Anvit Aggarwal - JOSAA Counselling Advice

JEE Advanced results are out! So, this is the time of the year when all the upcoming college students are thinking about the branch and college they should choose. It is also the time of the year when a lot of people think that they can offer better advice than others, except they are as clueless as you are, just with no actual stake. And somehow, a large number of these people are upcoming second-year students (like me). Despite this, I think I can offer some useful advice.

The most common way people choose their college is through placement statistics or previous year’s closing ranks. Without any doubt, this is the best way to choose your college if you want to optimise for seeming sensible to your relatives and friends. However, if you want to maximise your chances of long-term satisfaction, there’s a better way.

The Problem with Placement Statistics and Previous Year’s Closing Ranks:

Before getting into what you should do, let’s make it clear why previous years’ closing ranks and placement statistics are not useful data points. Seeing the previous year’s closing ranks is like asking advice from people who are as confused as you are right now, except with previous year’s data. Placement statistics, too, has several issues:

Placement statistics are highly manipulated.
Different colleges have different ways of compiling their placement data.
Even if they are accurate, you are assuming that maximising your first year’s salary is equivalent to long-term success (which is false if you think so).
Placements are variable. They are highly affected by the ongoing situation and not reliable.
If you are looking at median packages (assuming that you are smarter than people who look at average packages), you are only looking at the median package. CSE has a higher median package than Civil, but the highest package in Civil is more often than not, higher than the median package of CSE. Even if it is not, it is pretty close. CSE is quite competitive, and in Civil, even the students of the discipline are not sure whether they should focus on their discipline or not. If you commit to Civil, it is not so hard to be close to the top of your department.

What to do?

Now that it is hopefully clear that previous years’ closing ranks and placement data are like eating from the trashcan to plan your diet by watching what people threw away last year, let’s discuss what you should instead do.

In my opinion, you should optimise for flexibility. Most of you won’t really know what you want to do in your life. So, unless you are already sure about what you want to do, keep your options open. How do you do that?

Think about your strengths and your interests. I know that most of you won’t have a clear idea about your strengths and interests, and that’s fine. However, don’t choose a discipline misaligned with your strengths. Every discipline has its good parts and its bad parts. Choose the torture you are okay with. If you are bad at Physics, you should probably not choose a Physics-heavy discipline. Often, people close to you, like your parents and siblings, can tell you what you wouldn’t mind all that much.
Go to LinkedIn and check where the alumni are currently. This is much better data than placement statistics. It is genuine and not easily manipulated. Also, it gives you a long-term idea. If the alumni are placed at places you’d like to work at, that’s a good sign. You can check IIT Gandhinagar’s alumni data here (You’ll need a LinkedIn account).
Look at the faculty of the department you’re considering. Check where they completed their education and their research credentials. Also, check the student-to-faculty ratio. The most important factor, but usually always ignored while selecting a college, is the people there. Most of your peers will be at a similar level, regardless of the institution you choose. The faculty matters especially if you are interested in going into research, but even if you aren’t, it matters.
Check the curriculum of the program you’re considering. A flexible curriculum is better. Ideally, you should be able to study what you want to instead of having to follow a rigid curriculum. Some courses are necessary, but beyond that, students should be given more freedom.
Finally, it might be helpful to find out more about the culture of the college and life there. It is somewhat difficult to find out. But you can talk to people. You have to spend four years of your life at your college, so don’t choose a place where it’ll be a struggle for you. You already have a lot of things to worry about in college.
One bonus point, I am not entirely sure how useful it is, but it might be useful to find out about the innovation taking place at each of the colleges. Perhaps, check the startups incubated out of the college and any other innovations happening at the college.

To conclude: don’t listen to your highly opinionated uncles or neighbourhood aunties. And don’t go around asking people, “Which of these five options should I choose?” This decision is too important to outsource. You have to put in the effort. It’s not easy, but neither is regretting it later.

Last year, I was in a similar situation. I found the blogs of Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi which were quite useful. If you have any more questions, I would recommend checking his blog. Some of his posts: