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If you are highly talented and driven, it shouldn’t “matter”, unless you are looking for a very tiny segment of all jobs.Some people will say those who aren’t Ivy are “sour grapes”. I’ve gotten that before. My sincere rebuttal: I was accepted to an Ivy League school for undergraduate, but didn’t go because long-term costs were excessive relative to benefits.In almost every discretionary product market, what’s considered the pinnacle of quality is at a price much higher than what it’s intrinsically worth. However, overpriced doesn’t always mean bad. If the terms are favorable to highly specific goals, then you should consider biting the bullet. After continued deliberate analysis and soul-searching, I concluded the alternative was extraordinarily more favorable.Exception: Your family is from low-income/URM family to qualify for free tuition/scholarships. For me, that wasn’t the case and it wasn’t lack of trying for scholarships - I sent more than 200 applications and got <$300 in merit scholarship money, despite a perfect score.In short, I decided on state flagship in Texas at UT Austin, because in my case, I would save almost $500,000 difference in student loans for undergraduate and medical school. If including loan interest, that would make the Ivy League a million dollar mistake for someone like me. If I imagine I was an Ivy League graduate right now, I would gladly gain $1,000,000 to be where I am right now. (Jeff Bezos calls this the “regret minimization framework”) That being said, the analysis is more nuanced than that - factors such as educational quality, location, total costs and networking matter, my thought process is later explained.My dad went to Harvard.I am currently more wealthy than my dad. He had a 40 year headstart and an Ivy League degree.Here’s my thought process:My belief was and still is: Ivy Leagues are incentivized to select more talented people that will likely become successful, but not necessarily help them become more successful beyond what was intrinsic. This doesn’t mean that “selection” is necessarily a negative attribute, it’s closest to something in between a “club good” and “private good”. Ivy League schools has similar characteristics of a “Veblen good”, especially when it is a degree where it is more difficult to evaluate skills and quality i.e. liberal arts or business degrees.I’m not going to say names don’t matter at all. That is absolutely false. Names matter because it’s a brand - in essence a marketing signal. That being said, marketing is only useful if you get a return on it, otherwise you’re engaging in a high “marketing burn rate”. This strongly depends on what you’re applying to, what you are seeking, and how much the signal matters to who you’re sending the signal to. Ivies especially are critical for certain “extremely selective” employers as signalling for social closure in “elite” labor markets. Ivy League seniors survey shows they aim for law (25%), finance/IB (17%), management consulting (12%). That’s over half the class looking to move to extremely selective prestigious job markets. The “Ivy-to-Wall-Street” pipeline is quite real. Recruiters seduce you early on with a familiar “elite selective” structured application processes and fancy offices, insulating you from the start. These “elite” labor markets are generally competitive even among Ivy League graduates, so they rarely look at any other schools.Ultimately, this boils down to economics, unless money doesn’t matter to you at all. I have always believed in avoiding competition unless absolutely necessary, because that’s where you really make the most value.Let this fundamental but often overlooked concept of economics digest - in a capitalistic environment, perfect competition is the anti-thesis of the accumulation of capital, because competition will compete away all your profits in the long run! I'm not saying people should always be motivated by money or something like that, but I think we should be a little bit more critical of perfect competition as a rationalization, and look at cost-benefit ratio for prestige brands.We should also be wary about not making a fundamental error on market sizing. A new Italian restaurant with a new recipe in an area without Italian restaurants is not devoid of competition, but is likely operating in a highly competitive market of the restaurant industry. Most customers likely don’t care if your recipe is better than your grandma’s recipe.When I was deciding which school (state flagship vs. Ivy) to attend, here is what my decision process yielded:Opportunities of Ivy relative to state flagship:Specific employers in “top-tier” law firms, financial companies and management consulting firms use Ivy as the major hiring heuristic and recruitment. Relative to state flagship, there is a significant benefit for those specific employers that make up a tiny percent of all employers. If you need the “name brand” to get into those “top tier” firms, I would suggest getting a top 10 MBA after a flagship undergraduate, paid by your employer who will write it off taxes unless you get a free ride in an Ivy League. Why pay exorbitantly more for prestige when you don’t have to? You don’t need to chase an expensive Ivy League for undergraduate to do that. In the same state, flagship schools have an excellent reputation. In other states, it likely won’t hurt your employment opportunities, because it’s still a strong reputation. My