IIT=Harvard+MIT+Princeton

[Guest guest]

>

>Here is something India can well be proud of.

>

>

>

>http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/comp/articleshow?artid=34701392

>

>TIMES OF INDIA, JANUARY 18, 2003

>

>IITs BETTER THAN US INSTITUTES, SAYS CBS

>

>CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

>

>TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 2003 12:18:10 AM ]

>

>SAN JOSE, California: As hundreds of IIT alumni gather here in Silicon

>Valley this weekend to mark the golden jubilee of their celebrated school,

>they have just heard of a fancy new equation being bandied around in the

>US: IIT=Harvard+MIT+Princeton.

>

>The encomium comes from CBS' highly-regarded 60 Minutes, the most widely

>watched news programme in the US, which in a rah-rah story last Sunday told

>its more than 10 million viewers that "IIT may be the most important

>university you've never heard of."

>

>"The United States imports oil from Saudi Arabia, cars from Japan, TVs from

>Korea and whiskey from Scotland. So what do we import from India? We import

>people, really smart people," co-host Leslie Stahl began while introducing

>the segment on IIT.

>

>"As you are about to see, the smartest, the most successful, most

>influential Indians who've migrated to the US seem to share a common

>credential: They are graduates of the IIT," Stahl reported. "Put Harvard,

>MIT, and Princeton together, and you begin to get an idea of the status of

>this school in India."

>

>The heady praise came just ahead of the IIT50 fete which begins this Friday

>with a keynote address by Bill Gates. Others attendees, besides the usual

>movers and shakers among the alumni, include Stanford University President

>John Hennessy, India's Human Resources Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, and US

>envoy to India Robert Blackwill.

>

>The IIT alumni are meeting in Silicon Valley because IITians are found in

>the greatest concentration here in the US, one reason why CBS chose to

>profile the school. The 60 Minutes segment was aired on the West Coast last

>Sunday, but it was displaced by an extended football game on the East Coast

>where it will be broadcast in the coming weeks.

>

>60 Minutes typically spends several weeks and months, and several tens of

>thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars on a story. The IIT

>segment, which had been in the works since middle of last year, took

>co-host Stahl to the institute campus in Mumbai where she interviews

>current students and captures the ambience of the relatively modest school.

>

>The IITs don't offer well-rounded education, Stahl reports, "But in science

>and technology, IIT undergraduates leave their American counterparts in the

>dust."

>

>Among those interviewed for the story is IIT Delhi alumnus and Sun

>Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, who tells her "When I finished IIT

>Delhi and went to Carnegie Mellon for my master's, I thought I was cruising

>all the way because it was so easy relative to the education I had got at

>IIT."

>

>But the moment of supreme irony comes when she interviews Infosys

>co-founder NR Narayana Murthy and asks him about his son's education.

>

>Murthy: Well, my son, he wanted-probably wanted to do computer science at

>IIT. To do that, you have to be in the top 200 and he couldn't do that, so

>he went to Cornell instead.

>

>Stahl: (awed voiceover amid footage of IIT students on campus): Think about

>that for a minute. A kid from India using an Ivy League university as a

>safety school. That's how smart these guys are.

>

>Murthy: I do know cases where students who couldn't get into computer

>science at IIT, they have gotten scholarships at MIT, at Princeton, at

>Caltech.

>

 

 

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