User Reviews

There exists a life. Yes, believe it or not, behind it all, all the hype that has been created about IITs and people in it, there exists a life. It is challenging, yes, and yes there is competitiveness, but there is a dichotomy as well. It could be fun, and then it could get quite frustrating, and sometimes, it can get outright depressing. Depressing to a point that one would just put its head in sand hoping that somehow it would just get over. However, no one comes out of this land unscathed. For better or worse.

These 4/5 years, it's a lot of time in a young man's life. Formative years as they say. And in these formative years, naive students who do not know what they want to do in their lives, who are in this island just because they have cleared some exam whose importance and impact their juvenile minds cannot possibly comprehend, they create something truly beautiful. Backed into a corner, isolated, they have their own trials and tribulations. Stuck in a seemingly never-ending struggle to overcome these, they have created their own "distractions". And within these distractions, these unsuspecting souls find themselves. That is the culture of KGP. Alma matters captures this so well.

Being from KGP myself, I cannot help but be a little biased towards this series. Of course it hit me. It hit me hard. 3 episodes aren't enough to capture everything that goes on in KGP. Or any other institution perhaps. It's an island, a culture of its own formed and carried on by a tradition, passed on by seniors to juniors, replicating itself, and slowly evolving. But in those 3 episodes, it has captured the "Load" & "Peace" of KGP. A treat for a series this is.

It's a must watch documentary on one of the India's elite graduation colleges. Called the cream of India's future.

How we think that the grass is greener on the other side, and it's actually not so.

Three episodes of 45 minutes each. Shows you their world inside the campus, how they prepare for the job hunt, and how they celebrate culture.

There's cutthroat competition, loads of insecurity, failures and dejections too. Alongside shows the prime institutions, sexism, gender inequality, and a great expose on how they're as humane as the rest of the world.

The history of this elite institution system dates back to 1946 when Sir Jogendra Singh of the Viceroy's Executive Council set up a committee whose task was to consider the creation of Higher Technical Institutions for post-war industrial development in India.

They were created to train scientists and engineers, with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to support the economic and social development of India after independence. Are the institutions aiming to live up to their purpose? - watch to find that out!!!

While I didn't have the brains to crack IIT KGP and end up there like most of my batchmates , I ended up in another Govt College in Kerala which had an 100 acre campus.

KGP has 2100 acre campus !!!

Seeing the documentary I felt what difference it makes to you as a person when you study in an IIT and any other engineering college . And it's not about studies I am talking about . The infrastructure , the facilities , the people you interact with just shapes & nurtures your personality.

The passion with which students were designing & making the magnanimous structures for " Illumination" for a month just to light it in Diwali speaks volumes about friendship & brotherhood.

The academic pressures and it's repercussions on students , their trials & tribulations were well captured in this documentary .

Kudos to the makers , Nostalgic Student Life Revisited .

A must view for parents of IIT aspirants. It provides a reality check in a country where the word 'IIT' is synonymous to massive pay packages and big shot jobs. It showcases the challenges of balancing expectations while facing intense competition, and the extreme pressure environment that you would need to survive in to match those impossible aspirations.

Totally describes why we say, "Once you live in KGP, then KGP lives in you" :')

Woah!! Blew my mind , homegrown art at its finest. Amazing work by the crew this IS the future.

A wonderfully told story, gently piercing through the golden foil that otherwise wraps these institutions - shiny from the outside, but often suffocating inside.

Loved the pace of the series, especially important when most content out there is one fast cut after another, and that too with a story revolving around adrenaline filled teenagers.

As expected. Damn! It's the reality. So many clips are captured by phones. Well, this is overwhelming. I have no words to say.

At the daybreak, two young guys are discussing animatedly framed in the green environs of Kharagpur. In the state of intoxication brought about by the lack of sleep, their sentences are incoherent. The feeling behind those sentences came out very well; a sense of peace and calm. Thats what Kgp was to me. A moment of tranquility, frozen in time before the storm of everyday life took over.

This series has something for everyone who has been a hostelite, or maybe a student, but that's what it was to me. Perfectly captured in the last shot by Prashant Raj.

Life there was full of contradictory emotion. Hope existed along with despair, some instances of pettiness with huge acts of generosity, competitiveness with cooperation, extreme focus with cluelessness (that would be me!!). And so it went. I guess that's true of real-life as well. What made it different however was that these contradictions existed cordially sharing an egg maggie sitting side by side on the bench. Those things are regretfully never going to come back. What this series does is very beautifully captures those making it as real and "kal ki baat" as possible. Getting it up in 3 small episodes is a work of genius and for that, all kudos goes to Prashant Raj and his team. Take a bow please!!!!!

It may be interesting for iitians as they can recall their college days. For me it was an average documentary but covers life in iit with reality. The reality of doing graduation in a stream which is awarded bcoz of rank rather than interest, the placement pressure and also having fun after spending years for prep. Interesting watch as its only 3 episodes. Go for it.

One of the best illustrations of college life! Prashant and his team are fantastic.

