Home Away From Home

The college had very few restrictive rules. Whilst you are a student they may look bothersome however in overall I would recommend the University to anyone looking to have a great career base.

Here I am in my home country after my A'level Exams (12th Class) thinking where I would go and study since I wanted to study abroad. I went from agent to agent and buy the grace of God came by a past week local newspaper advertising that that same day a Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT University) International students Director would be having a counseling session. Immediately I got up and almost missed him by an hour. I got to know about all the courses, the tuition fees, living style. Basically, I had all my questions answered enough to make a decision there and then. I filled in the application form and left copies of my transcript. A few days later, I wrote to them, because I was anxious to know if I had qualified. So they told me they were still evaluating my results and would get back to me. Finally, after 2 weeks of thinking that I actually had not made it, I got a response with a provisional letter. I had chosen the Bachelor of Commerce(Computer Applications). I preferred the course since it combined my area of interest Business and Accounting with the basis of technology through Computer Applications. Fortunately, it proved to be a great choice for my career.

The curriculum was quite extensive than I actually anticipated. It covered from basic to advanced accounting, finance, economics, basic programming languages, web designing, database management as the core subjects. It gave one a full kit to go within the business world especially for someone who would consider Accounting, management, or Entrepreneurship as a career. We had a lot of practical work in the laboratories and these included C++, C-programming, Web designing, Database Management, and Tally and this was on top of the theory classes. This made the theory classes understandable and more bearable as you were only allowed to register for the lab together with the theory. We also had mini-projects for our lab exams and at most times our teachers allowed us to go beyond the classroom and create our own projects. For the electives, we could choose subjects from computer science or BBA stream. I managed to have Business Mathematics as an elective as well as Human Recourse management both of which I enjoyed a lot as they seemed to still link with my stream. In our final 6 months, we had to do a project or research work in different, trending, or new fields. We were also allowed to go and do the projects in organizations to be able to gather more information. This was a great experience indeed.

There was a placement office where internships were advertised and students could register. The available internship would also be sent to all students who had a chance to qualify school or department wise.

I did not sit for placements but as I understood it every student could register with the placement office and would have to go through the Placement training to help in preparing for interviews. A friend of mine got an 8 lakh package although from statistics I understood there were other higher packages. Companies like Infosys and Accenture were also a part of the large companies that came for recruitment.

Bachelor of Commerce (Computer Applications) factoring in that I was also an international student was pretty much affordable. Considering also that studying abroad for anyone would be extremely expensive, I had a consolidated amount of US$4500 (Approx: 3 Lakhs/year) to pay every year and this was inclusive of accommodation, food, wifi, and access to every other facility on the campus.

As an international student in my first days, it was really difficult to adjust to the different food. After giving a request to the concerned offices we were allowed to join the food park where we could order food and specify as to how we liked it. This made our lives a whole lot easier. In the first year, almost all the students are on a sharing basis of 2, 4, or 6 students. The students would have to stay in the allocated room for the academic year unless on request or there are problems. In the following years, the rooms would be allocated according to the CGPA's were the students with the higher CGPA would be given priority in choosing the rooms. This was good because they could also choose to stay with the roommates who would have lower CGPA. The rooms would be single, double, four bedded, or six bedded. There were also AC and non-AC options. In total there were about 6 dining halls only for girls. I am uncertain of the boys.

We had three exam times and for each subject, we had small 3 internal quizzes and an assignment. The timetables were in such a way that after a few weeks we would the quiz which would also prepare us for the first CAT as we called them (Continuous Assessment Test). Again the second one wound follows after about four weeks. In my second year, the introduced the open book system in our second CAT where instead of just cramming whatever we learned the questions would be application-based HOT (Higher Order Thinking). Finally, at the end of the semester, we would have the FAT (Final Assessment Test) for both theory and Labs and before then we would have to submit our semester mini-project or assignment for each course. We would normally have a 5-7 days break during that time.

Most of my classes were a size of about 30-40 students each and this size gives a chance at easy delivering of the lessons by the teacher. Most of the faculty members in the commerce department have at least 7 years of teaching experience in the area and most had a lot of publications too. For each and every subject the teachers would always encourage us to also start doing publication and that it was never too early. Furthermore, in most colleges you find partiality, so I would say I was lucky I never came across that during my time at the college, every student was given an equal opportunity and the teachers had designated timings to meet students. Whenever a subject was too difficult the teachers were also willing to take extra classes. I would say at least 50% of my teachers were over-qualified professors.