fiancé is also from a state flagship - University of Florida with a full ride - and got a 6 figure engineering job quite easily here in Texas. Outside of the tiny amount of “elite” labor markets, what matters is individual effort, smarts, and personality. My fiance out-earns 75%+ of all Ivy League graduates. I will out-earn 90%+ of Ivy League graduates, on a physician salary doing what I love. This does not take into account real earnings - when you include state taxes, size of student loans and cost of living. If we include that, my fiance will out-earn 90%+ of Ivy League grads. In fact, we can both retire at 40 - if we wanted to.Connections and alumni network are supposedly “superior”. You’ll undoubtedly make contacts that feed into the “elite job markets”, but I highly suspect that depends on the person. “Superior at X” is not the same as “superior”. Personally, the alumni network in UT has been highly valuable to me, while it didn’t really do anything notable for my dad because Ivy League students have an additional layer of selection amongst themselves. If you can’t connect with people by joining the in-group, then you’re not going to get much out of the network. You’re going to get weeded out of friendships based on what you can afford (it’s easy to tell from family background and occupation). I couldn’t afford what I saw going on in Harvard. The UT alumni network landed me multiple opportunities in entrepreneurship and helped me close software contract sales. It is also much larger. UT has 40,000+ undergrads and 500,000+ alumni. Alumni are very “prideful” about the school and it’s often called “bleeding burnt orange” - don’t take my word for it, search for it yourself - alumni always give a second look if they hear UT and classmates are much more empathetic. In addition, size does matter - UT has the most Fortune 1000 CEOs and it doesn’t pale much compared to Ivy in those types of job markets when it increases your sheer chances substantially at “the numbers game”.Resources are supposedly “superior”. This depends on a lot of variables and there’s no clear cut general answer. There is no doubt Harvard and Yale has a overall huge amount of resources, relative to state flagships. That being said, when we look at relative resources - in my case, UT has the 3rd largest endowment in the nation and is one of the three that received an AAA rating from S&P for strong and stable financing outlook, even in a recession. I had no trouble getting research opportunities or outstanding professors. This really depends on the school, department and what resources you seek. You have to do your own research.Costs of Ivy relative to state flagship:Extremely high cost of attendance. I personally save ~$60,000 a year for 8 years (B.S. + M.D.) from the difference in cost of attendance - that’s half a million in student loans, not including interest - which can balloon to ~$1,000,000 dollars in just one decade after school. The high cost does not pay off either - you generally do not get a significant earnings advantage, unless that is you get a free ride by being from a low-income family or as a underrepresented minority. In state-funded schools, the tuition is partly subsidized by the state.There is a selection bias among Ivy League graduates towards track dependency of prestigious “elite job markets” that are landlocked in highest-cost of living areas. What cities do Ivy League grads overwhelmingly stay at? New York City, NY; Boston, MA; San Francisco, CA. $100,000 in Houston, TX is easily $200,000 in those areas (see the “lifestyle trap”). My cost of living (rent+utilities+meals) is about $7,050 a year right next to campus with my private apartment. Harvard “estimates” the cost of living is $30,000 per year and can be much higher depending on the individual, and they’re more likely to keep paying that early on after graduation since their identity is intertwined with living in a certain way. Savings rates are estimated to be about 12% on average for these people. (Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913: evidence from capitalized income tax data. Emmanuel Saez & Gabriel Zucman) If you want to stay in a certain area, you should consider locale-specific reputation for those specific careers. It’s 10x easier to amass professional connections with your neighbors in a community based on proximity. Most jobs are based on who you know. They already know what’s it like to work with you and can give you a convincing recommendation.Increased risk of burnout. Health > Money. Staying healthy in mind and body is much harder than making extra bucks. The cost of burnout is much higher than you think in Ivy League. Burnout costs employers $150–300 billion a year. This is not a ticket to slack off, but one must also consider the risks of overloaded expectations in a cut-throat environment. My medical school has an emphasis and culture of chillness and cooperativity. That increases productivity because we are there to help each other out, not outcompete each other by a few points with relatively obscure medical knowledge that will be forgotten after graduation. Stress is already high in medical school, why add to it with irritated attendings and cut-throat classmates if it doesn’t increase your salary substantially? On top of that, 58% of Princeton students report feeling well rested only three or fewer days per week. It is one thing to have a strong work ethic (presumably), but another to undergo sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is directly counterproductive to memory, learning and creativity. This is particularly well-documented in the literature with strong evidence, yet Princeton claims they cultivate students to be “creative” in their marketing materials. They should focus on getting their students well rested first.Talented students at non-Ivy universities can possibly get more attention from professors (depends on the culture). Personally, I would get the time of the day from the department heads in state flagships really easily. To my understanding, the best academians only conduct research, and even if they offer a course, it’s not easy to get a spot. Look at the rankings of RateMyProfessor or any other data regarding how professors treat students (US News doesn’t take this into account, and basically rooted as a popularity contest amongst college presidents), here's how all the Ivy League schools fared: 111. Princeton University 152. Columbia University 187. University of Pennsylvania 196. Brown University 213. Yale University 247. Harvard University 294. Dartmouth College 414. Cornell University. Out of ~600 schools. Abstract matters, such as credit/recognition, generally warps academia. Clearly, most schools are biased towards tweaking their numbers in terms of what increases their rankings, and tend to de-prioritize anything that doesn’t increase their rankings, such as actually getting more quality professor time at a reasonable cost. Becoming a professor is extremely competitive at good state schools, so you really aren’t missing out relative to Ivies. In fact, the honors courses always had the most outstanding faculty with no trouble enrolling, since the spots were fixed to honor students only.Don’t ask whether Ivy League matters. What you should ask is - what matters to you? There are areas with significantly higher social impact - such as research, startups, politics, grantmakers and non-profits that require highly skilled people. Work backwards - if getting into an elite bulge bracket IBD is your dream, I highly encourage you to consider top “prestigious” Ivy League schools they care most about. However, you should be assessing whether crunching mind-numbing Excel sheets for 100 hours a week as a entry level grunt is what you’d enjoy as a career. If it’s only the money you’re after, then you should still consider opinion on Wall Street: A Wall Streeter Tackles An Age-Old Debate — Do You Take Prestige Or Money?According to the article, in short: “A better decision metric would have been: F**k prestige, get money.”For those who are not just for the money which I assume is a substantial crowd - think about this - a big company teaches you how to work for a big company - generally slow, bureaucratic and frustrating. A small company or self-employment will pile more valuable responsibilities to the most talented person at a breakneck rate. That prepares you for everything and sets you up for maximum impact - no risk, no reward. To give some color - small businesses make up 99.7% of US employers. Nobody cares where you come from if you bring enormous value. Non-monetary value dictates you are missing out on the entire universe which has immensely high value by only joining the extremely narrow range of big companies. In fact, it might well be riskier, since big companies don’t do “watch jobs” anymore. It is past the time where you stay at the same company for life. Everyone is essentially disposable in a recession, unless they are the few that are “critically needed”.Ultimately, what matters is what sort of career you seek, what are the costs, how you relate to people, and what value you bring. The notion that you’ve got to do X, Y, and Z or else your life is over is clearly flawed. All I can say is that you have to follow your own dreams, think critically, and make well-informed decisions. Ask in-depth questions such as “Best how?”, “Best for whom?”, “Best at what price?”, rather than the undefined superlative of “Best?”. Rankings generally focus on the superfluous, and doesn’t always make the best personal fit.Other considerations:Contrary to what Ty Doyle says: In medicine, Ivy prestige does not increase your future salary or medical school acceptance rates. This is a common misconception. I will point to my current medical school class - only 1–2 Ivy League graduates out of 220 students. Take a look at salaries for doctors from state vs. Ivy League schools. There is no premium. In fact, the average board exam scores (which is the top determinant of your residency match and consequently, salary) for my state flagship are higher than almost all the Ivy League medical schools. Ask any doctor and he/she will agree that salaries won’t be higher. This makes it clear that the quality of curriculum, attitude of the professors, and individual drive are more important than getting the most prestigious name in medicine. To sweeten the deal, physicians salaries AND real earnings are generally significantly higher in Texas and in-state tuition is the lowest in the nation. That being said, I agree with Ty for law school - being in the top 10 matters a lot for prestigious law firms, with some rare exceptions - the bimodal distribution of salary inflates the average law graduate salaries.In response to Alex K. Chen: Don’t just base it on class size as a whole, but find out how each school breaks the class down from a whole into its smaller parts. It wasn’t commuter for me. Both private and school dorms