#iit

In this frantic, breathless world of academics, I want to shine the spotlight not on China, America, Germany, or Japan. No. Today, it’s India’s turn — the land of Bollywood, chaotic festivals, and a thali big enough to humble the gods.

And yet, the greatest marvel of this country isn’t its monuments. It’s its children — specifically the 11th and 12th graders training for the most brutal academic war on Earth.

Everyone knows JEE Advanced is difficult. But most people don’t understand how difficult.

Imagine a 6-hour exam split into two 3-hour battles, with a 2-hour limbo in between. Imagine a paper with no fixed format — no guarantee of difficulty, question count, or even total marks. Now add an obscene syllabus spanning 70+ chapters:

all of Chemistry (Simple mole concept to Thermodynamics to Equilibria, Simple organic compunds to Aldehyde and Ketones to Amines, Biomolecules and Polymers and all of the periodic table obviously, you can't forget about the chapters on s-block, Hydrogen, p-block, and d and f blocks),

all of Physics (From Mechanics to Rotational to Fluid Dynamics to Thermodynamic to Electromagnetics to Optics ending with Modern Physics) and...

all of Mathematics (from Algebra to Trigonometry to Co-ordinate Geometry to Combinatorics to Number Theory to 3D Vectors and Geometry).

You walk in knowing everything — and also knowing you still don’t know enough.

Let me give you the numbers.

15 lakh students take JEE Mains. 10% qualify for Advanced. Out of those, around 10,000 get top-tier IITs.

Break that down: For a general student, the effective success rate is 0.6%.

For Computer Science and relative branches at a top IIT? Cut that in half — 0.3%.(Approximately, it's probably less than that)

Stanford, MIT, Cambridge? People talk big until they see what an Indian 17-year-old is competing against. I’d pay good money to watch an MIT engineer attempt JEE Advanced relatively, not with marks — with ranking. Let’s see how they fare among our little war machines.

Yes, war machines. That’s what these kids are turned into.

They wake up at 4 or 5 a.m., attend 8 hours of school, 4 hours of coaching, then go home to study more. No phones — maybe a Nokia brick if they’re lucky. No festivals. No weddings. No life.

People work 9–5; these kids work 5–9, in the world outside, a lot of homework left too, you know.

For two years straight.

And after surviving this academic torture chamber, the world still expects them to be “well-rounded.” Good at sports. Good at communication. Good at life.

What a joke.

The ones who actually enter IIT spend their first semester repairing themselves — fixing communication skills, learning sports, trying to adjust to a course load that would make normal people collapse. They’re exhausted, fried, traumatized — and somehow expected to be grateful.

And don’t get me started on those dreamy high-school coming-of-age stories. The prom nights. The baseball games. Teens saving their town while also getting internships with Tony Stark and MIT acceptance letters.

Sometimes I wonder how wildly I would’ve flourished in the US. How easy everything would have felt.

But luck isn't always on our side, is it?

People say, “It’s a rat race.” They tell Indian kids to step out of it.

Step out to where, exactly?

In a country where there are a million cricket enthusiasts in every state, but only 11 play in the World Cup? Where a child supporting their family cannot risk pursuing a dream?

At least IIT offers a 0.6% hope. NEET offers 0.09% for AIIMS.

And we still talk about Harvard and Johns Hopkins as if they’re in the same universe as our reality.

So this is my rant for the week. If you made it this far — thank you.

5 :03 AM

"DROP " when you drop something it usually means letting something go, but ironically in an aspirant's life it means to hold on to something, it means to hold on to the belief that you'll catch your seat this time ,it means you're not ready to let go off your hard work , the notes you stuck on your wall are still stuck in your head , the facts you mugged up you still murmur in your sleep , and most importantly you still want your dream to be fulfilled, you still have hope .