‘Give me some sunshine, I wanna grow up once again.’The line from India’s blockbuster movie was not merely a song; it became an anthem that tied together the feelings of a generation of aspirants. In India, engineering is not just a profession; for many, it is synonymous with a prestigious life. Students toil for years in coaching institutes, with hunched backs and swollen eyes, driven by a single aim: to crack JEE and reach the coveted gates of an IIT. For many, the preparation begins as early as Class 8 or 9.But after years of toil, perseverance, and sacrifice, what happens when the dream is finally achieved? The competition takes a different shape: academic pressure, constant comparison, the weight of the “IITian” tag, and the fear of falling short of what is expected. Is the pressure to get into IIT being replaced by the pressure to prove that you deserved to be there?At least 65 students have died by suicide across the Indian Institutes of Technology between January 2021 and December 2025, according to figures maintained by the Global IIT Alumni Support Group. As many as 30 such deaths were recorded in the past two years.The numbers do not explain the circumstances behind individual deaths. But they raise an important question: What happens to students who spend years learning how to reach IIT but are never prepared for what happens once they get there? Source: Responding to a question in Parliament, then Minister of State for Education Dr. Subhas Sarkar mentioned it in 2023. ‘When you come to IIT, a new story starts’ An IIT Delhi BTech student, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the transition from being a high-performing student to becoming one among many high achievers. “Students come to IIT after being toppers in their schools and coaching institutes. Suddenly, they find themselves surrounded by other toppers. For many, it is difficult to process that they are no longer at the top,” he told TOI.That shift can affect more than academic confidence. It can alter how students see themselves.Toshant Kamble, who passed IIT Kharagpur in 2019, said students enter IIT after years of intense competition, and the struggle does not end there; instead, it gets new benchmarks.“Students go through a lot of coaching and fierce competition before IIT. Once they enter, they start hearing about someone getting a one-crore package. Very few actually get such packages, but everyone starts chasing that number,” he said.The competition can begin almost immediately with branch changes. Though rarely articulated openly, a latent hierarchy exists, with branches such as Computer Science and Electrical Engineering often perceived as more desirable or prestigious.For many, the first major test after entering IIT is securing the grades required to move into their preferred branch, said Vishnu Prasad Sharma, who completed a dual-degree BTech-MTech programme at IIT Madras in 2023.The race then transcends academics. Clubs and societies become another arena of competition as students seek the extracurricular and professional skills employers increasingly value.“Everyone is good at studies, so employers start looking for extra skills, and those can be gained through clubs and societies. Getting into those clubs is a struggle in itself,” said Toshant.The rat race, then, does not necessarily end with JEE. It changes its currency: JEE rank gives way to CGPA, branch, clubs, internships, and eventually placements. The ‘IITian’ tag comes with a price to pay The pressure does not necessarily reek from inside the campus. The roots lie somewhere else.Gopinathan CP, a learning science, performance science, and organisation development expert, believes the expectations placed on students are partly created by parents and society.“Society and parents also need to change. Students are ultimately the receivers of parental expectations, and those expectations are themselves influenced by society,” he said.The narrative that getting into IIT will lead to a high-paying career can overwhelm the students and make ordeals appear much larger.“Not every IIT graduate gets the best job, and not everyone gets a one-crore or two-crore package. We need to recalibrate these expectations,” Gopinathan said.The anonymous IIT Delhi student said the contradiction becomes particularly stark inside and outside the campus. Sometimes the prestige of being an “IITian” adds burden and shackles the student.“Inside IIT, everyone has the IIT tag, so it becomes normal. But outside, families and society attach enormous value to it. That creates expectations about grades, jobs, and salaries,” the student said.For some, that expectation can even squeeze the space to consider an alternative career. The IIT Delhi student recalls grappling with family pressure over leaving the degree, saying the value attached to the IIT tag added to the mental burden. When toppers start feeling like impostors For students accustomed to being among the best, IIT can be a sharp reality check. Toshant mentioned that the intense competition can make even accomplished students question whether they truly deserve this place.“Students start feeling like impostors because the competition is very high. Creamy students enter the IITs, and then you are competing with those students,” he said.The comparison can become particularly difficult for students who have always associated their identity with academic achievement. Inside IIT, being exceptional may no longer feel exceptional when almost everyone around you has a similar record.The students who are sporty learn a lot and sharpen their personalities, but we cannot blame those who start feeling inferior,” Toshant mentioned.