Memorable phase in life

I loved my college days and thank my teachers and friends for providing a memorable phase of my life. I would like to visit the college sometime soon.

I took the professional enterence test (PET) to qualify for admission into an engineering course. I scored 576 out of 900. In the counselling session the best college option I had was OIST. Back then OIST had the reputation of being a new and upcoming student friendly college with good faculty members. It was regarded as one of the best private engineering colleges. The interview process was straight forward wherein the interviewer asked about my past academic record. They asked about why I would like to become an engineer and also asked about my goals in life.I picked up the electrical engineering course as that was the only option available to me. The overall infrastructure of the college was very good and it was ideally located just on the outskirts of the city away from the hustle and bustle of the busy city life.

The engineering course curriculum was well designed wherein in the 1st year we were exposed to a broad spectrum of subjects giving us a holistic appreciation of different branches of engineering. From the 2nd year onwards,we were given in-depth knowledge of our specialization. The faculty was a good mix of experience and youth. The heads of departments had a very creditable teaching experience. At the same time we had a lot of young and dynamic faculty members who would bring in Energy to the sessions. Overall, the teacher student interactions were fun and enriching.

Internship was not a part of my course and hence this question is not applicable to me. We had campus placements and I have spoken about it in the next section.

We had a lot of corporate companies coming to our college for campus interviews. These included Wipro,Convergys,NIIT and few other tier 1 and tier 2 companies. The general package offered to us in 2003 was in the range of 1.5 to 5 lakhs per annum. We had about 300 students graduating in 2003 and about 50 were well placed through campus interviews. Additionally, a few students were also selected in the Indian Army and Indian Air Force as officers in the engineering branch.

We had a lot of cultural festivals in our college. In one such function we had the privilege of having the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh come as the chief guest. It was a great festival which was very successful. There were a few techfests in which students from other engineering colleges came and presented technical papers. We also had engineering modelling contests in which students from all colleges would come and present concepts with working models.

The engineering fees for those who qualified through PET was INR 18000 per annum. The paid seats were for INR 40000 per annum. This was just the tuition fees and hostel expenses were separate. We paid INR 15000 per annum for hostel facilities which included food and accommodation.

I did not avail of any loan or scholarship facility. I believe there are education loans offered at very competitive interest rates for students looking for financial help. We also had a bank near our college which offered us special benefits for student account.

Campus life was excellent. We had a 50:50 ratio between boys and girls in the campus. As a result our events were always very lively. Every weekend was like a party. We also undertook a lot of group travel to nearby attractions. We undertook industrial visits places like Goa so we had a lot fun overall. The overall culture was very friendly and we had no place for any religious bias. As hostelers we were all equal.

We had the option of shared rooms and single rooms. The hostel had all the basic amenities like a phone connection,lounge room with TV,play area with table tennis carrom, chess and some other games. We had hot water facility in bathrooms. The mess served

This is one of the areas of improvement that I would like to suggest to my college management. While I am aware that there is some effort to bring together the college alumni but I feel that there is much to be done here. I think a lot of people from OIST are well placed today and the college will benefit immensely if there is a concerted effort to bring them all together.

We generally had small tests every month to gauge our readiness on the subject. We had a mid semester exam every 4 months and this was like a mini prep for the main exams. We had ample time to prepare for our subjects and the curriculum never seemed to be