Sandeep Singh's Review On Indian Institute Of Information Technology - [IIIT], Allahabad

I cleared GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) and scored an All India Rank 368 with 96.6 percentile. My first choice was getting into IIT-Kanpur/Delhi etc because they had the best rankings in India. However, I was not able to get into these institutes. I then applied to IIITs which are next after IITs and I was successful in getting into IIIT-Allahabad which was ranked at 8th in India.

The course curriculum although was not excellent, yet was very good. A full semester (last semester) was dedicated for the research. However, currently I feel that last 2 semesters should have been dedicated towards performing research which will improve the quality of the research as well as enhance the skills of the student. Some teachers were excellent while a few didn't bother about teaching.

Every M.Tech student of IIIT-A was a GATE qualified candidate and therefore had its own GATE fellowship provided by MHRD (Govt of India). At that time the amount was Rs. 8000/- per month which has increased now. B.Tech students had the choice of doing internship into the company of their choice but Institute had no role of providing any internship. However, Institute do provided excellent placement opportunities.

Placements were 100% for B.Tech students and were ~70% for M.Tech students on average (stats are as per year 2007). Many reputed IT companies came in the campus for placements like TCS, Wipro, Adobe etc. The placement procedure was in 3 rounds. First round included those companies which gave package of around 3-5 lakh per annum.

As per my knowledge, there was no facility of scholarship provided by the institute. Regarding loan, I can't tell because I didn't needed it. However, the admin and the staff was very cooperative.

There were two exams per semester which is of 6 months term. Mid-term exams were concluded around the mid of the semester while end-term exams were concluded after the semester ends. The exam structure was well balanced and the questions were framed according to the syllabus. The question paper was neither easy nor tough.

The admission process was as follows: a) Candidate should have a valid and very good GATE score and based on this score, the institute screened the applications for M.Tech admission. b) A written test was conducted for screened candidates. c) Finally, for all the screened candidates, an interview was conducted. A final decision was made based on the GATE Score plus scores gained in the written test and the interview.

Most of the faculty were talented as well as took pain to teach us. However, a few faculty members were not at all interested in teaching and used to pass their time in the lectures. While ignoring the bad faculty members, I always enjoyed the lectures delivered by the excellent faculty of IIIT-A. Standards of teaching were comparable to the international standards.