“Meritocracy is one of the most beautiful inventions of the 20th century – it is a foundation of a free society.” This line appears in Malcolm Gladwell’s 2024 book Revenge of the Tipping Point, in which he dismantles the hidden biases of elite American institutions. His prime example? Indian and Asian students are facing an uphill battle to get into Ivy League universities despite outperforming every group academically.Gladwell compared Caltech’s merit-based admissions to Harvard’s holistic approach. Between 1992 and 2013, Caltech’s proportion of Asian-American students rose from 25% to 43%. Harvard’s remained locked between 15-20%, despite a dramatic increase in top-ranked Asian applicants. “Indian applicants,” Gladwell writes, “would find it even harder to get into Ivy Leagues.”
Indians: The most educated group in America
Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America, penned by journalist Meenakshi Ahamed records:“Indians are among the most highly educated of any ethnic group in the United States, including whites. Seventy-two percent of Indian Americans are college graduates compared to 51 percent of other Asians and 30 percent of the rest of the population.”This is no accident. It is the direct result of one of the world’s harshest meritocratic filters: The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).In Ahamed’s book, Vinod Khosla, IIT Delhi alumnus and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, called IIT:“A great equalizer… Everyone knew it was a fair playing field – there was no ability to use influence or ‘Who do you know?’”
The 8-dollar club: How Indian students arrived
In the decades after independence, “Close to 40 percent of IIT graduates left to go overseas, with the majority going to the United States,” narrates Ahamed’s Indian GeniusThey arrived with little except brilliance. The Indian government allowed only eight dollars in foreign exchange per student. This “eight-dollar club” became a badge of honour for future CEOs and inventors.Students Who Changed America
- Kanwal Rekhi, IIT Bombay, reached Michigan Tech with eight dollars. Facing repeated layoffs in early jobs, he moved to Silicon Valley, founded Excelan, and became the first Indian-American CEO to list a company on Nasdaq.
Suhas Patil , IIT Kharagpur, flew to MIT with the same eight-dollar restriction. He founded Cirrus Logic, pioneering the fabless semiconductor model at the heart of modern electronics.- Vinod Khosla, rejected by IIT Delhi’s electrical engineering department, took up mechanical engineering instead. He later moved to Stanford, co-founded Sun Microsystems, and became one of the world’s most influential venture capitalists.
Ivy League Bias: The new quota system
Despite such records, Ivy League admissions keep Asian-American and Indian student representation artificially low. Gladwell, in Revenge of the Tipping Point, highlights why:
- Legacy admissions
- Donor preferences
- Athletic recruitment
These factors disproportionately benefit white applicants. Meanwhile, Asian-American students are stereotyped as lacking ‘character’ or ‘leadership potential’.Indian Genius recounts a similar pattern in the tech industry. Rekhi, despite becoming indispensable at Singer Link, was denied management roles:“Managers were better compensated than engineers… it was clear they preferred him in the bowels of the company rather than as one of its representatives.”At Harvard, the same logic plays out. Indians are celebrated for STEM brilliance but denied entry to leadership pipelines.
How the bias works
Ivy League admissions deploy subjective criteria like ‘likeability’ and ‘leadership’ to keep Asian-American numbers static. Despite outperforming other groups academically, they receive lower personal ratings. This approach echoes the Jewish quotas of early 20th-century Ivy League admissions, which capped Jewish enrolment to preserve White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance.In Revenge of the Tipping Point, Gladwell argues:“That meritocratic society cannot be achieved by segregating one group. There’s nothing more profoundly anti-American than that.”
The Supreme Court ruling and the advocacy divide
In 2023, the US Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in Harvard and UNC admissions, ruling that race-conscious practices violated the Equal Protection Clause.Yet, ironically, 91.7% of Asian-American advocacy groups filed briefs supporting Harvard’s policies, despite Pew surveys showing 76% of Asian-Americans opposed them, favouring pure merit-based admissions.This disconnect reveals a structural tension. Advocacy groups align with progressive coalitions, but grassroots Indian families prioritise educational performance as their route to dignity and security.
Beyond STEM: Indian dominance across sectors
Indian Genius details how Indians used their education to dominate American professional life. Notable names include:
Satya Nadella (Microsoft),Sundar Pichai (Google), Shantanu Narayen (Adobe), and Arvind Krishna (IBM) – all IIT graduates who rose through US graduate programmes to global leadership.
- Siddhartha Mukherjee, AIIMS graduate, Pulitzer winner for The Emperor of All Maladies.
- Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal and advisor to US health policy.
Vivek Murthy ,Yale MD , who became US Surgeon General.
Education as religion
Why do Indians outperform?Because, as IIT alumni attest, education is the ultimate family honour. Rekhi, from a poor Sikh family in Punjab, recalled:“I was a very good student before I went to IIT Bombay, but competition was very tough… To get to the top there you had to be really sharp.”This intense meritocracy prepared them for American graduate schools, Silicon Valley labs, and corporate boardrooms.
The bigger picture
The US immigration system itself filtered for the highly skilled. Indian Genius notes:“Between 1971 and 1980, 93 percent of immigrants from India were classified as professionals.”Today, Indian-American median household income exceeds every other racial group in America. Their dominance is not the product of privilege but of brutal preparation, selection, and resilience.
Gladwell’s warning
In Revenge of the Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell warns that institutions undermining meritocracy risk their legitimacy.Caltech’s rising Asian-American share reflected its pure academic admissions. Harvard’s stagnation reflected its systemic subjectivity.And for Indians, who have built global companies, transformed US healthcare, and redefined STEM leadership, the lesson is simple:Merit finds its way to the top – Ivy League or not.