“When you do not get placed after 2 or 3 placement rounds, the anxiety and sleep debt increases,” said Vishnu. The impostor feeling starts hitting students When the placement season becomes a nightmare for some While students grapple with several challenges through their IIT years, many of these eventually converge around placements. The cycle begins with relative ranking: when students find themselves surrounded by equally or more accomplished peers, a lower CGPA can feel consequential, potentially affecting access to internships and preferred recruiters.“The pressure is to get placed and then to get placed in a good company. Even when someone gets a package of Rs 30 lakh or Rs 40 lakh, another student may feel left behind if their package is Rs 15-16 lakh,” Vishnu said.Not every student secures a crore-plus package, and not everyone gets placed. Yet, for some, graduating from an institution as prestigious as IIT without a placement, or with a modest package, can feel less like an ordinary career outcome and more like a personal failure.The very tag that once represented the pinnacle of achievement carries enough weight to succumb to aspirations and become a source of inadequacy.He described this as the “burden of being an IITian,” an identity that can invite constant scrutiny and expectations.“There is a perception that people expect a lot from you simply because you are an IITian. If, after three years of experience, someone from another college is earning more than you, it can create a huge sense of insecurity,” Vishnu said.The problem, therefore, may not always be the absence of success but the inability to recognise it when it falls short of the success imagined for an IIT graduate.From branch changes to internships and placements, the race does not end. It simply keeps changing its finish line. Difference in median salaries across IITs Difference in median salaries across IITs in 2023-24 (Source: NIRF Rankings for Engineering 2025) For some students, the pressure begins in the first year itself The problem is not only inside IIT but even outside; you carry forth a sense of expectations that, in a way, overwhelms you and creates a sense of pressure.“The first pressure is meeting so many brilliant students. Everyone comes from a strong academic background, and suddenly getting a very high CGPA is not easy,” Vishnu said.The competition then moves to internships. “There are limited opportunities, students send hundreds of emails, and many do not get responses. Then the comparison begins again,” said Toshant.The same cycle continues into placements, where students compare their internships, extracurricular profiles, CGPAs, and offers.But the pressure is not limited to academics and jobs.The IIT Delhi student said some students also struggle with social comparison and finding their place on campus.“Some students are very academically focused and find it difficult to make friends. They may experience FOMO when they see other groups enjoying themselves, participating in activities, or socializing," he said. Are students being prepared for pressure? Gopinathan sees a gap in how students are prepared for the competitive environment they eventually enter.“We train students extensively in subjects, but when they struggle, the response is often to teach them more physics, mathematics, or chemistry. We also need to prepare them for pressure, how to handle failure, how to build good habits, and how to perform when the stakes are high,” he said.His argument is that students need to learn to focus on what they can control rather than constantly measuring themselves against outcomes.“Students need to understand their controllables and make peace with what they cannot control. We should focus more on process goals and skills rather than only chasing outcomes,” he said. The fear of falling short The deeper problem may be what happens when academic performance becomes part of a student's identity.Gopinathan said repeated celebration of being a topper can make students believe that they must remain one forever.“Being a topper does not define you forever. Students need to learn that success and failure are both part of the process,” he said.He draws a comparison with sport, where failure is built into the experience.“Sport teaches you to deal with failure and bounce back. Even the greatest athletes have failed many times. Our education system also needs to teach students how to deal with success and failure,” he said.For students who have spent years being told that IIT is the ultimate destination, learning that lesson may be particularly difficult. The question institutions and families need to ask These accounts do not suggest that every IIT student experiences the same pressures, nor can academic or social pressure alone be assumed to explain serious mental-health distress.But they point to a larger tension: when the IIT dream becomes heavily loaded with expectations, students can struggle to distinguish their own aspirations from the ones imposed on them.Gopinathan believes the conversation has to begin before students reach college.“Parents, teachers, and society need to communicate that getting into IIT is not the end of life. It is the beginning of another phase. Students should know that not getting the highest package or the top CGPA does not mean they have failed,” he said.He believes colleges also need to build structured support around both performance and well-being.Perhaps that is the question worth asking after the celebrations following every JEE result: What happens when a student finally gets the IIT seat everyone wanted but then feels they must spend the next four years proving that they deserved it?The challenge for institutions, parents, and society may not simply be to help students reach IIT.It may be to ensure that once they get there, they are allowed to be more than the rank, CGPA, branch, internship, or package attached to their name. Perhaps the main ordeal is to change the narrative itself. IIT will not solve all your problems or sort your life; it will bestow you with a conducive ground to nurture your skills.