95% of IIT-Bombay freshmen are virgins; 75% are 'cheats': Survey

Fee hike at Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) across India has recently been criticized and debated upon by many. But if IIT - Bombay's ‘freshmen survey' is to be believed, 95.9% of the candidates have taken coaching to enter premier technology institutes of the country and 47% have paid around 2.5lakh for it. Though 75% of the new IITians have cheated atleast once, highest percentage (37.7%) of them have mostly indulged in providing answers. These and many other new and old interesting details of IITB students have been reveled in the ‘freshmen-survey' conducted by the institute's official student media body.

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Inspired by Harvard Crimson's Freshmen survey, IITB's Insight has conducted a survey to appreciate the diversity of freshmen batch of 2015. The survey that saw 250 respondents covers diverse topics like background of students before joining IIT, their political and religious beliefs, personal details and plans post graduation.

Explaining the survey, the Insight on its website has stated, "A comprehensive survey to unravel what expectations does a quintessential ‘freshie' bear in his mind while entering the institute, we must admit that the one of the underlying motivations behind this survey was to gauge how much ‘change' does a freshman undergo by the time he leaves institution with a truckload of knowledge, memories and ambitions."

As per the survey findings, 95.9% of our total respondents said that they had taken coaching to crack JEE. Nearly 75% students spent upto Rs. 2.5 lakhs for JEE coaching. Nearly 90% of respondents under the 'less than Rs. 2 lakhs' income group spent more than half of their annual family income for JEE coaching. 28.5% of students under income groups of upto Rs. 10 lakhs spent more than a quarter of the upper bound. The current fee structure at IIT Bombay has entailed families of 12.2% of the respondents to apply for an educational loan. All the respondents who have taken loans to fund their stay in IIT-B lie under the income bar of Rs. 20 lakhs. The percentage of students applying for loans showed decreasing trends from families in the income group of 'upto Rs. 2 lakhs' to those within the range of 'Rs. 10 lakhs - Rs. 20 lakhs'. 35.7% students with income under 2 lakhs have applied for loans whereas 6% have applied for the same in the latter.

Campus life of IITB and its location i.e. Mumbai city has been one of the major reasons for students to prefer IITB over other IITs. Students have studied average 6 hours a day to clear JEE in order to enter IIT and around 26% have taken help of mental counseling in order to cope with pressure. But after getting admission, the study time has immediately decreased to as low as just 1.4 hours a day, in just first year. These points have indicated how much these students have lost out on social life while preparing for JEE suddenly started living a different social life after entering IITB.

Establishing this difference, the survey finds out - More than half of the freshmen surveyed feel burnt-out after JEE and don't feel like putting effort into academics having entered the institute. Total 55% respondents believe that their social life has been affected a lot due to JEE preparation. Around 64% feel their creativity is heavily affected while preparing for JEE. An average respondent spent 1.4 hours on Facebook daily before entering IIT. Halfway into the first semester, every respondent was spending 1.6 hours on Facebook everyday. The percentage of people not using Facebook at all decreased from 37.7% to 6%.