Seth Soorajmull Jalan Girls College B.A Review By Sapna Sharma

It is located in the most famous college area of Kolkata, i.e. College Street. It is affiliated with the Calcutta University and recognized by UGC. The admission was done based on the 12th percentage. It is all girls' college with single teaching shift from 7:30 am to 1 pm. The number of seats in every honors department is limited to 60. The college only offers two streams Commerce and Arts. There were multiple options in the Arts stream like History, Hindi, English, Bengali, Political Science, Philosophy, etc. there were option to choose honors in all these fields.

I joined the BA in English Honors. There were no entrance tests but students were made to shift to general after the mid-term tests which took place after 2 months of college commencement. So, seats in all other colleges were filled and the students who did not clear the mid-term test were left with the only option to give up their honors course and join the general course and it actually felt like cheating. This was the worst experience with the college. I chose English Honors along with 60 other girls and luckily passed out with honors degree along with only 13 girls. We were still lucky because the political science honors department had only 2 girls who managed to clear the entire 3 years with honors degree because they were all shifted to the general department after the first 'mid-term' test.

Every honors student had to take up two general subjects along with the two compulsory honors subjects. There were total of 8 papers in English Honors, 2 in the first year, 2 in the second and 4 in the final year with no general subjects. I had History and Political Science as my general subjects for two years. The course was very informative and taught us many things about English Literature and it definitely enhanced our writing skills. The course is also very helpful for getting every job since good English is a must in every industry and you can do freelancing works like Content writing, blog writing etc. as well. You could also get a job of a primary school teacher.

There were 4 faculties in every department. The HOD of English department DS was also the vice principal of the college. There were also four faculties each for the general subjects as well and all of them knew their work well. The teachers were very helpful especially to the students of their individual honors departments.

There was no such a placement facility or campus placement there back then.

Hostel Facility was not provided by the college but there were many PG's available nearby since students from far and wide comes to the colleges in College Street.

The college had pretty neat and clean classrooms, the area is not very big but it has 2-3 floors. There is availability of medical and emergency support. There was a single auditorium where the prayers and important announcements were done.

The college was locally known as jail because you cannot get out of the college before 1 pm or if your classes for the day has been over you need to show your routine to the guards at the door and they would then decide if you can leave the college or not.

Mobile phones are strictly prohibited not in the classrooms but also in the entire college campus even during break hours and when someone was caught doing that she had to give a fine of 500 rupees. Literally there were no clubs, party or other fun activities there but they celebrated Independence Day, Sarasvati Puja, Sports day, etc.