Why IITians are Hell Bent on to Brag the Term ‘IITian’ All the Time

My unsuccessful search for good doctors for an important consult landed me to India’s oldest and very traditional search engine—yellow pages. And the one name which caught my attention was followed by names of medical colleges such as MD, AIIMS, DM, and PGI Chandigarh etc. I made up my mind to trust this doctor.

But I wondered what had made him to think that adding those strings of medical colleges would prove an advantage anyway.

All right!! Putting all the speculations to rest, the answer is that the long string of medical colleges after his name in the directory left an impression of credibility in his profession.

Well, with that said and proven with the example above, we now can fathom as to why students from IITs mention that they are IITians. May be, it helps them build a sense of credibility among others.

We should also understand here that not all students from IITs love to brag the term ‘IITians’. In fact, I don’t do it either. I love to be judged by my potential more than just my IIT tag.

But that’s not what happens generally with other people. They are hell bent to assume you as an all-rounder shit who knows just everything in the world.

I started out as a freelance content developer for a corporate firm very recently. This venture was just like anything ordinary for me and consequently the need for telling my credentials never cropped up until yesterday. My boss called me out to meet him in his cabin. He was quite happy with my performance. He appreciated my work and I got to acknowledge my academic background with him for the first time.

I can tell you from my own first-hand experience that there’s a humongous difference the way you are received by people with and without IIT tag. In my case, it was just a boss-to-new-writer formal conversation, which instantly changed to a very casual conversation with my IIT tag. He was now talking about his brother who was also an IITian and his struggles to land a job and finally setting up a company.

It shows that people’s perception about you changes with every little information. And I guess cracking JEE was one of the biggest information about me one could ever have.

So, I don’t know if it’s really fair to do what the doctor in the directory did. But I personally I find the idea of sweeping generalization not any good. In case, I have a startup in future and if I have to list this company in the directory, then I will rather use other companies run by IITians for others to pay more attention on my particular listing.