The fallacy of the supposedly underachieving IIT student community

It's now fashionable, I suppose, to suggest that the IITian community has performed below its potential. Take this, for instance, from a IIT-KGP alum (Sandipan Deb, no less):

Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of IITians do nothing of note in their lives.

I think you'll find that the ratio of students that achieve 'something of note' to the student community size doesn't differ appreciably across universities - IITs/IIMs or Harvard. It's rubbish to suggest there's a causal relationship between how stringent the selection process is and how 'well' the student community will do - which is, unfortunately, what most people assume. Or between JEE rank/CAT percentile and subsequent 'achievement' in life [1].

There is, though, I think, a causal relationship between the selection process and how well the best students in that community will do. The average IITian will do about as well in life as the average Mumbai University grad. But the best IITians will do, in my opinion, far better than the best Mumbai U grads.

Put another way, the infrastructure (faculty, labs, alumni, courses) at the IITs/IIMs serves as a force multiplier for only those who make active use of it - who are, from that point of view, the 'best' among the lot. The rest, though having cleared the JEE/CAT, enter an environment that they don't make enough use of to yield any benefits - and end up more or less the same as the non-IIT/IIM grads.

Which is why the achievements of the IITians - even as a community - are quite in line with their potential. To better this potential will probably require bettering the IITs themselves (equally, the IIMs).

Now I'm much less sure about this, but the life achievement distribution curve for the IIT/IIM community might probably be sharper at the left extreme as well, than that for, say, the Mumbai U community; the weakest (worst?) students at the IITs/IIMs just might do worse than the comparable non-IIT/IIM students, perhaps as a result of a combination of peer/family pressure, tougher exams, more fierce competition for placements (compared to non-IIT/IIM students) without the associated benefit of the corresponding infrastructure.


[1] We'll have to have a completely different argument, btw, if you define achievement as service to the country (as opposed to "cushy MNC jobs")