Edited by Garima Sane
Note: T5E’s Exit Survey 2022 was conducted in June to study the graduating students’ perspectives on life at IIT Madras. The survey garnered 341 responses across the entire graduating class of 2022, with nearly 60% of the respondents being UG students (B.Tech + DD + MA) while the rest were PG students (MSc + MTech + MBA + Ph.D. + MS).
The survey explored various aspects of the essence of a student’s life in Insti, such as Lifestyle, Personal Life, Career, Decision Making, Academics, Extracurriculars, and Opinion.
This article takes a look at the lifestyle of the respondents.
The three metrics of a healthy lifestyle
A consistent sleep routine, a varied and balanced diet, and good hygiene are the three pillars of health. This section looks at how well the respondents fared on these metrics.
How often did you take a bath when you were in Insti?
Fortunately, more than 65% of respondents claim to have taken a bath at least once every day, while the other 32% took a few showers per week as for the remaining, well, the less said, the better.
Back in Insti, how often did you skip breakfast?
Around 28% of the respondents rarely had breakfast, while another 16% mostly skipped breakfast. This ratio is similar to the one observed last year, as expected.
What did your sleep routine look like in Insti?
The most common bedtime was between 1 and 3 AM, with 44% of respondents choosing this option. Interestingly this is significantly lesser than last year’s 65%.
Language
Was language a barrier in making new friends/joining new groups?
Insti is a very linguistically diverse place. More than half the respondents (54%) say that they had to face language barriers while making new friends and joining new groups. However, the majority of this group maintains that they managed to overcome the language barrier. One-third of the respondents were proficient in English and faced no difficulties making new friends.
How linguistically diverse is your friend group?
Most of the students could not make close connections with students from other linguistic backgrounds. At the same time, 35% of the respondents were able to make many close friends from diverse linguistic backgrounds.
How does your branch impact your Insti experience?
Surprisingly, the BE fellows were some of the happiest people across the branches. This comes as a surprise because the CS students are thought to be the happiest. On the other side of the spectrum, we found the AE peeps to be the most unhappy followed by HS.
Substances:
How frequently did you smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol in Insti?
If at all, when did you start smoking or consuming alcohol?
The number of people who never smoked is significantly higher than those who never drank. Also, more than a quarter of respondents drank at least once a month. Among those who smoked or drank, most started experimenting after their second year.
How did alcohol and cigarettes affect your Insti experience?
We found no significant relationship between alcohol consumption and Insti experience but the same was not the case for the daily smokers.
CGPA
How can your bathing routine impact your CG?
You might think that your bathing schedule has nothing to do with your CG, but our data shows a direct correlation between the two. People who bathed daily had a CG 0.6 points higher than those who didn’t bathe for weeks. This may be due to the better discipline of those who maintained a regular bathing schedule.
How can your sleeping schedule impact your CG?
Interestingly, later the sleeping time, lesser is the mean CG. Students who tended to sleep after 3 AM showed a CG 0.6 points lower than that of those who slept before 11 AM.
How does your sleep time impact your breakfast?
Students who slept before 11 PM were nearly 7 times more likely to have breakfast daily than those who slept after 3 AM. There is an unambiguous relationship between later sleep time and the increasing propensity to skip breakfast across all times.
What peer pressures did you face at IITM?
The most common peer pressure was to take part in multiple PORs and extracurricular activities and to collect resume points. This was followed by the pressure of remaining active on social media and being fit, slim, and healthy.
One of the interesting peer pressures is that of following the Insti time, aka, being late to the events and the meets.
Monthly Expenses
On average, students spent nearly 7000 rupees per month, mainly comprised food expenditure for many students.
Conclusion
The final report of T5E’s exit survey produced some interesting insights on the lifestyle of the graduating batch of 2022. Here’s a quick summary of the data the team collected and analyzed-
- Over 65% of the respondents claim to have taken a bath at least once daily in their stay at Insti with bathing showing a correlation with mean CG points.
- Around 28% of the respondents rarely, if ever, had breakfast.
- The common Insti bedtime is between 1-3 AM with 44% of the respondents opting this choice.
- BE has emerged as the happiest branch on the campus while AE turned out to be the least happy.
- The students who wish to experiment with alcohol and smoking generally tend to do so after their second year.
- At 54%, over half the respondents faced language barriers while making friends.
- The biggest peer pressure that the respondents faced was that of taking up multiple PORs.
- The average monthly expenditure of the students was seen to be nearly 7000 rupees per month.
To conclude, Insti is a place that never sleeps (for the most part) and doesn’t like breakfast! It is a linguistically diverse place which brings together people of varied lifestyles. But this beauty comes with the baggage of peer pressure. So do remember, don’t do something just because your friends are doing it as well. That’s all we have on the lifestyle aspect!
We wish the graduating batch the best in their life ahead (and hope they continue to take regular baths)!
