One Awesome Experience.

The college is as I said in the title the only drawback was the food and the lazy management for not taking quick steps to solve the issue. Other than that, its a very good college. Not Strict like many other colleges affiliated to Anna University. Overall, a place for both, fun and learning.

I choose this college via Anna University Counselling, based on my class 12th cutoff. I scored 190.5 and was able to bag a Computer Science and Engineering seat in this college. (Only one seat was remaining and I was the one who took it). I had written BITSAT and AIEEE and got a score as well. But unfortunately, it wasn't sufficient to get into Bits Pilani or any of the NIT's. (If you are wondering, I didn't write the JEE. AIEEE itself was daunting task for me, JEE was out of the question). Apart from these big shot exams, I had written SRMEEE and Entrance Exam for Amritha College of Engineering as well. I had cleared SRMEEE (luckily) and was called for counselling. I went there only to find seat for ECE in SRM Vadapalani campus. For the uninitiated, the SRM Vadapalani campus was newly constructed and did not even have proper lab facilities at that time. With a jaw dropping fee of more than 1.5 lakhs per annum, I decided to walk out of there. There was no point wasting money. After some chides from relatives, I sat waiting for my class 12th results to come and choose the obvious choice left, Anna University Counselling.

We had access to an online college portal called Moodle. Inside the Moodle, we had to select the Branch we belonged to and voila, we will be presented with the list of topics for the current semester, Notes (if available) for that semester and several important questions pertaining to each subject for that semester. The portal also had access to all tests and exams conducted by the college and marks obtained in the same would be sent via post to our houses (Much to our dismay). During sixth semester, we were given a choice of electives.

When I was a student there, I was not aware of internships provided by my college. Maybe they were providing but I might have been lazy. Hence, no idea on this one. Yes, during our final year, many of friends went to do their projects in other companies such as HCL. I don't know if you would call that as an internship.

Boy, this was (is) something that REC is quite famous for. Placement camp started after our Sixth semester (3rd year end). The training camp happens for around ten days and we are supposed to stay in the college during this period. We should not have any backlogs up until 5th semester in order to attend this camp. Every morning, there would be fun games followed by aptitude training from experts. We were also given material to practice for aptitude exams conducted by famous companies that visit our campus. It was a fun experience bundled with adequate learning. Amidst our seventh semester, we have companies such as TCS, WIPRO, HITACHI, ASHOK LEYLAND, and many more visiting for campus drives. I sat for TCS and got placed there. (currently working in TCS). More than 300 students got placed in TCS alone and close of 700 students were placed totally in our batch.

There are cultural fests happening every year. Sports day is also conducted every year (although I used to skip them, ya, I was a fool back then). Also, there is this college symposium, conducted by individual departments. These symposiums were a lot of fun as they challenged a person's technical expertise in his/her department. For example, for CSE symposium, we had events such as Coding, Debugging, Gaming, Hardware Assembling, and so on. I was an organizer for one of the events in my third year. Many students from other colleges take part in these events and bag exciting prizes. Once, there was a World Debating Club organized in our college and many students from across the GLOBE came to participate. It was one huge event that I can never forget. It was organized well and the guest students were given accommodation in Taj group of resorts. It happened for around ten days and garnered quite a response from many institutions across the globe.

As I mentioned in the Fee Structure, the third category can also be called as a Scholarship. My close friend availed this and was paying far less fee than I was. I was happy for him though. He was an intelligent student and is currently working with me in TCS. This is the only Scholarship i am aware of. I had not availed any Scholarship.

Gender Ration was mostly equal. (50-50). I was in the CSI (Computer Society of India) Club and we had workshops on Networking. There was a Robotics course as well and there were other certifications such as CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) and RDBMS. I did not undergo any of these certifications but the college used to conduct a lot of such educational stuff. There was a debating club which conducted debates, extempore, drama, and so on. When it came to sports, there was a football team. My close friend was a part of the team and they had won inter-college and inter- department football matches. There were other clubs such as Cricket and the selection happened mostly during the first year of college. A good amount of emphasis is given on extra-curricular activities.

The Mess food is, as the word states, a BIG MESS. Hostel food is no good either. I had seen many of my hostel friends move out and find rooms or apartments in the vicinity of the campus just because the food was distasteful. Canteen food was somewhat better but I would suggest you to bring home cooked food. There were cases of Typhoid and Diarrhea due to filthy food and dirty water. Yes, even water was not good. This is one area where this college made me furious. Although, I was a day scholar, there were many hostel friends who were suffering. We had complained to the management a lot of times but no serious action was taken, as far as I was there. Hopefully, they will improve the food quality soon. (a distant wish, maybe).

Seniors were helpful because they knew our struggle. After all, they had been through the same. They used to give us pointers on how to tackle certain questions in exams, what topics to focus on and how to write answers that could fetch good grades. Overall, we had a good bunch of seniors. I didn't have much interaction with the Alumni of our college.

Exams were pretty hectic, because we used to have tests every other week. Those marks played a role in our internal marks and hence preparing for them was equally important as having fun. Labs were not hectic. In fact, they were quite fun. Questions asked in the exams were sometimes quite tricky, but mostly, I managed a passing grade. The end semester exams, conducted by Anna University, were mostly predictable. Although the questions were predictable, our grades were unpredictable. Sometimes, for a subject we did really well, we will get a passing grade (or maybe even fail) but for a subject where we hardly gave a solid answer, we would get high grades. The correction was (is) one of the worst I had ever seen in my entire life. Correction of papers is done based on how huge a story you have written and how neatly you have written it. I was not much of a story teller, hence sometimes, I used to get passing grades. I was always to the point and couldn't change that till the end of my college life. (I still am to the point. That's why many answers here on this questionnaire are also short). So waiting for results after each semester was nerve wrecking and scary.

After obtaining my 12th marks (and attending phone calls from Nosy relatives and telling ENLIGHTENING them about my scores), I applied for Anna University Counselling. Since my cutoff was 190.5, I had few colleges in mind and out of that, I was determined to take Rajalakshmi Engineering College (I had no idea about the other colleges since many of friends were from REC). After the Anna University Counselling, I got admission into REC and was asked to report to the college Authorities for other processes. We paid the fee for a year, including the bus charges and everything. Administration was neat. Everything happened methodically. Overall, the admission process was smooth and I was given the date of joining, August 19th, 2011.

Most of the Faculty were well Qualified. They knew their stuff and were quite approachable. While Subject knowledge is one thing, ability to teach a class of students (out of which only a few were interested in learning) was actually a tough task. There were many faculty who hold a special place in my heart, especially my Java Lecturer. Every piece of code I write today is due to the profound attention I paid to his lectures. He is also as strict as Java is but one of the best faculty I had ever studied under. Then there were other faculty who were quite strict with the marks. I used to score less in certain subjects but that only fueled my passion to study more about the subject.