Rani Birla Girl's College B.A Review By Gitali Lalwani

Rani Birla Girl's College is not exactly the dream college which one thinks about but it's one of the best colleges in Kolkata when it comes to academics, discipline and attendance. The college has a school type of atmosphere and once you enter the college premises you cannot leave before 2.30 PM unless there is an emergency and you manage a special permission from the principal. Even in the lunch break one is not allowed to go out. It is an undergraduate girl’s college that offers many different courses and is affiliated with Calcutta University. Admission to this College is based upon one’s marks in their Higher Secondary exams and also in the Course-related subject. College management I would say is not very impressive and it calls for improvement.

I had done my B. A (Hons.) in Education. I got admission to the college, based on my performance in the 12th grade and also for my marks attained in Psychology as psychology is one of the important subjects in Education Hons. Their was no other entrance test for this particular course. I joined this particular course because I had a deep interest in this field and wished to get associated with teaching as my career and also the fact that very few colleges that time offered this particular course. The course subjects were very much up to my expectations and maybe more. I found them to be very interesting and comprehensive. This course undoubtedly paved way for me to become a teacher for Special children.

We had a total of seven faculty in all for my whole course. Four for my honors subjects and three for my pass subjects which comprised of philosophy, political science and English, which was a compulsory subject Overall there were a good number of faculty members catering to the respective courses. Most of the teachers were highly qualified and experienced and very senior, except for maybe a very few who had joined new. The teachers taught us very well and though they were very strict but were also very supportive, helpful and always ready to guide us. They also gave us such high quality notes that we hardly needed to refer to any other reference books.

As far as my course is concerned, we didn't have any such training or placement facility for us. But I guess since many new courses have been introduced now, so many companies are approaching the college and are hiring students from the campus itself. I have also heard that lots of IT companies are also hitting the college campus and offering good salary packages, but it all depends on the course one has selected.

The college does not have any hostel facility of its own but yes there are lots of pg accommodation near the college which one can explore. And this is all the more possible because the college is in the advantageous position of being centrally located.

The College campus is not very big but yes it's of a decent size. The campus has a playground and an office cabin in one of the buildings where the office administrative staff carry on their work. The classrooms are simple and big enough to accommodate the students as per the class. The college has a library which has a wonderful collection of enriching books which all the students could vouch for. There are course-related laboratories too though I never had the opportunity to visit them since it was never required in my course. The college doesn't have an auditorium but has a common room where all the students could relax and chit chat if they had a free period. The college also has a small cafeteria which has very simple food and not much variety. Since the students are not allowed to go out of the campus during lunch break and if they forget to get their lunch boxes they would surely need a good cafeteria to bank on. The college does not offer any other special the facility as such.

Talking about overall campus life I always felt that I was still studying in school. The college was very strict and particular regarding attendance and studies. And I being a Hons student had to be committed and extra serious about my studies and the teachers made sure of it by taking regular tests and giving a lot of assignments for completion. Even if we had free classes we couldn't leave college before a particular time. We didn't have any such club but yes we had intellectual interactions among us. Again though we didn't have many activities in the college but we took part in inter-college competition very actively and enthusiastically. We didn't have any such celebrations in the college to look forward to.