I have seen that a majority of Indian graduate students at top schools like Carnegie Mellon, University of Pennsylvania, UCLA and Georgia Tech. are from absolutely non-elite colleges (I mean the names you haven't even heard of). How is this possible?

A reason for that is education in USA is not like that in India. Yo...

I can comment about CMU and Univ of Penn as I went to these schools for my PhD and MS respectively. In my opinion, being from an elite college is *not* a requirement to be admitted to a top graduate school. You need to only show that you have done well and have a good chance to succeed at the graduate level at their university. Note that the expectations are different for masters and PhD levels. To succeed at these universities at a masters level, you only need to be able to do well in the courses. To be able to convince to the admissions committee that you will do well at the masters level coursework, you show that you have done well at your undergraduate level. So while the bar is still pretty high, it perhaps isn't as high as that for PhD. To be able to do well at the PhD level, you have to conduct top notch independent research. So to convince the admissions committee that you can do this, you have to show that you have already done this. Now it is possible to have "done well" at the coursework level at non-elite colleges. And that's good enough to also succeed at the masters level. (Unless of course there are red flags about the authenticity of colleges, where say the grades are inflated and doing well at those colleges does *not* translate to doing well at the masters level. I guess these red flags are observed empirically from how well the admitted students do from various colleges). It's very rare to have "done well" at the research level from non-elite colleges, which is why at the PhD level, you typically only see IITians etc. But if you are that special someone who went to a mediocre college and *still* did good work, they will admit you.

Apart from having bachelors from a reputed university in India there are many other things which matters a lot while applying to these top universities. To mention few.. Statement of purpose where a person tries to convince why he should be considered for that program. What all you have done during the bachelors program like projects, research, internship Above mention points are well know to students who have plans to continue their education abroad. A student can develop himself even without being affiliated to a reputed universities. Also it should be kept in mind that there are many excellent local engineering colleges who do not have brand value equivalent to IITs It is not necessary that tag of reputed university will get you into a top university in US of A and the rule in those universities are same for everyone who joins them.. "Prove yourself and get funded" P.S: These top universities don't accept students to collect money. These universities have billion dollars in endowment whereas Indian universities have in the range of 1-300 cr. The tution fee is very very tiny compared to the funding they get.

Not always true. A lot of students from IITs, IISc and BITS also join these universities. A lot students from India join these universities for their MS programs, which isn't really competitive to get into. These typically cost around 30-50  lakh for the duration and hence universities won't mind admitting a lot of students. Hence you might see a lot of people from unheard colleges of India.

Lot's of reasons, I will give the CS perspective: 1)  The best from elite colleges are either getting international offers in  Google,FB and the likes, are going for direct PhD's into these very  institutions. By the elite colleges I mean the old IIT's,the four NIT's  in the south,BITS Pilani and IIITH. With  the case of IIITH, you have a culture more oriented to taking jobs  after graduation. The best CS students from the old IIT's are either  opting for PhD's(which are much harder to get into compared to an MS) or  they get some of the best job offers. Let's  face it, for most students an MS is a path towards better employment  prospects abroad but when IITians already get offers for Google,  Mountain View, there doesn't seem to be a point to go for an MS. If  learning and knowledge is the motive then why not go for a PhD since in  top tier places like Silicon Valley and Wall Street quant finance,  you'll hardly get into their research divisions without a PhD. Very very  few students from both elite and non-elite institutions see an MS as a  path to build a better profile for PhD admits. So  in a way some really amazing competition from the best in India is not  present during MS admits and in MS the criteria is a bit different than  PhD admits. So lack of research is not much of an issue in MS admits  since they want to see how you'll perform in courses.  The places that are serious about research potential even in an MS candidate are UC Berkeley(where I have seen 9 pointers from IIT-Kgp CS get rejects), Wisconsin Madison. UCSB is an institution that I have seen hands out admits for MS CS more in accordance to they tags they perceive as good, hence you'll see students from IIIT-Delhi, PESIT get admits, since UCSB thinks of them as good schools. Another famous candidate is UT Austin where most people not from IIT/NIT/BITS don't apply due to Austin's reputation for being very tag centric, even Texas A&M has the same reputation. Stanford is one place that is still a mystery where I have seen students from Jaypee,LNMIIT,Nirma (private institutions that are mediocre) get into the MS CS program. They were good students but their profile was not close to an IITian's profile from the old IIT's. A senior of mine equated Stanford as the "IIM Bangalore of the US", since like IIMB , only god knows what Stanford wants from a grad student they want to admit. Another mystery is that of GaTech which is rather notorious for taking in students from Mumbai University. Why that is so , still puzzles me, since MU has hardly any good colleges apart from ICT(which is primarily a Chemical Engineering institute). In my worst nightmare I wouldn't compare the likes of VJTI to IIT, private institutes like DA-IICT alone trump VJTI by a large margin. I am sure you would have thought of this question by seeing some MU students who are MS CS students in CMU. 2) Another reason I think of is the cost. Funding isn't that great for MS CS students in most institutes. UCLA is notorious for having a shitty funding scene for MS students and in some places there are no TA/RA positions for MS students. Most of the students even if they get admits can't afford to pay the sum out of their pocket even after a loan. Some of the elite college students might opt out of even applying due to the high cost and prefer to go to a place where at least they'll get funding. The thing is , if your main motivation to go for an MS is to get a job then you are in luck since the tag doesn't play a very big role unless you want to work in quant finance in major hedge funds(where they pretty much throw away the resumes of any student not from a top-10 institution or not from the Ivy League). Institutions near tech hubs like SJSU,SDSU,Cal Poly and even institutes like RIT that have a reputation for imparting job specific education , have students that get offers from the likes of Google. So if a job is your criterion, then one can apply to these places, if funding is a major issue. I have seen some students do this. Take it from , if these very students from non-elite places applied for a PhD even to places down the ladder like UC Irvine, USC, they'd be rejected in the first round itself. MS admits though competitive are more forgiving than PhD admits, since even the best students from US institutions prefer to go for a PhD rather than an MS. The competition for PhD admits in CS at top places is a different ball game.