IIT
The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are a group of fifteen autonomous prestigious engineering and technology-oriented institutes of higher education established and declared as Institutes of National Importance by the Parliament of India. The IITs were created to train scientists and engineers, with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to support the economic and social development of India after independence in 1947.
In order of establishment, they are located in Kharagpur (1950; as IIT 1951), Mumbai (1958), Chennai (1959), Kanpur (1959), Delhi (1961; as IIT 1963), Guwahati (1994), Roorkee (1847; as IIT 2001), Bhubaneswar (2008), Gandhinagar (2008), Hyderabad (2008), Patna (2008), Punjab (2008), Rajasthan (2008), Indore (2009) and Mandi (2009). Some IITs were established with financial assistance and technical expertise from UNESCO, Germany, the United States,Japan and Soviet Union. Each IIT is an autonomous university, linked to the others through a common IIT Council, which oversees their administration.
They have a common admission process for undergraduate admissions, using the Joint Entrance Examination (popularly known as IIT-JEE) to select around 8,000 undergraduate candidates a year. Postgraduate admissions are done on the basis of the GATE, JMET, JAM and CEED. About 15,500 undergraduate and 12,000 graduate students study in the IITs, in addition to research scholars.
IIT alumni have achieved success in a variety of professions. Most of the IITs were created in early 1950s and 1960s as the Institutes of National Importance through special acts of Indian Parliament. The success of the IITs led to the creation of the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIIT) in the late 1990s and in the 2000s.