Idiot? Certainly not...

I read this article and felt a bit confused - is this good or bad? Then I figured that this is really really bad - in fact a guaranteed fact that shows just how massively screwed up our education system is!

Nobel laureate Ramakrishnan failed IIT, medical entrance tests 5 Jan 2010, 2138 hrs IST, PTI

BANGALORE: Venkataraman Ramakrishnan won the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 2009 but decades ago he failed to clear entrance tests for both the IITs and a reputed medical college. At a public lecture at the Indian Institute of Science campus here, he recalled his journey from Baroda where he went to school and college before moving to Ohio University for his Ph.D. He shifted to Baroda from Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu when he was three. He noted that he appeared for the IIT entrance test but "did not get a single seat in IIT". "My parents were somewhat old-fashioned; they did not believe in coaching classes (in preparation for entrance test)," Ramakrishnan told a packed J N Tata Auditorium, where many could not even enter because it was crowded. They (his parents) thought coaching classes were "nonsense". He also appeared in the entrance test for a seat in the reputed Christian Medical College in Vellore in Tamil Nadu but was unsuccessful. Giving an explanation, he said that those days, there were only a small number of seats for men. The (really sad) takeaways I have after reading this stupendous article is Getting into IIT (and other prestigious institutes of higher education) is a function of what kind of coaching class you have been to There are no avenues within the country for potentially brilliant scientists or other skilled professionals if they do not conform to the rat race (IIT / SRCC / AIIMS / NLS etc etc) Now that I try to think hard, I cannot recall any Nobel prize winner who is from IIT. I can think of many people in finance though (self included!). To me, this is a travesty of IIT's purpose