were right next to campus. My college and medical school dorm cost me ~$400/month including utilities with my own private room, right next to school. On the contrary, it wasn’t hard to break into “friend groups” as people in Austin are quite open to new friends. This depends on the culture, rather than size. It was not hard to make friends in a “big school” as the amount of diversified choices in interest groups and classes are high. Also, my current class size is 220, but the small group PBL sessions are 6–7 people per faculty.Attention matters. Everybody has a scarce resource called time. Two of the department heads would entertain my request for meeting in one room for joint research with me by taking out time from their busy schedule and coordinate a meeting. If you had the experience of coordinating busy schedules, it’s quite messy. It’s not a matter of being “too busy”, but ultimately what their priorities are. I think students should consider schools that have more strong faculty who make students a priority, whether Ivy or not. With higher Ivy grade inflation and lackluster general undergraduate lecture quality, we should question the assumption that Ivy Leagues have generally better teacher attitudes and class/academic rigor without proper analysis. The priorities are skewed towards not adding value to students, but publishing papers in prestigious journals to maintain the brand prestige. Although this can heavily depend on the individual professor as well. The main point is you are more likely to shine if the professors prioritize cultivating talented students. These professors are going to be the network base for which you get references and contacts. Almost all of the department heads have top credentials in my medical school, so I really maximize bang for buck.Location matters. This is another factor I looked at in the process of choosing which school to attend. If your network is in the same state, it will be highly advantageous for your pursuits. Not to mention, Texas has no state income tax, strong asset protection, and favorable tort reform. With the new tax bill, real earnings are even better than before relative to high tax states such as NY, MA and CA. Texas has ~2% effective state taxes for high income earners. It’s also one of the most business and landlord friendly states out there. If you plan to obtain high leverage in real estate markets, Texas is an excellent choice for inflation protection, because asset prices stayed steady throughout 2009 when the housing bubble burst. Houston especially is a good location for my RE investment purposes because the “no zoning” allows supply to meet demand, which reduces the likelihood of a real estate asset “bubble” and increases long-term health of the city by keeping rents low for both commercial and residential.Higher education predators. On the other end of the spectrum, don’t mistake colleges that are known to be predators, you know - mostly the ones that offer an easy degree on advertisers that only see the dollars. Don’t believe the average college degree makes you richer “hype”, asymmetric outcomes are more likely to happen because there is a lot of noise and dilution. There is a clear problem with new institutions, especially specific for-profit colleges that prey on students that can’t make it anywhere else. If you are just looking for a 9–5 “white-collar” job, look carefully at the value of your degree - in particular student loan default rates and similar career profiles on LinkedIn to assess the job market. There are many more people in college these days, so attending a “diploma mill” doesn’t mean much.You don’t need the name or even college for that matter to make as much as a Ivy League graduate in an “elite” investment banking job. You make your own fate by working as smart and hard as possible. If you follow “avoid competition unless absolutely necessary”, you should be very careful how you select your college institution for a lasting, sustainable edge over a lifetime, or consider alternatives you may enjoy, such as trade schools. Focus your efforts on what matters to you and do your own research. Prestige should only be a tool, not an idol. Don’t go into Ivy just because your high school friends hype it up. Think critically beyond the hype - and assess what’s the best decision for your situation.Heck, even a “blue-collar” government janitor (How one Bay Area janitor made $276,000 last year) made much more than Ivy graduates living in cramped Manhattan apartments for the right to “slave” away on Excel sheets at Goldman Sachs and pay NYC ~13% top state taxes on top of Uncle Sam’s 37% top federal tax rates with a maximum $10,000 SALT deduction. In short, every extra $1 you make, you pay ~$0.5 in taxes if you work for GS in NYC at the highest income tax bracket, if you work for someone else.The janitor’s general manager made ~$500,000 on public salary record: 'Grace Crunican' - Transparent Public Salary Search. If you are a top 5% plumber with your own growing business and employees, you can make $1,000,000 a year (at the lower 21% corporate tax rates and effective <17% tax rate I might add!) in some geographical areas. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg recommends to consider forgo paying $60,000 tuition a year at Harvard for plumbing. If you have the talent and drive to get into Goldman Sachs (~3% acceptance rate among already “top” Ivy talent, which selects top high school talent at ~5%), there is no reason you can’t do this, if you can already make the top 0.15% of candidates. Even fewer of those candidates who are bald, white men have a shot to become the CEO. It is much better to take fate into your own hands if you have a different vision of “minimizing regret”.How are the most millionaires made in America? Look it up - it’s laundromats.

