Bigg Boss 19- Daily Discussion Thread - 14th Oct 2025
Mannat Har Khushi Paane Ki: Episode Discussion Thread - 30
ASTHIN KA SAANP 14.10
Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai Oct. 14, 2025 Episode Discussion Thread
Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai October 15, 2025 EDT.
KARWA CHAUTH 15.10
Kajal,Vidya and Tanya ka Gharelu Kalesh
Alia Bhatt is being roasted on Insta on Jigra BA post
Pankaj Dheer Passes Away
Rhea Chakraborty and her brother get their passports back
How the IIT Bombay placement story
changed over three months.
Five-point fiasco—but IIT Bombay's data flip flop may have actually yielded something positive
by Olina Banerji, The Ken, April 14, 2024
It’s hard to miss headlines when the acronym IIT is in it. So by now, I’m sure you’ve heard that placement season for IITs such as Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, and Kharagpur haven’t really gone as planned.
The spotlight was particularly bright on IIT Bombay, though. And for good reason.
IIT Bombay thought it was in for a great placement innings. On 5 January, it announced a coveted placement statistic—85 students, out of a total of 2,000 who’d registered for placements, had received a Rs 1 crore (US$120,000) salary package. This would portend good things, it believed, a reversal of the disappointing placement season from 2022-23 which had been dampened by a global economic downturn. (I love how this phrase seems to explain away so much!)
Someone had been too trigger-happy in the placement cell, though, because about five days later, IIT Bombay had to recant—22, not 85, students had received offers over Rs 1 crore. Still, not a bad outcome.
But information about the rest of the 1,900-ish students had also begun to trickle out. International firms were thin on the ground. Companies didn’t want to match the salary levels IIT Bombay wanted. Offers weren’t flooding in.
And then, soon enough, someone compiled the numbers, and they indicated that 712 students, or 36%, hadn’t secured any offers.
This created an uproar and overnight, the cottage industry of hot-take experts had spun a bunch of explainer videos with existential throughlines like, ‘Is your degree even worth it?’.
IIT Bombay wasn’t having any of this.
The institute issued a clarification to try and change the narrative around it.
Many felt that IIT Bombay was doing damage control. They argued that other categories like “not yet decided” or “higher degree” were euphemisms for students who haven’t been placed yet.
The placement cell has also given out mixed messages. It’s unclear from these graphs if this is the entire batch of graduating students or only those who signed up for the placement season. And the post cites data from its previous graduating batch to show that only 6% of students weren’t placed that year. An Economic Times report dated 11 April, however, says that 33% of students this year were yet to receive offers as of 4 April, as per placement data shared by IIT Bombay.
Is the placement team talking to each other?
There are only guesstimates about what’s really going on. Here are a list of reasons I’ve cobbled together from what IIT Bombay, and its placement data detractors, have said:
· Fewer foreign firms….
· Fewer companies willing to offer high starting packages…
· Students holding out for higher salaries…
· There’s too much focus on the outlier salaries, not enough on the average salary package…
· PhD and Master’s students weren’t offered as many jobs…
· And of course, global economic downturn and what not…
The placement season is still on, and the various IITs are planning to reach out to more companies. But if there aren’t enough positions to be filled, it’s a stretch to get 36% of your graduating batch placed. Now, like last year, if only 6% of students aren’t placed by the end of this season, then we’d know that IIT Bombay hasn’t fared any worse, even if it hasn’t improved its track record.
But why do institutes haggle over placement percentages every year? And why do we need sleuthing academics to let us in on what’s going on?
Take this excerpt as an example:

“IITs Kanpur, Madras and Delhi are also struggling with placements. As per The Telegraph report, Dheeraj Singh, an IIT Kanpur alumnus, compiled data on this year’s placement based on feedback from IIT Kanpur students and an RTI reply from IIT Delhi.
The RTI response revealed that 1,036 IIT Delhi students secured jobs till 28 February this year. However, it did not mention how many students had registered for the placements.
The IIT Delhi has claimed that 1,050 students got job offers, of which 50 were pre-placement offers (PPOs), in the first placement phase in December. Singh, who also studied data from the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) website, found that IIT Delhi had recorded 60 per cent and 66 per cent placements in 2023 and 2022, respectively, The Telegraph reported.
IIT Kanpur clocked an estimated placement of 69 per cent this year, compared to 91 per cent in 2023 and 90 per cent in 2022, the report added.
According to Free Press Journal (FPJ), 45 per cent of students in IIT Madras remain without job offers this year. As many as 2,100 students registered for placement, but only 1,150 have been hired till now.”
WHY IITS ARE STRUGGLING TO GET STUDENTS PLACED THIS SEASON, FIRSTPOST
There are four different data sources needed to verify one number. Sanghi, the professor quoted in this article, had to file an RTI (!) to get hold of IIT-Delhi’s placement numbers.
I understand why this data is obscured by institutes. I wrote about this problem in the context of IIM placement data. IIM-A had tried to create a standard of reporting, but few other IIMs complied. It’s a choice that institutes have to make. This is what Janat Shah, the former director of IIM Udaipur had said at the time:

“It’s too difficult to compare faculty quality, or student groups across MBA colleges, says Janat Shah, the director of IIM-Udaipur and one of the few in the IIM universe to support the IPRS. Shah knows that following the standards have probably dragged the school’s average salary package down by Rs 1-2 lakh (~US$1,300-2,600). But he’s not overly worried. “We care about the signal we’re sending about transparency. I think our students get it,” Shah told me over the phone.”
Shah’s point was that placement or salary package data was the only, if flawed, arbiter of what makes a good management institute. Other metrics—like research or faculty—are too variable, too unstable. There also isn’t enough time or intention to change these metrics, even as batch sizes increase and branded institutions multiply.
We should be concerned about how thin these metrics are, how fungible.
We should be alarmed because every year, thousands of students, from grades 9 to 12, spend all their waking hours studying to get to the IITs. Maybe now there’s enough information, or lack of it, to create a standard reporting procedure for the IITs too.
IIT Bombay’s data flip-flop might have actually yielded something positive:

“IITs are, therefore, seriously contemplating a shift in their reporting approach by refraining from disclosing the highest annual packages. Instead, the focus might shift to mean and median salary figures, as discussed during a recent meeting of the All IITs Placement Committee (AIPC).”
It doesn’t solve all the problems, but it’s a starting point. Until then, all the best to all the hopefuls. You are so much more than your grade-point average.
In response to the invitation for a rather unusual *REUNION of all time greats:*
*Newton* said he'd drop in.
*Socrates* said he'd think about it.
*Ohm* resisted the idea.
*Boyle* said he was under too much pressure.
*Darwin* said he'd wait to see what evolved.
*Pierre and Marie Curie* radiated enthusiasm.
*Volta* was electrified at the prospect.
*Pavlov* positively drooled at the thought.
*Ampere* was worried he wasn't current enough though alternately none were.
*Edison* thought it would be illuminating.
*Einstein* said it would be relatively easy to attend.
*Archimedes* was buoyant at the thought.
*Morse* said, "I'll be there on the dot. Can't stop now, must dash."
*Hertz* said he planned to attend with greater frequency in the future.
*Wilbur Wright* accepted, provided he and *Orville* could get a flight.
*Aryabhatta* said there were zero chances of him showing up.
*Marconi* said, he would listen to the report on wireless.
*Pythagoras* refused because he thought that the organisers were not looking at the reunion through the right angle.
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