Success Relates to Dreams, Not the IITs

IITs are most prestigious institutes in India for the aspiring engineers. The IIT entrance, or the JEE Advanced, is also the toughest one to crack. Lakhs of students appear for a handful of seats and only the cream students get selected. These selected students get the best infrastructure, best of the faculty, best facilities, placement opportunities and best packages too as a result of being IITians. It is a matter of debate whether the IITs or the IITians are overrated or not, and whether the IITians are as eligible as they are portrayed on not. But definitely one thing is for sure that the students, who do not get into the IITs either because they are not selected or because they opt for desired streams in other colleges are no less than the former if they dream big and work towards it with full dedication.

Following are the examples of some real life winners who were non IITians and made it big in their fields-

Satya Nadella
This man is the talk of every Indian household. He, who is the inspiration of every aspiring engineer today, is no IIT pass out. Nadella, who now heads Bill Gate’s company, is an alumni of the Manipal Institute of Technology (or MIT), an engineering institute that ranks way below IITs in the best engineering institutes of the country, at around number 24. But how did that come in way when his future was being shaped?

Venkat Ramakrishnan
Venkat, the 2009 Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry and 2010 Padma Vibhushan awardee was not only rejected by all the IITs, but also failed to get admission in Christian Medical College Vellore. Unable to pursue engineering and medical studies, he settled for physics and finished his studies from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore before going to America for his post-graduation. Then what? Further the rest is history.

Vinod Dham
Also known as the Father of Pentium Chip, Vinod finished his engineering from the modest Delhi College of Engineering (which was then a part of DU). After finishing his engineering he worked in an Indian firm called Continental Devices for some time, and then went to America to get his master’s degree.

After that he worked with a small company which made cash registers. Gradually and persistently he made his way up to become the Vice President of Intel. Thus the world knows that it was his entrepreneurial skills and hard work, not merely his college degree or college name that made him the ‘Father of Pentium Chip’.

In the year 1999, Dham took the stage and dreamt a dream- “Make a computer for 9, 999 rupees and take it to the masses’”, as he told the gathering at IIT Mumbai. Hearing this, a student pointed out that you couldn’t even get a memory device for that kind of price. Dham’s modest reply was “If there isn’t one, you have to design one.” And so he did.

Sabeer Bhatia
This man created Hotmail and sold it to Microsoft for a fortune. He also did not go to any IIT.  He is a Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS Pilani) pass out.

Not only Bhatia, but, BITS also has to its credits many other internet success stories in India. Like, India’s biggest online bus ticketing company, redBus.in was founded by BITS graduates— Charan Padmaraju, Phanindra Sama, and Sudhakar Pasupunuri.

Well, these success stories don’t end there. Not just BITS, but NITs and IIITs have also given many a rising starts to the country in the field of engineering. In the year 2013 Facebook recruited seven Indian students- three IITians and four non- IITians. IIIT, the International Institute of Information and Technology Hyderabad gave 3 of them, whereas one was recruited from the National Institute of Technology Trichy.

The idea is not to render IITians any lesser than the non- IITians, but despite which college you pursue you studies from, to make it to the top of the world, you need a burning desire and a strong willpower. And for that, you have to dream big.

Where it might hold true that the non IITians start at much lower packages than the IITians on an average, but that doesn’t mean that the non IITians cannot make it bigger in life or emerge better as compared to their IIT counterparts. Higher education or perseverance or excelling at what one does, can bring the non IITians to the level of the IITians any day and it again depends on how big you dream. So, wherever you start from, don’t stop working towards your goals and success would find its way to you on its own!