5 Pretty Good years of my life

Conclusion: It's a friggin IIT for crying out loud. All the hype was totally worth for me. There of course would be students/ alumni who would say that the college educational environment could be much better. I, having seen it all, know how much peace they would have 'maaroed' during their times.

IIT JEE - AIR 4997. Got IIT Kharagpur in the central counselling and chose to go ahead gladly. Had to take an additional test for architecture aptitude.

Course was pretty standard for an architecture bachelors degree. We used to have design courses in each semester, with electives from civil engineering and mechanical engineering. I personally chose courses related to economics and coding as separate electives as I was interested in them.

It used to be by choice. In the 5 years of my study, I interned with 3 different companies and the general stipend was around 4500- 10, 000 per month. I worked with an innovative architecture firm in Auroville - Pondicherry & big architectural firms in Delhi and Ahmedabad.

Students of IITs normally don't bother about placements. IIT Kharagpur has a pretty solid placement process and nearly everybody who wants to get a job gets a job. In addition to core companies, finance and consults companies like Barclays Capital, Mckinsy, Bain, KPMG etc. are the ones visiting Day 0. During my time the average package was around 7-8 LPA.

Biggest Cultural Festival - Spring FestBiggest Management Festival - KshitijThese are one of the biggest college fests in the country, with participation from all over the nation. The event nights see amazing performances by leading bollywood celebrities. During my time, Shaan, Sukhwinder Singh, Sonu Nigam, Indian Ocean etc. had come.

Yes. Merit-cum-means scholarship - 100% of fee is returned. I got it for the entire 5 years. One has to submit family income and should also be scoring more than 7 CGPA.

Unlike general over-enthusiastic answers to questions like this, I would want to put a realistic picture here. Campus life is chilled out. As they say in KGP - 'Peace Maaro'. The culture is so accommodating that whether you like to fight real hard or be a lazy sloth, things will work for you. What more, you will find friends who would be exactly like you, hence instances of loneliness are limited. Having said that, IITs are notorious for suicides. That is one fact one can't deny.In short, I would say that immense support system is there, it's all about reaching out to batchmates and seniors.

Pretty decent hostel facility. Students are not allowed to stay outside. Till 3rd year I was sharing rooms with one other student. Fourth and fifth years were single occupancy rooms. Hostels are quite old yet really solid. Not the biggest of the rooms but how much space does one require for a bed, a laptop an almirah and a bucket! Mess food was bad. It was terrible. Most of us survived on the canteen. It's like a legacy thing.

Seniors are very helpful. As alumni, we still keep in touch with our department juniors and help them whenever they need us. It helps in jobs and all too.

Semester exams - twice a year. For architecture department exams were pretty chilled out. The real chaos used to happen in post exam submissions for our design projects.

Most of the professors were good. A few professors from civil engineering department could have been less acerbic and negatively biased against architecture students. Having said that most of them didnt do any real harm.