Truth about life at an IIT

Positive - It's an IIT, and one of the top 10 IITs. It is ranked 15th among other engineering colleges in India by NIRF. The IIT tag brings along a lot of career opportunities in numerous different fields. The college itself has a very strong foundation and a rich culture. Negative - But, the infrastructure is currently not as good as other IITs and campus area is also limited. Most of the faculty doesn't ignite student's interest in higher studies and research. Students are miserable as they are overburdened with their academics. Placement in core branches are in a miserable state.

We have a huge course curriculum and the academics are really hectic with daily classes and labs from 8 am in the morning to 5 in the evening. B.Tech first year students of all branches have a common curriculum. The respective curriculums of different branches are started from second year. The exam structure is based on a new relative grading system in which grading is based on a student's percentile and avg class performance. Mid sems and end sems have 28% and 42% percentage weightage resepctively and the rest of 30% total marks are based on quizzes, assignments and attendance. We have a very strictly implemented 75% attendance rule.

Being an IIT, our college has very good placement and job opportunities along with numerous internship offers. Placements are really good in computer science engineering, petroleum engineering and mining engineering branches with giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, Samsung, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, American Express, Schlumberger visiting the campus for placements. However, other branches ,specially the core branches (electrical, mechanical and civil engineering) are really struggling in placement and internship offers when compared to other IITs. Most internships offer around a stipend of around 80,000 to 1 lac rupess for a two to three month internship.

Our college's timeline is filled with numerous fests and event. Srijan(cultural fest) and Concetto(Techno-Management fest) being the most awaited ones and are very well know for their magnificence in all of eastern India. Khanan, organised by mining department is the most famous fest for mining engineering students and attract numerous students from all over India. There are other departmental fests like Vibhav(electrical department) and Pratibimb and annual sports fests (parakram) along with various other events like Fotomela (annual photography exhibition organised by FotoFreaks, the official photography club of IIT ISM Dhanbad) and Basant (annual Alumni meet)

Fee structure is fairly feasible as it is subsidised by the government. The fees per semester amount to around 1.3 lac rupees for general and OBC-NCL students without any scholarships. Students with low family income and SC/ST students are granted a 100% exemption from paying academic fees(1lac per semester). There are also numerous scholarships available for students.

There are various merit based scholarships granted to the students. Most of these scholarships are sponsored by alumni organisations. Student loans are easily facilitated with State Bank of Indian's branch at IIT ISM Dhanbad.

There are numerous cultural and technical clubs and societies in this college which compete with other IITs at the annual Inter-IIT. Most of these clubs have built a commendable reputation for themselves by the virtue of their hard work and creativity. Students learn various skills such as photography, videography, art and craft dancing, singing, music, dramatics, poetry, literature, astronomy, debating and public speaking at the different cultural clubs while there are also technical clubs for coding and programming, robotics, formula cars, entrepreneurship-cell too. Students in these clubs also learn team work and event management along with these skills. Sports clubs for karate, chess, squash, boxing, badminton, hockey, football, cricket, athletics along with a few other also provide a good opportunity for the students to follow their hobby in sports and represent the college in Inter-IIT sports meet. But the major drawback of this college is that some of the sports and clubs are still not funded well enough to nurture and bring out the real talent of the students. The biggest drawback of this college is that even after having so many great extra-curricular facilities for students, the students still can not make good use of these facilities because they are already overburdened with their academics.

Boy's hostel infrastructure is currently not at par with the reputation of this college. Hostels aren't very spacious and are not good enough to house the current population of this college (We have only 4 bathrooms, each having two lavatories and two showers, on a floor with 110 occupants).Although a new mega hostel for boys is under construction which will be completed and furnished very soon. Food served in our hostel's mess is hygienic and neat but isn't palatable at all. We have a laundry service but there are no washing machines installed. Clean water and electricity is available 24x7.

Labs in various departments of the college are well equipped with the required machinery and equipments. They are at par with other IITs in the country and some of the research labs are one of the best in the country.

I competed with almost 12lac candidates for JEE Main 2018 and qualified it with an AIR 31009(CRL). I qualified JEE Adv. with AIR 11435 (CRL) / 2263 (OBC-NCL) rank. I applied for JOSAA's counselling and I was allocated a seat in B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering at IIT ISM Dhanbad after 7 rounds of counselling on the basis of my JEE Adv OBC-NCL rank.

College's faculty are well qualified and meet the standards of an IIT. They have numerous research papers published in various publications in their respective fields. However, most of them are terrible at teaching and seem very uninterested in taking lectures. They fail to keep the students interested in classes and also overburden them with assignments and projects. Some of the professors are very arrogant and unsupportive too. On the other hand, we also have some great and helpful professors who are really dedicated to their work.