Dear Alumnus/ Alumna,

IIT Madras has been changing and evolving over the years, but for many of us, it is stuck in a time warp. We like to visualize the campus as we left it, and pretend that it remains the same. The farther we are from it, the fewer times we visit, the more outdated our image of the alma mater becomes. This is true for all campuses, and all alumni/ alumnae. It is perhaps especially applicable to IITians and their campuses as most of us resided in these campuses for a substantial number of years, forming impressions that never fade away.

We also have similar frozen-in-time perceptions about fellow alumni, and these are many times no different from popular perceptions. The recently-undertaken survey of IITM alumni (designed by Gopala Ganesh of the ’73 batch), which many of you participated in, is a gold mine of data that we are beginning to unravel, but here are 20 “teasers”:

1. We graduated 100 students in 1964. In 2015, the number exceeds 2,000.
2. The graduating class was predominantly undergraduate only in the ’60’s. Since the ’70s, postgraduates have equaled and, more recently, outnumbered UGs. Only 30% of the graduands today leave with a 4-year Bachelor’s.
3. While the economic BG of admitted students has not changed significantly over the decades, what has changed is their place of origin; a significantly larger fraction of students now come from semi-urban and rural areas.
4. 60% of IITM alums are currently in engineering; 40% are in other fields.
5. Percentage of IITM grads living abroad peaked at 40% in the mid-80’s to mid-’90s batches, and has now dropped to 34% post-2000. The drop is even more severe post-2010.
6. Post-2005, there has been an uptick in IITM grads opting for manufacturing professions, versus IT & software.
7. Based on responses from 113 alumni who hold leadership positions in one of 6 current fields of endeavor and had revenue responsibility, their 2014 Total Annual Revenue Responsibility (CARR) is $ 5.34 billion or $47.23 million per alumnus. The severe skew in the distribution maybe inferred from the modest median of $3.00 million. When analyzed by decade cohorts, 1986-1995 group had the highest mean of $95.21 million. About 70% of the total revenue responsibility was in India.
8. Pre-1976 alumni have created more than 10,000 jobs per alum of which more than 90% are in India. Post-2005, there has been an uptick in IITM grads opting for manufacturing professions, versus IT & software.
9. Post-2006 alumni have the largest presence in the social sector.
10. The mid-70’s to mid-80’as alums have founded the most number of companies, but uniformly across batches, 70% of the companies are tech in nature. Per-company revenue is highest for the mid-90’s to mid-00’s alumni.
11. About 23% of all alumni are currently in research & education, and 40% have been there sometime. Of these, 20% characterize themselves as being in leadership roles. Overall, 30% of alumni see themselves as leaders.
12. Nearly 25% of alumni serve on Boards of Directors, and about 45% have led a turn-around (half of them, more than one).
13. Hardly 1% of respondents serve in the Government.
14. 90% of alums rate the value of IITM education as very high or high, and this is uniformly across all batches.
15. About 40% of alums claim to have made a very high or high contribution to India, though this has decreased gradually from 60% for the mid-’70s batches.
16. About 30% of alums claim very high or high contribution outside India, a number that peaks for the mid-80’s to mid-90’s batches. The preference for working in India has gone up in recent batches.
17. 92% of respondents were male. 50% identified themselves as “middle class”, and 50% identified themselves as living in towns with a population > 1 million. 60% identified their first IITM degree as a B.Tech.
18. 21% of the respondents were from EE, 18% from ME, and 17% for ChemE.
19. 58% of respondents were from India, 33% from North America.
20. 35% graduated during 2006-14.

Here’s the link to the complete results of the survey:

http://acr.iitm.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015IITMAlumniSurvey04september2015color.pdf

Please review and give your feedback. We’d also appreciate it if you report any anomalies or weirdities which may indicate an inadvertent error in the analysis.

Thanks again to gg for the effort & dedication he brought to this undertaking….

With regards….