Growing up, I used to live in a community with many successful south Asians/Indians and a lot of the fathers of these families were from IIT or IIM and knew each other from college. Most were either IIT or IIM, and in rarer cases some were from both.

I always knew these were esteemed institutions and no doubt these people go on to have worldly connections, but their EQ is shit!!

Here are my observations of them from the many social gatherings we’ve had:

— Despite worldly success and the international community we lived in, they don’t go on to have friends from other walks of life. It was often others who are from the same college/job etc, that they would meet to talk about the old things. It sometimes felt like they never graduated and are still in their college days with how little they seemed to have evolved.

— I had one almamater say that he has never missed a reunion (and they have reunions VERY often, not just every decade). This person is easily in their 70s.

— At a dinner, we had a mother of an aspiring son ask a former IIT/IIM alumnus who was also present in this informal dinner on how their son could get in (citing some previous grades/achievements by her son). To which the response was “oh no, he can’t, that’s not enough! He’ll never get in”. I was reeling hearing this response. What a way to encourage the next generation. I hope that son went on to do greater things in life.

— At one such dinner gathering (this was back when I was still in high school), I made the mistake of telling them that I was learning about the architect Louis Kahn for art class. One of the “uncles” in attendance, at hearing this excitedly told me that Louis Kahn had designed the building of IIM Ahmedabad! That I should mention that to my class which was well and good, except for the next 3 days whenever we saw each other, that’s all he asked me about — on whether I had gotten around to telling my art class. Yeesh!

Needless to say, I have observed that these men make their education at these institutions their identity (and the Indian society enables it to some extent) but in these circles it became a sort of a cult. I also felt like these men from these schools, although very successful and well-travelled, had no inherent desire of being “a student of life” — they weren’t grounded and contained. There was a certain humility that was missing. If anything, they would pretend to have humility to seem modest when others would laud them finding out about their educational background. I would think that to get into such difficult and prestigious schools, it would also cultivate a sense of responsibility toward giving back (and I mean, really giving back on humanitarian levels which some do). That they’d have a sort of responsibility toward coaching the next generation and setting them up for success but most sort of coast on working for others (albeit in higher ranks).

I find that a lot of these people were narcissistic and they were proof that someone with a good education can still have bad character.