I met my former mgr back in Nov/Dec 2014 for an interview. I was between 2 p/t jobs & had to leave b4 nightfall for my 2nd job. The interview start between 3 & 4pm. After 1.5hrs, I kept telling Chris, the owner/mgr of this tiny co that I had to go. Half hr later, he was still “interviewing me”, I kept telling him that I had to go. I was late to my 2nd job. I received a request for a 2nd interview. A week later, I went to the 2nd interview, which was another 2hrs of BS. I had a bad feeling about Chris, only did I not like him, but something told me not to trust him. I went through the 2nd interview b/c needed a f/t job w/ benes. I took the job, despite the bad feeling about Chris, despite his down-to-earth disposition. I learned as much as I could from the technology available at the company. During the first few months, I was told that if I learn SharePoint that I could cross train into a position w/in the co. I learned as much as I could, passed 2 Microsoft cert exams & had hands on experience.About 1.5 yrs later, Chris hired a guy name Matt who had no IT exp., BS in computer science, but was an EMT after graduating college. I saw this in Matt’s LinkedIn profile & thought WTF-why did Chris hire Matt? This made no sense, since I have been making it known to everyone in the company that I wanted to do more & be more. Plus, Chris hired a guy a few years ago who may have a college degree, but no IT exp & not even 1 certification in anything, yet he was hired as a SharePoint consultant.So, I wanted to give Matt a chance to see if he knew anything about SharePoint or Office 365 that was not in his LinkedIn profile. I finally had a chance to talk with Matt in the breakroom. During our small talk, Matt admitted that he didn’t know anything about Exchange, Azure AD, on-prem vs. online or anything. He walked away from our small talk & I was utterly dumbfounded that Chris would be so callous to hire a man w/ no IT knowledge, but not promote a woman learning & practicing all things SharePoint. FYI: Matt & I are both veterans.After seeing this pattern of Chris giving men who lacked experience the opportunity to develop a career, he denied me. My intuition told me not to trust this guy & this is the result.I left to take control of my destiny.BTW, After I left, Chris did hire a woman as a SharePoint consultant, but she quit 6 months later. I reflect on the fact that Chris’ small company has a disproportion ratio of men to women in his team. More men & few women; Don’t accuse the IT industry of this, b/c Chris doesn’t even have a single woman in a upper mgmt role.

I didn't stay for an extra semester. Although, in retrospect, I should have. It was a nice chance to increase my grades etc. I stayed back for summer to complete the BTP project part 2 and one course which I had dropped.Throughout the four years at an IIT, the one thought that sends a graduate student into deep depression is the thought of staying back. It's really degrading, humiliating and confidence shattering experience. Students are ready to do anything to prevent that.For me, it started slowly. With a first F in fourth semester, I tasted the pain of failed course. Probably the first time in my student life. It was bitter of course, but I was more bitter that I was awarded F grade not for low marks, but for shortfall of attendance. A despise for this rule grew in me. I started taking rules very lightly and by the end of 6th semester, I had 3 additional failed courses, along with the one from 4th which I wasn't able to pass again. Because of the same reason.Out of the 4 failed courses, only in 1 I had failed because of low marks. And I scored low marks because I didn't go to attend the classes. In fact, I had less than 10% attendance in few of the courses. It was a sort of mutiny I had thought of, which was going to hurt myself. Contrary to what you may think, I didn't waste time. While I wasn't going to classes, I was going through some great literature over internet or watching some awesome documentaries. I thought of three different start up ideas, started one quite successfully and excruciatingly worked for the second to lift off. Of course, I had my fun over the time as well. I experienced my first relationship during that time. Experienced the betrayal and pain of break up. Experienced what a total failure is and what bankruptcy means in non-financial terms. I even walked out of college with less than half mind to come back.But after I returned, I had a completely different outlook. I had about two and half semesters to go and there was a good chance I could have cleared all the courses. I didn't get back into book but the outlook towards education changed completely. My intention was to learn everything possible. Anything and everything. I chose one of the most difficult projects for my BTP, which was not even in the sanctioned list of projects by the professors. I selected my optional courses very carefully to maximise the learning in my area of interests.I had already understood that one of the startups which I had planned wasn't going to take off without some hefty investment. So I put it on the back burner. Or you