College Diaries by Preetha

The admission process was completely online, through JoSSA and CSAB. We didn't have to report to the institute, in view of the pandemic. JoSSA consisted of 6 rounds of online counseling for seat allocation and CSAB (also known as the Mop-Up round) consisted of 2 rounds for filling up the vacant seats. The vacancy is created mainly due to the non-reporting of students at the respected institute. In this case, it is due to the submission of insufficient documents before the given deadline or due to non-payment of fees as prescribed by the Council.

I'm a student of Mechanical Engineering. However, in 1st year, I was in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. I got my branch changed at the end of 1st yr, as I had a good CGPA and a decent rank. There are around 500 faculty members and the college has over 5000 students, from all streams and all years. So roughly the faculty: student ratio is around 1: 10. The faculties here are highly qualified, most of them having completed their B.Tech or BE from reputed Engineering colleges in India. Some have even received education in foreign universities. Almost all faculties have completed their M.Tech and Ph.D. from various IITs. So, definitely, the quality of education is never compromised. Exams have always been conducted on time. In view of the online situation, the duration of the semesters and of the exams have been reduced. In offline classes, End Sem exams used to be of 3 hours but now they are of 2 hours and paper is sometimes difficult and lengthy so, sometimes it becomes stressful

Internships are provided by Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Google, JSW, Wells Fargo, TATA, CMERI, JP Morgan Chase and Co., PWC, and many more. At the end of 2nd year, students work as interns at IITs or IIMs. The stipend amount is also pretty decent for a beginner.

Around 70% of students get placements. The rest go for higher education. Barely there is any student who remains unsuccessful after graduating from NIT Durgapur. I want to get placed at the end of the 4th year and work for 2 or 3 years under a company and pursue MBA after that. Then the job continues. Perhaps, I could start my own business as well.

A general category student has to pay around 75000 per semester. This excludes mess charges. However, GEN-EWS and SC, ST students have to pay quite less. Also, scholarships opportunities are available for SC, ST, and OBC students. General Category students have lesser opportunities for scholarship. Being a college under the central government, one is not expected to pay such high fees. Even some private colleges have lesser fees compared to us. This has been brought to the notice of the administration but no action has been taken yet. The top 3 students of each batch from Mechanical, Civil, Electrical, and Metallurgy are eligible for certain scholarships in the core sector. The institute informs the students about these scholarships from time to time.

2 fests are conducted every year: the cultural fest is called NITYamini and the tech fest is called Aarohan. Aarohan is conducted in January- February. NITYamini is conducted in even semesters. Books are always available in abundance in the library. Classrooms are well equipped with projectors, mics, etc. Students regularly take part in sports and extracurricular activities. NSS is the body that organizes these events, especially marches and social events. There are many techs, non-tech and cultural clubs and societies run by the students. To name some, ISTE, IEEE, Spic Macay, Strokes, Radio Nitroz, SAE, QuizInc, GLUG, RECursion. But now everything is online so we can't enjoy college life.