Atharva College of Engineering B.Tech Review By Rushab Mehta

I passed out from here in 2014, and since I know not much has changed. The location of the college is convenient to reach from anywhere in Mumbai. The infrastructure of the college is awesome. There are way too many other activities. If I put it up bluntly, there are way too many to distract you from your studies. There is no compulsory attendance here. After the second year, they get strict, but you can bunk as many classes you want in the first two years, if you want some serious action in terms of learning, this is not your place. The faculty were more of a mentor than actually guiding the students with programming. All said I had fun all four years, as for the most part; I stayed home and learned programming from outside the college.

For college, academics mean doing many things along with studies. If they were many, I could have managed but trust me, they were too many. We started learning programming from the 1st year, but the momentum was never really there as they would go on an entire semester without much of a practical. We were to do an internship every summer break after the fourth semester. The internship is where you will get hands-on knowledge. College gave us some really good projects, so do take them seriously as they are the ones that will fetch you a job. The college will keep asking you to join certificate courses, but they are nothing but a waste of time. They will make your CV long, but only the projects will impress the recruiters.

I had a torrid time working with them as if you ask them a question; they will say will tell you later. So practically, if you ask a question starting the month, you will get your answer by the end of the month. Their advice that the project will help you get a good job was alright, and they awarded some really good projects and helped us with internships with companies like Quinnox, Mindcraft, and bewkoof.com.

In the 2014 batch, the IT department saw a big rise in placements as a year before, the average placements were averaged around 3.5 LPA, and in 2014, that shot to 4.5 LPA. Oracle had some serious signings as they were quite active and also joined hands with Atharva a year before. I missed that and got an offer that wasn't acceptable to me. Never mind, though, as internships and projects helped me learn about IT as a whole in a much better way.

The college doesn't provide any hostel facility, and that was sad as Atharva is a big name among the Mumbai colleges. Since the college is in Malad, one can find private boy's hostels, girls and boys PG, and rented apartments that are easy on the pocket. Charkop is close to Mahada, and the apartment rent over there is quite reasonable.

Not many colleges have the infrastructure that Atharva College of Engineering has. There is a world-class main building with a garden on one side and a closed roof basketball court on the other. The building didn't just don’t have the classes but a library and a resource center that's worth looking for. There's a room of cubicles inside the building where Computer Science Engineers used to do their projects and presentations. It's the same as any IT office where we are working in cubicles. I am sorry that I am mentioning about the auditorium so late as even though small, it was again worth looking at. There's a small swimming pool inside the campus which I don't know who used it because students were surely not allowed to use that. If I compare the college size with colleges in Mumbai, it was big enough, but for people studying in Bangalore and other cities, the campus may look tiny to them.

There were two annual fests, one cultural and one technical fest. Since, I never participated in cultural fest, I will write about Essentia, the technical fest. Students were busy with the projects that we had to show in that fest all year round. Everybody used to be a part of our technical fest, from politicians to noted engineers. I may miss the classes but make sure don't miss a single day of the technical fest. Now let me validate my point of view for you. Get involved in three personal projects every year. Be a part of the internship twice. If you just do these two things, you will easily have both on-campus and off-campus jobs.