Ahmedabad University B.A Review By Ananyaa Sahai

I always had a knack for research and after reading about the university and talking to some students over there I found the curriculum excellent to foster my research outlook. In the first year itself we had foundation courses that helped us in understanding how to write detailed reports and how to work with data. Apart from that we had separate dedicated courses for Language and Communication, Data Science as well as Research Methodology that were compulsory for us to attend. The teachers here are especially helpful and understanding. If you write to them they will give you office hours where you can go and discuss your problems in detail and they're always up to help. The best things are that we are not made to declare a minor. We can either choose a minor or do other different courses of our choice to cover the credits for the minor allowing us to have a very interdisciplinary approach to our studies.

I am doing my Bachelor's in Psychology at this university. I had scored 96.2% in my 12th grade. When I applied they had asked for a statement of purpose (which had to be written on one of the 4/5 prompts that they had provided) along with the normal application consisting of all your information. After my application was accepted, I had to go through a round of interview where I was asked about why I wanted to join this university, my experiences at several MUNs and what I expected to do at the University. I believe if you are well aware about the ethics of the university and are keen to do research (and are able to convey these sentiments through your interview) you will easily get an admission here.

The faculty at Ahmedabad University is genuinely one of the best that you will find in India. Since declaring a minor is not compulsory here, I take the Psychology courses as my major while studying Social-Political Science as well as Philosophy courses to satisfy the minor credits. All the faculty members have their backgrounds from IITs and IISc or other major international universities like Columbia, Yale, and UC Chicago, etc. Most classes are conducted in form of seminars where there are question-answers throughout the class time. We also have works hoping where we take a single concept and understand it in depth. The evaluation components comprise of in-class activities like debates/presentations, a research project, midsem / endsem exams, weekly/quarterly assignments, and class participation.

We do have a placement cell here called "Career development Centre" while it provides good internship opportunities to the BBA and MBA students it's hard to say the same for BA programs. The opportunity for BA students isn’t that many for placements however, they do provide some internship opportunities.

The university has no on campus hostels they have a tie up with local FLHs. There are only double and triple sharing options with shared bathrooms. The overall facilities provided are below average.

The campus is lush green and the buildings are extremely beautiful and easy to navigate. There's centralised AC in all the blocks. We have dedicated "University Centre" consisting of a gymnasium consisting of all kinds of sport areas like a squash court, table tennis, cricket field, running track, etc. apart from that we also have gym, cafeteria, reading rooms, conference rooms and student lounge.

The campus life at AU isn't like other Universities. We don't have big fests where celebrities come to perform. Different schools in the university have their own festivals which are centered on the subjects taught in that course. I would say that the University is too education focused. We have a variety of student led clubs but even they don't get a lot of funding and have to get thousands of approvals before setting up a program.