If you are from IIT or aspire it's interesting for you.. But for me who isnt there or has no connection it was borderline boring.

In the first episode they make a statement that girls are outnumbered 1:9 and no one treats them seriously there. Yet still the documentary makers have NOT included any female characters as a main follow up story ! BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE people !

It was amazing. Had goosebumps so many times during the series.

Also going to kgp on 10th oct this year post covid to relive some memoeries. Anyone who wants to join DM :D.

It reminded me of my alma mater in every way possible. From Joy of being placed to loosing a friend, it was an experience. It will take you to your hostel room, last moments of you being with your friends. No doubt, it is a must watch docuseries.

While the series is certainly well-made, there's nothing about the actual dark side of IITs: ragging in hostels, pervasive substance abuse, and instances of caste discrimination (something that wasn't even brought up during the discussion about the reasons behind student suicides). By not touching on these issues at all, Alma Matters ultimately only tells a partial, well-hashed truth about IITs, one that arguably has already been covered by movies like 3 Idiots.

Worth a watch though, it will definitely make you feel nostalgic about your IIT days.

Everything is so pitch perfect. Being an engineer I could feel all my college and hostel life once again. If you hail from an engineering background you will totally relate to this series.

Courageous and Bold. A real eye opener. For a very very long time, what needed to be told about the unseen and unrevealed truth about IITs has been put in the form of story and presented.

Its a Gold Treasure, a real peek of Life inside campus, a campus whose walls are high enough for lakhs of aspirants to breach.

Since every mind has a dream. And this documentary wakes you up from the lullaby of dreams and put you in a saddle to take charge of your aspirations.

Must Watch.... Must Watch...Must Watch...

Prashant's labour of love is a flashback flood of bittersweet deja vu moments. Personally, the second episode(placements) felt like something which happened just yesterday...written tests, interviews, getting rejected again and again..making decisions whether to skip companies or risk getting placed too early etc etc:)

Great cast of earnest and likeable kids - were we also like them once? :)

Superb direction.....almost like a fly-on-the-wall account of the most pivotal moments of college life(friendships, classes, hostel Life, placement etc). The music is really classy & understated and the icing on the cake (esp in episode 2)

Pretty sure this series will age like fine wine.

Take a bow Prashant!

Never been to this institute, but only can relate through a parallel universe. It's so naturally put. Neither extra nor insufficient material. Wish the whole team a huge congratulations to be able to make this.

The only good point of the series is it has shared that IIT Engineers also face problems like other engineering colleges. It is in a nutshell - 'Chichore movie in documentary form'. Following TVFs Kota Factory, Netflix would have decided tag IIT has a great brand value and lets take the other side of it. But, the reality is, these are not problems, rather some celebrity issues due to celebrity privileges. Come on, where in the country you would see a guy say - "I am not interested in Microsoft. Its not my type company". The IIT facade will still remain and it is definitely the escape velocity in one's life!!

Trust me, this documentary is a reminiscence of my college hostel life. I neither had the brain nor the hard working capability to crack IIT JEE. But, the life in IIT as portrayed in this documentary is absolutely enjoyable. Being in IIT means all those kids were toppers in their schools and then suddenly some of them found themselves in the middle of a pack where they were not toppers any more. Such a feeling always hurts and may throw some of those nicest innocent boys and girls out of the track. The documentary portrays it so nicely. Also, being in IIT means there is an added pressure from themselves, society that they perform well and get good grades and land a job at the end of their undergraduate/post graduate studies. But it is not always so simple and believe it or not even if one can not land a job right away there will be plethora of opportunities waiting to be explored. So, one should never give up and feel sad. Never ever. But we must remember those kids, no doubt they are the best in the country, still have feelings of joy, anger, frustration, fulfillness, competitiveness as everyone else. They are human beings after all and perhaps the most innocent human beings with full of nicety and empathy towards their fellow batchmates, wing-mates, friends, and sometimes strangers. This documentary is a complete package portraying the lives of students in IIT Kgp. Loved watching the documentary and request the reader to watch the doc if possible.

I had high hopes but it is average.

Overhyped, over dramatic, stretched, few episodes were like having no points, problems shown were not specific to IIT. Most of the things were known to most of us.

I didn't like the documentary. It's an account of IITians and their struggles in the campus. This is a waste of a documentary because the student who can crack IITs have plethora of choices just because of the intelligence. The real issue is our broader educational system that has completely failed us. Go to the tier 3 colleges in india where there a pandemic of confusion, lack of opportunities and options. Students are not only confused by they are depressed and unsupported. It's a real shame that we are trying to portray IITs in this light. Cracking IITs require amazing intelligence and these people generally have more options even if they don't end up at the IITs. To me their problems in campus is similar to complaining about first world problems.

Can someone make a real documentary about Indian education system which will be shocking to me.

This gets a massive thumbs down from me.

Real students, real struggle, real and raw thoughts. It shows the amount of pressure a student have to face inside IIT echo chamber. Also the sexism female faces in every field.