IIT placements

BANGALORE | MUMBAI: In what looks like the start of a bumper placement season, the Indian Institutes of Technology ( IITs) have recorded a 5-10% jump in salaries at the final placement offers for students at Madras, Roorkee, Kharagpur, Bombay, Delhi, and Guwahati.

The top offer thus far is an annual package of $150,000 (Rs 81.6 lakh) from South Korean multinational conglomerate Samsung at IIT Madras for students in computer science stream and the posting could be in US or S Korea Google follows closely with a $135,000 (Rs 73 lakh) PPO (pre-placement) offer at IIT Kharagpur.

Big recruiters on the first day include Boston Consulting Group; Deutsche Bank Group; Goldman Sachs; ITC, Google, Sony (Japan), Facebook, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft amongst others. Average domestic salaries are in the mid-Rs 20 lakh range on the first day.

IIT Bombay's kitty included 35 companies on the first day with first timers like LinkedIn, Twitter and Blackstone. "Salaries are 5-10% higher than last year and several companies offered international roles including Samsung, Microsoft and Google," said Avijit Chatterjee, prof-in-charge, placements, IIT Bombay.

At IIT Kharagpur, EXL Service, Deutsche Bank, Rio Tinto, Schlumberger, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Opera Solutions and ITC, were among those who turned up on the first day. Credit Suisse and Indus Insights were among the new names on campus. "The institute has received 100-plus PPOs, of which 73 have been accepted," said SK Barai, professor-in-charge, training & placement, IIT Kharagpur.

Domestic salary for IIT Guwahati on the first day broke last year's record of Rs 20 lakh as a firm has already offered students a paycheck worth Rs 28 lakh. "The highest international salary is $130,000 and we have received 7 international offers from the likes of Facebook and Microsoft, among others," said Natesan Srinivasan, professor-in-charge, training and placements, IIT Guwahati.

IIT Madras is expecting 100 new companies to prowl around their campus despite a slow economy. Some of the first timers include include Rolls-Royce Operations India, Mercedes- Benz Research & Development India, Toshiba Corporation, MyLikes, Walmart Global Technology Services, iGate, Procter & Gamble Hygiene amongst others.

HRD minister steps in to resolve confusion over Board cut-off norms in admission to IITs

NEW DELHI: HRD minister M M Pallam Rajuhas called the IIT-Delhi director on Wednesday to discuss widespread resentment against the criterion that students have to secure top 20 percentile in class XII board examination. This is an additional criterion apart from performance in JEE (Advanced).


So far, 79 students have been denied admission in IITs after getting initial offer as they did not fulfill the cut-off norms that vary in case of each state board. Though Raju is non-committal about changing the procedure from next year, sources said the minister has been receiving lot of complaints against the manner in which cut-offs were calculated twice. "He wants to understand what has gone wrong. Denial of admission has become a big issue in minister's home state Andhra Pradesh," a source said. IIT-Delhi organized this year's JEE (Advanced). 

Sources said the top 20 percentile eligibility cut-offs of class XII result was calculated twice. "This created the problem. For instance, in case of Andhra Pradesh the first cut-off was 89% which had to be corrected to 91.8%. This happened due to miscalculation but resulted in many students not getting the admission," a source said. 

The matter has already reached the Supreme Court. Last week, the apex court stayed an Andhra Pradesh High Court order that reserved four seats for students who had challenged the 20-percentile criteria. SC has adjourned the matter for two weeks. There is a widespread variation in cut-offs. It is low in Tripura (53.2%), Jharkhand (56.2%), Assam(56.6%) and Uttarakhand (57.8%).

CBSE's cut-off is 81.6%, ICSE (83.2%), UP (73%), Bihar (65%) and West Bengal (61.2%). Eligibility till last year across boards was 60%. IIT-Delhi maintains there is nothing wrong with the eligibility, and only few students would be affected.