows- it is a 200 question mcq test with: English and Reading comprehension - 40 marks GK- 50 marks Numerical ability- 20 marks Legal aptitude- 50 marks Logical reasoning - 40 marks. You are given 2 hours to answer all these questions. Having spoken to a few of my juniors and people from other colleges I've come to know that the test has been easy on the gk, english and legal aptitude part. It is difficult on the maths and logical reasoning part. That in turn means that the decider between two students is their math score. Pretty unfair if you ask me. To induct/discard a student into a top law school just because of his/her maths aptitude. I mean, if we are testing advanced maths including trigonometry and Cartesian and all that which has nothing to do with anything, we might as well test the students on carpentry, Polish literature of the 1800s and the ecology of sub saharan Africa.
gaurav92 Posted July 3, 2012 Posted July 3, 2012 Since we are discussing the relevance/ significance of having maths in engineering, let me also tell you how :mad: I am at the current scenario for admission to Law colleges after the 12th standard. For the last couple of years, there is an exam called the CLAT. All the top colleges in the country- NLSIU, NALSAR etc grant admission to students on the basis of scores in this test. The pattern is as follows- it is a 200 question mcq test with: English and Reading comprehension - 40 marks GK- 50 marks Numerical ability- 20 marks Legal aptitude- 50 marks Logical reasoning - 40 marks. You are given 2 hours to answer all these questions. Having spoken to a few of my juniors and people from other colleges I've come to know that the test has been easy on the gk, english and legal aptitude part. It is difficult on the maths and logical reasoning part. That in turn means that the decider between two students is their math score. Pretty unfair if you ask me. To induct/discard a student into a top law school just because of his/her maths aptitude. I mean, if we are testing advanced maths including trigonometry and Cartesian and all that which has nothing to do with anything, we might as well test the students on carpentry, Polish literature of the 1800s and the ecology of sub saharan Africa. I think the main idea of including maths in every professional exam is that the subject requires great analytical skills, and just to test him on the analytical ground, there is no better subject than Maths. Talking about relevance, there are various subjects/ topics which are practically not relevant in real world, but still you've got to do it since it is mentioned in the syllabi.
Crookbond Posted July 3, 2012 Posted July 3, 2012 Because as per basic etiquette of discussion/debates, you should try not to mix two unrelated topics. As I see it - Problems with curriculum, and Govt's retarded intervention in JEE (and IITs counters/proposals) are two separate topics - unless you can prove otherwise. You just tried to save your azz, by bringing in "ills of IIT" and myriad of other "problems with IITs", when your hilarity of your claims was exposed - "CS requires special skills, and eligibility of potential CS-UG candidates, can't be tested by PCM based entrance test". If everything is wrong with IIT professors, and you have better solutions for everything - why do not you show them the light? It should not be too difficult for you, as you can make people piss in their pants? [wait...most likely, it is you who pee & poo in your pants at the thought of "speaking against ill IIT profs/system", out of fear of losing/not-getting something precious (for you), you may be expecting from them? And perhaps that is one of the sources of your (irrational) bitterness] Edit: misread one character. I told earlier - my comments on the topic were more about "Alumni moving to court" (which was posted in this very thread and justified) and not on government's interventions . I don't support the government intervention as I have repeated earlier specifically to you and others too. Either you choose not to read it or you just like to have fun - I presume the latter. You need to be consistent with what you do. You can't be a saint on the entrance exam and be a devil on the curriculum, research aspects. All these things are inter-connected for a make up of a university and it's unfortunate you don't think so. Probably, we can agree to disagree here. Now, here's the hilarity - I said "PC" are not the ONLY indicators and I stand by it. Arts, Languages could also be great indicators for a CS degree and there's huge amount of research available which shows that. No one has