2. Academic Life: In the second point, the author opined that the applicants who manage to qualify the test and enter the IIT’s are regarded as the best produced by the country. However, the IIT professors cannot be said as the best ones. The structural reason behind this is that during 70s and 80s, the IITians who were more inclined towards academics went to U.S. to acquire PHDs and settled as professors over there. There was very little reason for them to return back to the country as they enjoyed the benefit of better lifestyle and earned more money there. Therefore, the IIT’s are populated with professors with PHD’s from IIT’s or less eminent foreign universities.

According to the author the relationship between the professors and the students are quite tensed and transactional as students attend classes in order to submit their homework, appear for exams and get on to the next semester.

Most of the students who went through the IITJEE exams appear to be burnt out and therefore they proceed to “chill out”. The class atmosphere in the IITs is also destructive. The structural reason behind this is the IIT’s are engineering colleges and not universities. As a result some students who do not have genuine interest in engineering have no other options to explore.

3. Social Life: Moving on to the social life in IITs, the author highlights that there is very less female candidates in IITs and the male-female sex ratio is 10:1, approximately 10 males for every female. This is considered to be a very unhealthy scenario for young adults. The fewer females in IIT feel threatened by the sheer amount of focus on them and everything they do by the male students.

As the majority of the students reside in hostels or dorms, they tend to be very sentimental about IIT as with the hostel system where the growing-up experience is mutual.