IIT KGP Review

The Good - They are very helpful and friendly and do their level best to make our stay here as pleasant as possible and have had very good interactions with them, and all the office work(bureaucratic stuff) is smooth and transparent and corruption-free. The Bad - Could try to make our living conditions(hostel and mess) a little better though i understand it's the best with the amount we pay but still we won't mind if we have to pay a little extra for better living conditions.

I took many engineering entrance exams like any other student in India at 12th standard level like BITSAT, JEE-MAINS( formerly AIEEE ), etc. but the one through which i took admission was JEE-ADVANCED( formerly IIT JEE), I scored 132 out of 372 which is 35.5% but still managed to get a rank of 5428 but IIT JEE is one such exam where getting high percentages is tough, even the All India Rank(AIR) one scored 86% and then came JoSSA councelling and I chose IIT Kharagpur because of many reasons and the main one was the rich alumni network it boasts, and the awesome senior to student interactions i heard about from an existing KGPian.(we call ourselves not IITians but KGPians it's one of the many things which sets us apart form the rest of the IITians.)

Even though I'm a first year, here students of all the branches of firstyear follow the same curriculum one of things which is unique and awesome about an IIT, the emphasis on the research part is high because irrespective of our branch we are given basic insight on all the courses and the number of lab periods in a week is very high where we get to do a lot of Hands-on-experience, for example my favorite is Manufacturing Process Lab where we get to all kinds of awesome things such as foundry, welding, machining, etc., In the later years I have seen my course curriculum and interacted with my seniors and found out that the research facilities are one of the best in the country for biotechnology and biochemistry and we have been consecutively invited last year and this year to iGEM(link: http://igem.org/Main_Page) conducted by MIT(Massachusetts Institue of Technology), Boston and we have won bronze this year(link: http://2016.igem.org/Results) so that should give you a fair idea about the level of emphasis on the research part here. The general course structure isn't too hectic and as well as not too free due to the minimum attendance percentage to a class but the main driving factor here among the students is the sporting competitiveness among the students, which makes it one of the best in the world due to the quality of good students joining here which makes each one of the student awesome in his own unique way.

Again as a first year it is difficult for me throw a more detailed review on this as I too i am learning more on this as i go but as far as i have heard from my seniors that the opportunities are endless.

The fee structure is one of the most feasible and cheapest in the world, around 2 lakh per year for academics and 40 thousand for mess and hostel this is too after a 100% hike in fees last year, but the facilities are still world class because the fees is highly subsidized, the government pays around 5 lakh per student in general(like me) and for category it is even more highly subsidized making the craze around IIT even more.

Campus life in one word is awesome, especially here. Gender ratio is bad as is the case with most IITs, the number of girls clearing IIT JEE is very less. Diversity is not a problem here since students from all over India come here, since it's based on merit and the rank you secure.labs as mentioned before are awesome, there are many societies for any interest you have, for robotics you have TRS, for debating you have DebSoc, for dancing you have TDS, etc. i can keep going for your each and every interest you have a society, I had attended many Societies interviews or selection even if i didn't have of joining them since the entry is based on Group Discussion and Personal Interviews based on the society's main focus, so that i can get a good experience while sitting for placements. The workshops are many in number, both technical and social(to improve your soft skills), i have attended many tech camps, boot camps and hack camps conducted by Microsoft, IBM, etc. I am also taking a micro credit course on "Science of Happiness" where the visiting faculty is Ex-DRDO chief since this question has always bugged me, What is happiness life and the course so far has been so amazing , the people who teach them are experts in their own field. I can keep going but this has already been too much I guess, in short if you are interested and motivated to do something then IIT KGP provides the best platform there is for you to do it.

This is the only area i would say in which IITs lag is this, the mess food is way below par than what we expect and that is one major drawback but that is expected as they collect from us very less money for mess food and hostels( way less than other institutions) but it isn't way bad so that it isn't edible, when we consider the position of many others who are struggling to get food our position is far better, it a way teaches us the value of food and money, again for the hostels they aren't world class but they are manageable, again teaching us to be happy with what we have.

The Alumni Network and the Senior-Junior Interaction are the two major reasons why I chose IIT KGP, because I had heard some much about it, and now i can confidently say I am not disappointed and am glad that I chose IIT KGP, it's been just 3 months and i have already many interactions with my alumni, where they guide us(what to do and what not to do) and how to make the most out of our stay at IIT KGP, the alumni are big part of the institute, especially in KGP which is the oldest IIT so its has the richest Alumni network in India. Next, Seniors, they are the best in the campus they help you discover your true self, they are very helpful and guiding, I got my Imbibe first year paid winter internship through merit through a 2nd year senior who is working part time as a consultant for Imbibe and earning while studying. The Seniors are very talented and smart and it's your job to get the most out of them, they even guide you and tell you to not make the same mistakes they made in the first year both academically and socially.

The Exam Structure for the first years is a centralized one and it wasn't too hectic and on the other hand it wasn't too free, generally the first year is a bit hectic and the subsequent ones are free to the extent that you can pursue your own interests, the labs were too an awesome experience, and they too aren't hectic. I found it a lot hectic when i first joined here but now feel no pressure because you learn to manage time in a better way, this is a very good way in which we KGPians learn time management.

If you want to get admission through either of JEE exams, mains or advanced you have go through a common counselling window (JoSSA, link: http://josaa.nic.in/webinfo/Public/home.aspx), through whcih you can get admission into a wide range of government engineering colleges and government funded engineering colleges, IIT JEE was for IITs and ISM Dhanbad and for other colleges it was JEE mains, for more details about this refer to the above link. The notification was released for JEE mains around December of 2015, there was no seperate application for JEE Advanced, students those who qualify a cut off mark in jee mains will automatically qualify for JEE advanced, they normally select the top 2 lakh students out of which 50% is reserved for category students, myself a general student and out of which again top 10 thousand students in JEE advanced get admission in IIT again 50% of which is reserved for category students, the entire process pre-exam( application, fee payment for exam, etc.) and post-exam(counselling and fee payment for admission, etc.) was one of the most smooth and transparent process i have ever been part of. The process is 100% corruption free (not to be sour, but which is rare but the harsh truth is that is rare in India) and legit which makes it one of the most sought after set of colleges in India.

The faculty here are the best in India according to me, it is very hard to secure a teaching position in an IIT so the quality and the subject knowledge is in no doubt the best India has to offer and sometime we even get professors from abroad teaching us for a semester, but the real thing which sets them apart is the emphasis they set on research and real world application, whatever we study we study because there is a reason for this and our teachers make sure that we know them, even if the topic is too dry or boring or not interesting, our teachers make it interesting by telling us the real world application of learning that and the emphasis on research is also very high, all the final year students have to do a mandatory project on their own. The faculty here are so good in their respective fields that some of them work as consultants to firms in that field.