shown that Physics and Chemistry is a "mandatory" requirement for CS as required by the JEE. You posted Stanford/MIT/CMU out of ignorance and then realized they themselves don't require it as well as allow for languages & arts to go through for the CS degree. :cantstop: As far as the highlighted goes, note I didn't say all professors as you seem to suggest neither did I say most. And it is not just me a lot of people have already started that mission and a few have succeeded as well. Heard of a place call - IIITH? An institute which started 10 years back is now considered (in some books) even better than IIT B for a CS degree. But obviously, I wouldn't expect you to know that unless another 'memoir' is shared. :winky:
Crookbond Posted July 3, 2012 Posted July 3, 2012 Curriculum Revisions :- (1) The IITs review their curricula every 3 to 4 years. (2) We are doing curriculum revision for a major private university and are using MT/Harvard/Stanford and a few leading Indian universities(including IITs) as benchmarks. We found that the US University curriculum is very unfeasible in the Indian context, for one because of the degree of investment per student it would require, the infrastructure and the number of faculty that would be required, as well as the availability of expert faculty in some of the fields. The kind of curriculum we ended up with was very similar to the IITs. Research: Can we have data of Invested /Impact Point of Research Achieved for the major universities ? We have some extremely erudite people here who should be able to get this. Difference between review and adapt. IITs are slow movers. Also, mind telling me why is there NO performance based review for faculty at the IITs? I haven't heard of any faculty being asked to leave for below par performance no matter how pathetic they are. Research - There are many universities in the US who don't have million dollar grants but whose research output is better than the IITs. My point RQ from IIT doesn't justify the input. Also, before you get into this I hope you're aware than IIT professor's do get huge grants from the government for research. A relevant read if you continue thinking along these lines. Dheera has just nailed this. http://dsanghi.blogspot.sg/2011/05/are-iits-world-class.html I think the problem with IIT system is that they are satisfied with being the best in the country. And whenever anyone points out that your parameters are not what the best in the world have achieved, there is a ready made excuse - money. Double our salaries, type of thing. IITs are not doing sufficient introspection to see if they could have met the expectation of our nation to a fuller extent within the same resources. A very strong statement from Dheeraj who is definitely one of the best IIT professors around.
akshayxyz Posted July 3, 2012 Posted July 3, 2012 I told earlier - my comments on the topic were more about "Alumni moving to court" (which was posted in this very thread and justified) and not on government's interventions . I don't support the government intervention as I have repeated earlier specifically to you and others too. Either you choose not to read it or you just like to have fun - I presume the latter. You need to be consistent with what you do. You can't be a saint on the entrance exam and be a devil on the curriculum, research aspects. All these things are inter-connected for a make up of a university and it's unfortunate you don't think so. Probably, we can agree to disagree here. If that (bold) was the point- even then, there is nothing wrong in moving the court. Those are the people, who have been running the institution - they have some philosophy and they believe in that (backed by some logical reasoning). There is nothing wrong, in fighting for what you believe in - as long as it is legal and not discriminatory. Whether their philosophy will succeed or fail in long run - is immaterial. If you have problems with their system - get in there, try to understand, what they value - then make your suggestions. I am quite sure, they are more receptive - then what you would find in Govt or lower ranked universities. (receptive does not mean - just bending to your wishes). As for inter-connectivity of selection/curriculum/research - I can't help, but just smile at your naivety..