A great college with old school charm

Annamalai university is overall a great place to be with its old school charm and its huge campus. If you are not addicted to the flashy lifestyle of the cities, Annamalai will not disappoint you.

There are no entrance exams as such to get admission into the course. One has to have passed 12th std with at least 60% marks with maths as a subject to qualify to take up the course. There are Annamalai university study centers in most cities where one can go and initiate the admission process. I had already decided that I wanted to BBA. So I looked around I found that Annamalai to be a better option as it is one of the reputed universities in south India and has wider recognition than other colleges.

Annamalai has about 4 majoring options in BBA. I chose Finance and Accounting. The course is for 3 years, divided into 6 semesters and each semister containing 5 subjects. There were assignments given in each semester and a project in the final year. All these carried marks in our semester exams. Electives were limited to language subjects. One can choose either English or Business communication in Tamil.

Internship is not part of the curriculum, so there were no internships on offer to BBA students. However, we were taken to a couple of industrial visits during our third year where there were options to join as interns (after completion of degree) One of the companies was Grasim Industries, who were offering a 6 months internship with Rs. 12000 stipend per month.

Sadly, there were no on-campus placements for BBA students at Annamalai. But then, that is the case with all BBA colleges. On-campus recruitment only happens for MBA students. Our lectures did try to help us through their contacts, but such opportunities were very few.

You will have countless number of ethnic days during the three years of college. Every festival is an ethnic day. Apart from those there is a fest organised on a grand scale every year.

Of all the colleges I looked at while joining, Annamalai had one of the lowest fees, and way lesser than the colleges in Bangalore where I live. First year's fees was about Rs. 18000. Second year was also about the same. Third year's fees was about Rs. 23000. Additional are exam fees of Rs. 1500 per semester.

I had opted to stay out of campus on my own and therefore cannot comment on hostel facilities. Although, I did have food a couple of times and found it to be disappointing. A lot of student opt to stay out of campus and it being a college town there are lot of student friendly accommodations available at reasonable rents. I shared a 1 Bhk house with 2 other students splitting the rent of Rs. 4500 per month.

AUETTA is one of the biggest alumni associations with hundreds of its member representing it overseas such as Singapore and Dubai. Though, I have not personally interacted with any of the alumni.Our seniors during college were friendly and helpful. Though, our interactions were limited to when we played cricket against each other.

The exams are semester-wise with 5 subjects each semester. The core subjects have assignments during the semester which count for 10 marks in the semester exams. Scoring good marks is not very difficult as long as you put in time and effort into studies. The third year syllabus gets a little tough with heavy subjects such as financial management. But with the marks for assignments and little extra effort, passing should not be a problem.

I went to a nearby bank and made a DD for the application fees and filled out the form with the help of the study center staff and attached all the required documents such as marks cards, address proofs, etc (all self attested) and submit application at the study center and collected an acknowledgement slip that they gave. It was all done within a matter of 4-5 hours. Then about 10 days later, I got a letter home confirming my admission along with details of course start date and such.

The faculty is very experienced and knowledgeable. The HOD of the department is a PhD with years of teaching experience. The other staff are a mix of young and senior lecturers. Every lecturer showed deep understanding of the subject they taught. However the approach is still kind of old school and mostly confined to black board style teaching as opposed to projectors and Pp Ts that can be seen in other colleges. But then again, that's a good as well as a bad thing.