The Unreasonable Effectiveness of IIT - Samiron Ray
My father immigrated to the US from India in 1977. He landed in West Virginia without money for a security deposit for his first apartment, not even knowing what the term “security deposit” meant.
In some ways, you might think this is just another example of the trope of the immigrant arriving in America with “only five dollars in their pocket.”
Like any cliche, it has a grain of truth. But fortunately for him and the US, he came armed with a degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, which he eventually parlayed into a decades long career designing next-generation nuclear energy technology like AP1000 reactors and accident tolerant fuel.
His roommate from IIT-Kanpur also ended up emigrating to the US at the same time and ended up founding a multi-billion dollar transportation company.
This was before the era the IIT system was widely recognized as producing some of the top engineers and business people around the world.
