Ravi Kumar Venkat's Review On SASTRA University, Thanjavur

I was selected in SASTRA University based on merit scores obtained in 12th board examination(Andhra Pradesh). My board examination score was aggregate of 11th and 12th board which was 92.6%. I opted for this college because of the campus placements it provided. During 2004, the university had got a 75% of the students placed on campus.

There are courses offered in different fields as already mentioned. I would be talking about Electronics and Communication here. In a scale of 1 to 10 I would give a rating of 8 to the curriculum. The first year comprises of the common subjects in engineering as does any other curriculum. Later narrows down to electronics in the second year and third year with a bit of communication engineering subjects as well.

During 2004-2008, the college did definitely encourage the students to do internships in companies to have an exposure in applied engineering. Also it has an abroad programme which allows a student to do the final year project in international universities. The university has collaboration with Stanford, MIT as well. The general stipend for the internship varies anywhere between Rs 5000 to Rs 20000 for a month.

Placements during 2008 was in a boom. almost the university achieved 100% placements for the students who cleared the minimum criteria required to sit in the campus placements. Tata Consultancy Services bagged 200+ students during 2008. Later during 2012, TCS recruited 1755 students creating a world record.

Technical Events celebrated: Daksh. The community has a wide range of technical events spanning from high end robotics competitions to building extremely creative stuffs in all the departments. When I was a part of Daksh we conducted 3 robotics competitions where the challenges included control of the robot manually to Autonomous control of the robots.

The fee structure is definitely feasible compared to many other colleges with similar standards of faculty and infrastructure. We had to pay Rs. 30,000 per semester excluding the book fees. Mostly the references were notes of the lecturers and the money was spent on taking photo copies of these lectures. In the initial stages there is a caution deposit of Rs 10000 which gets reimbursed after finishing the course.

Of course there are loans available from various banks. Few banks offer a loan upto 4 Lakhs without collateral security. Apart from that university gives a scholarship to students who fall under the category of top 5 % and 10 % of the students having highest CGPA.

Extracurricular activities in SASTRA university were really good. They have high class sports facility. Sports facilities included courts for badminton, table tennis, football, volleyball and basketball. Apart from that there is a billiards and a pool table. A gymnasium is available open most of the time.

As I am one of the active alumni, I could definitely say that they are really helpful. The ragging has been brought down to zero due to the strict rules that management has brought to practise. Students being from different cultural background get a good exposure to people skills.

There were a total of 8 semesters. Semester exams happened twice in a year. In each semester there were two mid semesters which occurred once in two months. Mid semesters were good in fact, since it gave a possibility of getting prepared for the end semesters well in advance. There used to be another optional mid semester.

The faculty of Sastra is one of the most important reasons that the university has got its name all around the world. Every faculty in SASTRA holds a minimum of M-Tech degree in the field in which they teach. Many hold a Phd degree too. Most of them have atleast a teach experience five and above in their career which gives them an edge in excelling the art of teaching.