A spot at an Indian Institute of Technology is a golden ticket. There are 23 IITs throughout India, the nation’s most elite expertise coaching establishments: a manufacturing line for CEOs. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Flipkart’s founder Sachin Bansal are among their alumni. So are Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy and FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam.

Dhaval Raghwani hadn’t even thought of going to an IIT till, in 2017, a training institute—a ending college designed to get children into elite establishments—opened up in Thane, near the place he lived in Mulund, Mumbai. Possibilities unrolled in entrance of him. Each yr, the media runs headlines of scholars leaving these prestigious establishments with “2 crore per annum jobs” (practically $245,000). Raghwani was swept up by the promise of incomes in crores.

Taking a run at an IIT entails, counterintuitively, leaving college. To get into an engineering school in India means passing the Joint Entrance Exam, or JEE, and training facilities concentrate on getting ready college students for these grueling exams. Just 0.5 percent of candidates are accepted into undergraduate programs at IITs.

Raghwani give up college—finishing his highschool diploma as an impartial candidate—to enroll within the teaching heart. Classes on the teaching heart would usually have price him the equal of $6,000; nonetheless, with a scholarship, Raghwani paid $2,500. It was an intensive program. “I had no social life,” Raghwani says. “I [went] to coaching classes early morning and used to come back home late. I didn’t have a phone. I just used to study, eat, sleep.”

The intense work paid off. In 2019 he obtained a spot at IIT Madras within the southern metropolis of Chennai. But there was a good steeper hill to climb. The common IIT scholar is anticipated to spend 50 to 55 hours per week on their educational program, to safe internships and placements at prestigious firms, and to take care of a wide range of extracurricular pursuits and actions—together with as much as two hours of mandatory physical education per week. The definition of remarkable has develop into inflated over time. It’s not sufficient to have good grades. Now you must have edited the college paper and raised cash for charity. With each scholar having been prime of their class, the tutorial setting is fiercely aggressive. Current and former college students say that campuses are sometimes hypermasculine, with feminine college students going through overt harassment and abuse.

Unsurprisingly, the dropout rate is high. For some, tragically, the strain of the IIT pushes them into disaster. Since 2018, 33 IIT students have died by suicide, based on authorities figures. This yr alone, the IITs noticed six suicides within the first 4 months of the yr. In late April, IIT Madras, the top-ranked IIT, reported its fourth suicide in three months.

“I guess it depends on the individual,” says Raghwani, now a 22-year-old Bachelor of Technology scholar, “how they [handle] the pressure.” His voice lowers as he proceeds: “In my hostel, [last semester] there was a suicide,” he clicks his tongue between each second phrase. “I knew that person very well—and in front of my room, he committed suicide.”