IIT graduates have the upper hand over non-IITINs. I am also from third level college.
All professors of IITs have worked as highly skilled scientists or industry experts, while this is rarely true in other colleges.
Students at IITs are learning natural language processing and machine learning by the third or fourth year, while local college students are still trying to figure out how to become hackers reading Ankit Phadia’s books.
an internship. —-> By the third year, IITIS will be going for a 3-month summer internship at Microsoft, Google, etc., while people in local colleges are running for a chance to get a certificate-internship or summer training at other local institutions.
Active student body —— → Many such students are motivated to engage in research work / product development / project. This is where active student bodies help them with further guidance. For example Team Pratham [1] is an interdisciplinary team building India’s first student-building satellite in collaboration with ISRO. Another example is STAB – a platform that helps students build on their electronic skills and does ‘cool’ stuff such as making projects with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, robotics, RC aircraft, etc.
Availability of funds for student activities -> This is perhaps the most important difference. Most local private colleges focus on becoming a profit machine by ensuring that they establish an identity for themselves in a sea of other peer institutions. Management in these institutions are generally not much concerned about the quality of faculty research or student projects [however, this trend is changing rapidly]. Funds of IITs are abundant – either in the form of alumni funding, company sponsorship or ministry funding. More money means more access to learning tools. For example, Boeing and Airbus rival each other at IIT B to fund projects in the Aero department, proving students with many electronic gadgetry, among other things, to build model RC aircraft in the process.
An IIT graduate can get his or her dream salary, but if the local dedication is shown enough dedication in the field of field then students from the local student college can also do so.
How can Tier 3 students overcome them?
- Create / join local clubs that promote collaborative learning
- If your university does not provide great coursework or faculty then take online courses to do away.
- Work on projects. Build apps and share them online. Push improvements and changes to opensource projects. Write a blog I got help from here: What is the difference between an IIT graduate engineer and a local college graduate engineer? Isn’t there an engineering curriculum everywhere in India?