can say I completely forgot about it. I landed a mediocre job in campus placements and looked at my challenges. I have to clear two more courses and then I'm free from this hoopla of pretentious education. My ambition was to clear them and go for a solid career making frenzy, leading to my third and dream start up.After 7th semester, I had cleared two of my back courses and two more were remaining. Including the one from the 4th semester. By this time, I had understood that the professor for that one course isn't going to pass me unless I attend his classes or give a suitable excuse. As I despised him, his teaching methods and his lack of interest in further expansion of knowledge, I chose the later. I chose an elective whose class timings would clash with his course and showed him the time table. Even he had an expression in his eyes: "Okay, you win this time."But he had the last laugh. When the exam time tables were out, it turned out that two of my courses have same exam slot. This terrified me. I went from pillar to post to get anything done. I talked to the professors. The academic department. The DoAA, DoSA, idli sambhar vada everyone. But they were of little help.Everyone had a unanimous stand: Stay back in summer and graduate next year. But then a ray of hope came. I was able to switch my electives at the last moment. In fact, on the last day itself I was running from one department to another to get signatures. Of course, I would have missed half the attendance and I would have to go on another spree to convince the professor to pass me, but that was to be thought of later. I got my elective changed and went to talk to the professor. He made it clear. I don't care if you come to my class or not. But if you don't score good on my scoring curve, I am going to screw you and screw you good.It was scary but I was relaxed. I thought that if I scored some mediocre marks in the exams, he will pass me with the lowest grade. I didn't care if I had passed. I started working on my BTP project. It was tough. I made a prototype and demoed it to my mentor. He was quite impressed but wasn't satisfied.I made another prototype and showed him that. He was again impressed but wasn't satisfied. I didn't quit because it was interesting for me as well. The equations, the numbers, the diagrams, the mechanisms etc. They all made sense. Much more sense than what they made during lectures. Then the unthinkable happened.My laptop got stolen.Two days before my end semester exams.It had everything I had created. The short novel I was writing. The details of my next prototype. The papers for my elective presentation. My class notes. Practice papers. Everything. At this point, I could have gave in and quit. But I still denied that there is zero possibility of graduating on time.So while each and everyone of my batchmate was signing no-dues forms for easy graduation and trying out fitting gowns for the convocation, I was asking everyone to lend me their laptops so I could work a little more on my paper. Or I could run another simulation on a prototype. Somewhere my subconscious kept telling me that resistance is futile and to give in to an extended semester, but I kept denying that. I refused to accept that there is no chance to graduate in time. I had reduced the conversations with my parents to bare minimum and that with my girlfriend to almost nil. Once in a week or two, I'll reply to her text that I'm okay and healthy and working.Due to lack of time, I even turned towards plagiarism and ended up copying some research work without proper documentation or reference. There were many other bittersweet experienced which I had with the BTP panel and the aforementioned electives professor which ended up me getting failed grades in both of them.And then the actual hell began. One by one, I saw every friend of mine walking out of college. Everyone promised to stay connected through facebook and whatnot. But in absence of a computer, I had nil contact with anyone else. I met my girlfriend after 3 months and broke down in front of her. My family was thousands of miles away, organizing an event related to the death of my grandfather. One more time, I faced total bankruptcy.I hadn't expected to fail this bad. There was no retrospection or epiphany of sorts. It was just anger. Towards myself and towards the educational system. I knew that I was smarter than the average flock which graduated couple weeks ago. My professors knew that. Heck, even my batchmates knew that. I wanted to curse the gods, but I knew their existence was as true as my degree that day. I wanted to talk to my dad, but I couldn't face the shame. I didn't know what to do next. I had faced every humiliation in the past four years. I had attended classes with my juniors. I had licked boots of my professors for an extra reference on my paper. I had manipulated, twisted and haggled for change in exam dates. And I had sold my soul. But in the end, I received nothing. I still had two failed courses.Technically, it was an extension, not a failed grade.Which meant that if I could complete the papers in summer, I will get my degree in July of 2012 instead of the May of 2012 which rest of my batchmates will be getting. Then began my tryst. I told myself that I don't care about the prestige or pride anymore. If they don't want to see the intellect in me, they will see what they have inside them. I didn't care for their intellects either. I didn't consult with my mentor or my BTP panel