Out of several career options like Medicine, Fashion Industry, Armed Forces, Teaching, Business etc., privileges for women have been more reinforced in STEM field than any other professional path. But still the improvement has not been much over the past fifty years. One reason could possibly be that women have failed to fruitfully respect these opportunities because of personal or societal reasons and approach to studies. In the context of India, we will analyse these reasons.

In 2018, 15% supernumerary seats were created for girls in the most prestigious engineering colleges, the IIT’s. So the gender ratio saw a sharp rise from around 7% to 17% from 2017 to 2018. But it came at several costs. I have felt the major drawbacks from the first day I stepped in IIT Delhi in 2018. Because of these exclusive seats, aspiring girls now think that their competition is only among girls. That breaks the very spirit which is required by any young girl to confidently step in themale-dominated field of technology. 

The main focus of the education system should be to train school and college girls to successfully carry forward their technological abilities to the world, and for that, an open competition with boys is much needed. Merely creating opportunities has no use if they do not serve the fundamental purpose, that is making women competent enough with men.

Another reason for the skewed gender ratio is attributed to fundamentals of socio-economic classes. Several media reporters and institutes have independently studied the background of Indian women who are successful presently in the STEM careers. According to them, more than 90% of them come from middle class economic families. Where does the influential high class society hide when it comes to educating their girls to pursue science and technology careers? The poor cannot afford education, even some middle class parents have to take loans to pay the college fees, but the rich have no excuse. 

The truth is that many people can afford their daughters to become rich spoilt brats, but they cannot take the pain of motivating and supporting them to do something challenging (I admit some parents are exceptions here, like mine). STEM careers are not the only challenging ones in terms of expertise and gender representation, but the tough competition does make this career path a very challenging profession for girls. How can they simply make it through without their parents’ support? This support and encouragement has been missing from almost every section of the society for ages.

But kudos to the wonderful women out there in industry and research in STEM, who have made an impact in the world. They all have unique struggles and deeply motivate the young girls to chase their dreams, overcoming all hurdles.

The society is progressing everyday and more opportunities are coming up for children to realise their passion at a young age. There is one unique thing called experiential learning which has recently come up. So I call out to all school girls, look up STEM activities and workshops on platforms like Experihub, experiment, observe and you will feel how amazing science and tech is. This is the first step, next is to follow your interests with full dedication and fight all hurdles. Women must earn their equal share in the STEM world, it is achievable!

By : Manupriya Gupta, IIT Delhi

For Science related  videos visit  : https://www.youtube.com/c/ExperiHub?sub_confirmation=1

For  Science related blogs visit : https://experihub.com/did-you-know/

The most important task is for one to realize which path is most suitable depending upon things such as the person’s interest, level of competence and demand in the market.

Management studies after an engineering degree are helpful for expanding your horizons. Other than technical knowledge, added skills in management and business can bring more choices of employment.

It’s a myth that after management degree engineers leave the core, more jobs are emerging every day on the inter-disciplinary lines too. Moreover, with strong technical skills, you can always go back to the core sector jobs/training if business management and related fields do not suit you.

Jobs in the core engineering sector require a good knowledge of the subjects in your graduate and undergraduate programs. Big technological giants hire on the basis of a competent profile which includes technical skills and knowledge, prior work experience like internships or part-time jobs, and sometimes good referrals.

An undergraduate degree is good enough to kick-start your career in the industry, especially for tier 1 college students. But not belonging to one should not demotivate you. There is always a place for talent and skill in the industry. After a few years of work, if you feel you need to specialize in some area of your interest or you want to try out some different domain, applying for degrees like MS, M.Tech, MBA, etc. will be a good idea.

Research is something that requires more patience than any other line. PhD degrees from eminent institutions can last from 3 to 5 years. After that, the main profession pursued is either becoming a professor or an independent researcher. The upcoming fields such as AI, Computer Vision, and studies associated with energy and resources are very promising for researchers.

If you are interested and dedicated to solving unsolved problems or if you want to explore a field in greater depth, research is a good path.

Entrepreneurship and Start-Ups have recently become a trend among college students. The intensity of challenges faced depends on your social skills and network apart from the technical skills. One needs a high spirit and dedication towards the company, especially during the early stages.

Dropping out of college is not the best option to work on your startup but it works in some rare cases. At whichever stage of your job/studies, you feel like making your own idea or product, first ensure that you and your teammates have a very good idea about what you are going to make and how that product will attract the customers. Make a strong social network and hire talented people to contribute fruitfully to the company. There is a huge risk factor associated with startups but mostly truly dedicated people do buffer the reverses faced.

These are the more or less the most popular career options in Engineering. But other than these also, there are a lot of unpopular ones. But no option is good or bad. Whichever path(s) we choose, we must work hard to make it the best experience for ourselves.

My recommendation to you all would be to discover your passion and follow your heart – don’t follow the beaten path because everyone else has done that. You might still be choosing from one of the typical careers post-Engineering, but don’t muffle up the voice of your heart. This might sound cliched but don’t look at success from the eyes of others.

I also feel it is good to talk to people who have been there, done that. Find out more about the areas that look interesting. Try to experience what those career options really mean. There are certain platforms such as Experihub  that are trying to bring the perspective by interviews and discussions with industry professionals from various walks of life and these could help in your decision making process.

This experience students crave for is nothing but the outcome of the amazing research going on in Science and Technology at various labs and supervised by the professors at IIT’s. These are the same professors who make questions for JEE (Advanced).

Now, is it not justified for the best institutes to select the best out of all candidates as their students? After all the professors would like to teach students who have strong concepts of basic sciences and not those who can simply plug in formulae to get the results, then what’s the difference between an illogical machine and a logical human brain?

It might sound a bit crude that the difficulty of questions is kept far above the N.C.E.R.T textbook level and yet students are expected to solve them.

It is true, but it is also true that they have to somehow differentiate between students who learn conceptually and those who don’t. If all questions just require memorization and application of the formulae, everyone will be able to score high and everyone will be selected, irrespective of the fact whether they have a thinking aptitude or not.

Also, there is a balance of easy, medium, and difficult level questions in JEE. Those students who are able to solve those questions involving fundamental understanding and a strong grasp of concepts are able to score much better. It is needless to say that these outperforming candidates have the aptitude that IIT professors look for in their students.

Now coming to how such questions are formed which expect students to think deep and not just remember the formula. The list of formulae given in the NCERT textbooks is limited but the theory explained is not. Every single line, like the statement of the Work-Energy theorem, carries fundamental importance. In JEE, most questions are based on the application of the theory.

Professors mostly have research ongoing when they are setting questions, so if something new or interesting comes up and they think that it can be explained on the basis of the theory described in NCERT, it goes into the question paper in a simplified form.

Sometimes questions are made out of the most neglected portions/lines from the book which has just been started and not explained very well. The key idea is to test how thoroughly the candidate has grasped all the concepts in the book.

So this is briefly about the title of this blog. Perhaps this will help in your JEE preparation.

I will add that I secured an All India rank of 220 and 492 in JEE Advanced and Mains respectively so whatever I have written is inspired by my personal experience as an IIT-JEE aspirant.

However, IIT-JEE tests the learning which you have received from real-life experiments and your observational skills. Here is a brilliant website [Learn Science through Experiments] for elementary and middle school students with interesting science experiments that would help you for sure