<p>“My dad applied for IIT three times and was rejected each time–got into Harvard with a full fellowship”</p>
<p>Then the system is wrong, that’s fairly obvious. </p>
<p>Regarding the quality of IIT, check out the latest ARWU rankings here [India</a> Universities in Top 500 - 2009](<a href=“http://www.arwu.org/Country2009Main.jsp?param=India]India”>http://www.arwu.org/Country2009Main.jsp?param=India)</p>
<p>Certainly, the ARWU have many faults (as all rankings), nevertheless it only measures the academic weight of the universities, and particularly their achievements in sciences. It cares nothing with student/faculty ratio, dorms or such silly things, just pure academic achievements, yet, IIT is ranked 303-401, which is a quite poor performance compared to most US and European universities. I’m sure IIT provides quality education, but I fail to see that it’s a world-beater university. Indeed, the admissions borders with ridiculous, but that really makes it an outstanding institution? Maybe I’m wrong, but as I see, in case of world rankings, IIT is a solid university, surrounded with a lot of myths in India (which myths fuels the idea on the subcontinent, that IIT is in pair with Harvard and such), but nothing more. </p>
<p>As mentioned before, there are tons of Indian students in the top notch universities, such as Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, Princeton, etc, and I’m curious: if they return to India, will their degree seen as inferior to a degree from IIT…?</p>