for anything. I didn't care what my electives professor was teaching. And when the time came, I presented something which was good enough for just passing. I expected their reaction. The BTP panel failed me again and the electives professor passed me.Now comes the twist. The reason why my BTP panel had failed me, and they quote: "We believe this is not your best effort. Although you have a working prototype, you can make a better one. We as panel, advise you to stay for next semester and work on it."I went to my mentor and told them, this is the same bullshit which the panel told me during end semester exams. This is the same thing which they will tell me next semester. Even I know that this is not my best effort. Even the workshop technicians who helped me cut the metal know that. But I don't care for my best effort. Because the panel can't see it if it hit them in the face. I prepared those simulations in 2 days flat. Those videos in 4 hours. Which one of the PhDs has done that? I didn't get a proper sleep because of the panel. This pretentious panel which will use my best effort not to increase the knowledge domain, but to increase their demand for R&D money. Even you know that not 1% of that will come into my project. So I request you, either give me a passing grade or give me a no-objection certificate so that I can drop out of college.Now, I wasn't a star student. But asking an NOC for dropout was going to hamper the reputation of my college. As the last date for submission of grades has already passed, he said he will get the panel to give me passing grade, if the academic section will accept it at such late notice. I said I will take care of that.I went to the Dean of Academic Affairs and told him my story. He said he will talk to my panel and get back to me next day. Next day, he repeated the same words. You have potential, why don't you want to work for us.I repeated the same words. Because I don't trust you. Instead of teaching the brightest minds of this country, you've used their ideas to pitch for money and then use the money to fill your coffers. I knew it was a bad idea to insult the man who was going to decide my career, but I was a hot head back then. It ensued a long conversation about academics, research interests, career options etc. which ended on: If your professor have no obligation on re-testing you for your grades, I don't have any issue in correcting your grades.The last date of provisional graduation has already went off. There were lot's of other backloggers who had stayed back and even they had left. New semester was going to start in a week. My warden has asked me to shift to a dormitory and asked me to vacate my room because he wanted it for a fresher who was going to live in it for full time. I took that mail and planted it on the desk of my BTP panel chairperson. He said that they can't retest me unless I made a new prototype. I said I'm not going to make a new prototype. You will have to make do with the same one. If they want, I can show the same prototype once more. I can work up futuristic calculations and leave the prototype with them for any further testing or development they wanted to do. This seemed like a fair deal to them. They arranged a meeting, took my prototype and instead of letting me speak any new word or giving me a moment to show my calculations, they handed me a letter and said, Go. I knew what it was.The time was Friday, 10th August, 1650 hrs. I had less than 10 minutes to get that change of grades approved, get my updated marksheet and provisional degree. I ran like wind towards the academic section. They asked to come back on Monday. I couldn't. I had a train back to home, that very night. They said they couldn't do anything. The registrar had left the building and he had to sign on the provisional.I ran down to the parking lot and just missed the registrar. I called the main gate and asked them to give him a message. It was a very low probability that he would return the message, but if in case he did, I would be able to face my parents with my degree in my hands. I waited for 10 minutes. The office staff were getting angsty to leave for home. I pleaded them. Half an hour passed. Still nothing. I asked them if any of them had his cell number. They said they had his home number but not his cell number. I asked for that and called his home, hoping someone would give me that contact info. I kept calling and calling and calling again. Around 17:45, he walks into the office, "Who is this Shivam Mishra and why did he leave me this urgent message at the security gate?"Me: Sir, its me. I need one of your signatures. Its urgent.Him: Why is your phone busy?Me: I was trying to call your home.Him: What do you need?Me: Your signature on my grade update sheet and my provisional degree certificate.Him: Can't you come on Monday, kid?Me: No, I have train this evening.Him: Are the papers ready?I look at the other officials who were hesitant to take the printouts because they were sure the registrar won't turn up. I just pleaded them with my eyes and they dropped into action. Within minutes my grades were changed. Within minutes all the no-dues was cleared. Within minutes all the registers and databases updated. And within minutes, I had my degree in my hand.Yes, I played it close. Yes, I succeeded. Was it pleasant, of course not. How did it feel? Well, my friend, it felt like playing russian roulette with myself. It's exciting, but at the end, I was hurting myself.