(if you believe that you can fix them all, overnight by some revolutionary ideas of yours, and folks at Institution itself are not bothered). Each of them have a role to play in overall image/reputation of University - but every one of them have different purpose and different dependencies. Now, here's the hilarity - I said "PC" are not the ONLY indicators and I stand by it. Arts, Languages could also be great indicators for a CS degree and there's huge amount of research available which shows that. No one has shown that Physics and Chemistry is a "mandatory" requirement for CS as required by the JEE. You posted Stanford/MIT/CMU out of ignorance and then realized they themselves don't require it as well as allow for languages & arts to go through for the CS degree. :cantstop: Short-term memory - go back and look, somewhere you said Physics can't be used to test eligibility for CS student. And it was not just me, who countered you. so, it is more likely that you were making some absurd point, than bunch of other guys, speaking in similar tone. I never said - someone with XYZ background can't be a good CS/Engineering student. The problem is, with the size of India, and the magnitude of gap between demand and supply - you have to narrow down on filters.. besides there are few more problems, how you would normalize merit lists of Arts vs Maths/Physics. By allowing each of PCM, Engineering institutions are giving opportunity to more students...there can be someone who is very bright with Physics, but not so much with Maths (perhaps due to lack of interest) - but as already shown, there is no reason that bright student in Physics be allowed a chance to choose CS. And among equals, lets say, someone bright with Physics, vs someone bright with Maths - one has to prefer someone who is better in the weaker subject. And among people with similar aptitude (within a narrow range) - one has to give preference to folks who are better in 'subjective' tests. Which is what IITs have been contesting for. As I said before, even if their philosophy is not perfect, they have every right to pick their own philosophy...It is their loss, if they miss out on some genuine talent... but so far, (I am guessing), such misses have been far less than they should be bothered about. Apart from the other reasons mentioned for choosing PCM as the common denominator - there is one more, for not 'allowing' Arts...as per Indian education system - filtering on the basis of quant/aptitude starts happening at very early stage. Almost everywhere (in Indian schools), choice of Arts/Commerce vs Science subjects is driven by differences in maths/analytical aptitude - and rarely by (then) choice/passion. So, that already serves as 0-level filter, and it is perfectly fine considering the huge gap in demand vs supply. You can argue, that one can do away with only Aptitude test - but the point you are not getting is, as of now, this is in-feasible to implement in Indian system.. one has to take gradual steps, but definitely not drastic/un-researched changes overnight. Personally, I have no problems with some Arts/Commerce student applying for Engineering seat, who can demonstrate sufficient aptitude in Maths ( or Physics..). But, given the way Arts/Science filtering happens in Indian education system - it is extremely unlikely that they would outperform "Science" students on a common standardized test. There will be exceptions, but changing the whole system overnight is not worth it - the key word is - "collateral damage" There are quite a few examples where Arts and Science students sit on a common quantitative aptitude tests, and more often than not - Science students out perform their arts counterparts...and many with lesser effort. As far as the highlighted goes, note I didn't say all professors as you seem to suggest neither did I say most. And it is not just me a lot of people have already started that mission and a few have succeeded as well. Heard of a place call - IIITH? An institute which started 10 years back is now considered (in some books) even better than IIT B for a CS degree. But obviously, I wouldn't expect you to know that unless another 'memoir' is shared. :winky: "in some books" is the keyword. I won't care to elaborate -what is the difference between IITB/D/K-CS (or even Electrical/Mechanical/Chemical.......) vs IIITH-CS...-, as you are too narrowly focused on, one can be successful in life/CS - even after failing to clear JEE. Why is it that, more often than not, its the folks who 'fail' - who always have some point to prove against a system/filter that rejected could not accept them - for whatever reasons (mostly due to demand/supply). 4-din hue nahi market mein, and you have all the information, but all others are ignorant :haha: And, not surprisingly, that is coming from someone, who, when can't counter a point comes up with "You don't know me....." .... kind of bluffs.
