Vellore Institute of Technology B.Tech Review By Ashish Vedanabatla

VIT was worth joining then and it is even more worth joining now. Like many other students, I also aspired to go to the IITs but because I didn’t do that well in JEEs, I have to take admission here. Trust me but I am not regretting it at all as I enjoyed my life to the fullest at VIT. I am a little older to answer this question as I passed out in 2016. Even then, I knew people who accused the college of charging a very high fee. The fees have increased 30% now but I would still say the fees were justified. VIT can disappoint the ones who are not so interested in studies and have come through management quota. Civil Engineering is one of the toughest domains which I know my CSE or Mechanical friends will not agree to. It’s their choice though but everyone knows the reality. VIT will help one build a bright future is all that I can say.

First of all, attendance was not so compulsory. Most students were preparing for GATE, GRE, and other competitive exams from the second year onwards and the college was quite ok with it. The course was quite flexible as it was entirely project-based learning. Out of 100, in Civil 30 marks were accounted for through practicals. Our main subject was town planning and architecture and had to learn Revit architecture for that project. The projects always had upside attached to them because if one scores well in practical's and submit their projects on time, they do get additional benefits. Each project was a learning curve as in all, I think I did over 15-20 projects at VIT.

Faculty were a bit after pointers as the students below 8 pointers were hardly given attention to. However, in a college that has strength of almost 10,000, there were 400 odd professors. Have you ever seen a college, where there are 400+ best professors? VIT is that place as there were that many professors and all quality professors. My friends from other states found communication language issues with professors but we Tamilians had no such issues.

VIT is great in placements as each branch had their core companies at the campus to apply for. ECE and CSE were the clear winners as the students of those branch annual packages were no less than a CTC of 5LPA. Civil had little less but at least companies in which we can use our skills were there at the campus. I challenge most of the colleges in this regard as I have seen Civil engineers working in the cubicles of IT companies. VIT was different and a student from our batch in 2016 bagged a placement worth 16 Lakhs with Bangalore based real estate company, Shobha Developers.

No one can predict the exact number of hostel blocks unless they count themselves. From naked eye, what I saw was 15-20 blocks. 80% of them were boys hostel blocks and the rest were girls hostel blocks. There were a variety of rooms available for students as there were some rich brats who were my friends. They used to stay at the hostel which had AC rooms while there were blocks that had non-ac rooms. Food also was not an issue for them as the menu was chopped and changed and they were happy with the food provided. Curfew time was a little harsh as 1st year students had to be back at the hostel by 8pm. From second year onwards, there were ways of getting out of the hostels at will.

I can define area but rather I would define what was there in that huge area. If there were 20 blocks of hostels, then an equal number of administration blocks were also there at the campus. Hostel blocks were too huge while admin blocks were relatively smaller. As the library is the most important part of an engineering college, the Periyar Evr Central Library of the campus was a five storied tower. The ground floor was reception and the first three floors were filled with books. The top two floors were the study room. Hostel students had the access to the study rooms for as long as they wanted. All the buildings at the campus were centrally air-cooled. All the rooftops of the building had solar panels as the college was never dependent on state electricity. A super market at the campus as hostel students can buy all their chips and colas in abundance from that supermarket. Now if I start writing about the sporting facilities of the college, it will take another hour or so. I have been to NIT and IIT Madras and even those colleges don’t have Snooker rooms with air-conditioning and wooden squash courts. Basketball court, badminton court, tennis court and all were there like every other college.

The annual sports and cultural fest of the college, Riveria. In our time Tamil celebrities and sports personalities were invited but now Bollywood actors and international sports persons like Brett Lee and others too have been a part of college’s annual fest. I had a great time at the college and I seriously wish rather than going to NIT, I should have done my masters from VIT itself.