Indian Institute of Technology B.Tech Review By Piyush Mohanty

Overall, the institute offers courses of B.Tech, B.Sc, B.Tech + M.Tech, LLB, B.Arch, M.Tech, M.Sc, B.Sc + M.Sc, B.Com, and MMBS to start tentatively next year. The hyped image of this "Premium" institute fails to live up to its expectations and falls short on many aspects with respect to its counterparts. However, it would not be wrong to state it offers a state of the art research opportunity to all of its students regardless of their age or academic performances. Recently major curriculum changes were introduced to ease the problems faced by the freshers of B.Tech course. The halls are moderately good, the food is not up to mark, but the non-trivial perks are good.

As seen in many institutes of rural India, the academics are still conventional and many of the courses offered are not useful for the students in their upcoming years, core aptitude or industrial aptitude. The freshers of B.Tech still had to deal with the courses of Physics and Chemistry which were supposed to be removed after their high school degree. However, recently certain curriculum changes were made which removed physics and chemistry courses and incorporated AI / ML into its curriculum.

The faculties of this institute can be categorized into a broad spectrum. On one end one can observe very lenient professors who grade students generously and teach them well and on the other end we can see professors who are neither good at grading nor teaching. There is also a prevalence of professors who don't teach well but grade well and equally those who teach well but don't grade well. The distribution of these types is fairly equal as far as I have observed.

Placements are the single major reason that this institute is looked up to by students, mostly by undergraduates and this is the very reason behind the so called "IIT Dream". However, contrary to popular belief, the placement scenario is not that great and a lot of room for improvement still exists. The current net successful placement rate stands at ~75% and most of the high paying offers are grabbed by circuital branches. There is a heavy influx of software, consult and product companies and very low proportion of core companies.

The hostels are moderately good in the campus, but that is still dependent on when the construction took place. The majority of hostels are from the British era and traces of architecture are still present in some of the old halls. These halls are always in a state of renovation but speaking honestly they are not that bad. One can get single, double, triple and even quadruple sharing rooms depending on their luck. The newer halls are a sight to behold and are no less than flats that go for 15000 INR / month for a single room.

Most of the departments here possess an old building and a new building. The old buildings of certain departments have been present from the pre-independence era and still possess the characteristics of that time even after countless renovations. However, one should not be fooled by their appearance as they house countless laboratories with technologies advanced enough to keep up with the era. Some of the instruments are so highly priced that the funding used for them could easily cross 8 figures in rupees. For instance, I have had the privilege of using a machine for experiments that had needed an investment of 9 crore over 4 years. The new buildings are mostly still under construction but as far as I saw from what has been currently built, these would be peerless once they are built. Just the reception area of a new one seemed to be on par with those of Marriott hotels

Campus life here is incomparable. There are over 2200 students in each undergraduate batch and lots of opportunities to make connections with people from all over the country. The seniors are extremely helpful to their juniors. Most folks are concerned about are cells, societies, clubs, etc. and these are highly inclusive in nature. The college fests are held in the first half of the year and they involve very exclusive concerts, performance and contests. Every week the institute screens a relatively new movie in an auditorium comparable to movie halls and countless activities and entertainment events are organized by the administration year round.