chanakya Posted July 10, 2012 Posted July 10, 2012 Difference between review and adapt. IITs are slow movers. Also, mind telling me why is there NO performance based review for faculty at the IITs? I haven't heard of any faculty being asked to leave for below par performance no matter how pathetic they are. Research - There are many universities in the US who don't have million dollar grants but whose research output is better than the IITs. My point RQ from IIT doesn't justify the input. Also, before you get into this I hope you're aware than IIT professor's do get huge grants from the government for research. A relevant read if you continue thinking along these lines. Dheera has just nailed this. http://dsanghi.blogspot.sg/2011/05/are-iits-world-class.html A very strong statement from Dheeraj who is definitely one of the best IIT professors around. Do they have better profs ? Easily yes, most of the decent profs were on the last legs when I was in IIT, and there weren't too many good new ones coming through either. the scenario was bad enough that profs who should have retired a long time back were still teaching because there are no replacements. The problem with research in IIT is kinda simple. Too much politics.... To be a professor you used to need a CBI clearance. Not sure if that is still there :) btw IIT has a common entrance for all its departments, what you are asking is basically to separate the exams for all departments ? Only Arch has an extra exam currently to my knowledge And when you say Language and Art skills what exactly do you mean? Not the research but more importantly how does having particular language skills in any language (not English necessarily) help? And not knowing English is a major drawback in IIT, I used to know a UP board topper who got a decent rank because he wrote the exam in Hindi but could not cope up because the teaching medium was English ... (seriously using Girish Karnad and Homer to teach English is not a good idea) the guy dropped out, worked like mad and took the exam in English, but did not make it. So the exams are definitely lacking. The MCQ tests in my view are not good. Subjective was better. It did not give you the option of getting something correct by mistake. Plus we also got step marks if we were headed in the right direction btw since the first year is more or less common in the IITs the exams need PCM cause you wont survive the first year without PCM and its at a pretty advanced level compared to what other engineering colleges used to teach in the first year :D
Crookbond Posted July 11, 2012 Posted July 11, 2012 Do they have better profs ? Easily yes, most of the decent profs were on the last legs when I was in IIT, and there weren't too many good new ones coming through either. the scenario was bad enough that profs who should have retired a long time back were still teaching because there are no replacements. Some of the old guys are around AND they are good - the others not so. The problem is that once recruited as a professor at IIT you can't be fired unless the professor does something criminal. Must be the only top institution in the world which does this. And when you say Language and Art skills what exactly do you mean? Not the research but more importantly how does having particular language skills in any language (not English necessarily) help? There's a theory which makes complete sense and co-incidentally I landed up this article on my reading list today. http://lenz.unl.edu/2012/06/10/learning-to-program.html People who enjoy studying foreign languages tend to make good programmers, but not for any of the more obvious reasons. Some people acquire languages more quickly than others, but anyone who succeeds at it has developed the remarkable ability to be more-or-less happy while being stupid. TheyÃÓe not frustrated when they can only say Å©ello and Ũoodbye in French, and they still wonÃÕ be frustrated two years later when they still canÃÕ really hold a serious conversation in the language. WhatÃÔ more, theyÃÃl gleefully and enthusiastically start trying out their broken, high-school-textbook French the minute they land in Paris. One of these days, theyÃÃl Ã…ÃŒnow French. But theyÃÃl think of themselves as Ã…ÃŒnowing French way before that day comes. Musicians, too, are often natural hackers, and I think itÃÔ because they know what it means to be inept. YouÃÓe not Eddie Van Halen when you start out on the guitar. In fact, your fingers hurt for weeks and you wonder how anyone manages to make music with this damn thing. But hey! That sounds sort of like Å´moke on the Water. And off they go. Sucking for years. But then gradually, they donÃÕ. And way before they definitively donÃÕ, they think of themselves as guitarists. There's huge research in this space suggesting there's active correlation between language, arts and a good engineer. In the 80s "language" was considered a very important parameter for recruitment - not for soft skills but for technical skills. And not knowing English is a major drawback in IIT, I used to know a UP board topper who got a decent rank because he wrote the exam in Hindi but could not cope up because the teaching medium was English ... (seriously using Girish Karnad and Homer to teach English is not a good idea) the guy dropped out, worked like mad and took the exam in English, but did not make it. So the exams are definitely lacking. Which was exactly my point. You say English is not important and then you say English is important. Pick one and stick with it. If it is important, include it as a parameter. If not, change the way you teach.
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