A roller coaster ride

The college is very particular about the rules and regulations and is very strict in this matter. They will not tolerate any disciplinary action and if any problem is created by the students, then severe action was taken.

Loyola College in Chennai is one of the best colleges for B. Com in the country and has a very good reputation. As I am planning for higher studies, is associated with a college like Loyola will help me in my future endeavors. It is located in the heart of the city and is very accessible from my home.

The course curriculum consists of 6 semesters. The first two semesters consisted of basic concepts in commerce such as financial accounting, economics etc. I felt this was quite basic as I had already studied these topics as I studied from a CBSE school. However, the subjects in the next 4 semesters were quite interesting and fun to learn. In the final 2 semesters, we were given a choice of selecting our specialization between finance, marketing, and entrepreneurship. I selected finance stream and Subjects like investment and portfolio analysis and financial markets were quite interesting. Also in the final semester, a compulsory internship of one month had to be completed which helped me gain practical experience in the real life corporate world.

It is compulsory as per the curriculum to complete one-month internship in the final semester of college. The college does not provide internship, We have to go and find an organization which will let us intern over there. So I interned at Equitas small finance bank and after that, we had to prepare a report and also a viva was conducted testing the skills that we learned during the internship. There was no stipend given by the organization.

The placements and job opportunities for BCom graduates were few and not that great in quality. There was a separate placement cell in the college and they used to put notifications on the notice board outside their office as to which companies were visiting our college. Many companies like Ernst and Young, Deloitte, Goldman Sachs did come but the pay packages were quite low as they were giving around 2.5 to 3 lakhs per annum. Also, the number of companies that came to our college was very less as compared to the numbers told by my seniors.

There are many events hosted in the college. The inter-department cultural, ovations, is one of the biggest cultural fests in the city. There is also an inter-college cultural festival held every year. Apart from these, there are various conferences, corporate events and awareness campaigns organized in the college.

The fee structure was different for the morning and evening batches. The fee for morning batch was quite reasonable as it was around 3000 per semester as it was government aided. The fee for the evening batch was quite expensive as it was 30000 per semester as this was the self-financed batch. Also, an examination fee of 700 rupees was charged every semester for writing the exams.

There is a good scholarship facility given by the college to the economically backward community. Many students used this facility and there were many concessions given to the backward and scheduled castes. Students also could borrow books from the college library instead of buying them. However, I don't have any detailed information about it.

With only the viscom department and the postgraduate degrees being co-educated in the evening shift, the gender ratio is quite bad as there are around 8000 students out of which more than 95% would be boys. There were quite a few students who were on the student exchange program and so the diversity was good. Being a commerce student, we never used any labs or anything as such. There were many extracurricular activities held in the college but I didn't participate in them as most of these events used to happen in Tamil and my mother language is Hindi.

As I was a day scholar, I do not have much information about the hostel facilities and especially the mess food. But since the hostel came on the way from parking to my department building, I could say that the hostel looked alright with decent facilities.

I have just passed out of college this year in 2018. So I don't have much information regarding the alumni network. The seniors have been helpful in assisting with studies throughout.

The exam structure of my course was very simple where the average of the internals and the semester examination were taken in ascertaining the final mark. There were two internal tests held during the semester of 40 marks each and 20 marks were awarded for assignments, projects, reports etc. These 100 marks constituted 50% of the total weight age of marks. The rest of the 50% was allocated to the semester examination which occurred at the end of the semester. The breakup is as follows: Internal 1 - 40 marks Internal 2 - 40 marks Internal 3 - 20 marks (assignments, projects) Semester examinations - 100 marks Total - 200 marks rounded off to 100.

The admission procedure is a tedious one and I had to stand for a long time to get the application form. After filling the form which was quite easy, it had to be submitted back to the college and they would let us know about the selection process in some days time. The merit list was posted online on the college website which showed who was selected. There were two merit lists which were released and my name was not there in any. So I had to go to the college and ask about the status of my admission. Since I had a high percentage of marks in my 12th boards, they had to accede to my requests and grant me a seat in the course I wanted. But this took a lot of time and it was literally a grueling test of patience of going to college every day and talking to the people concerned and was tired of asking them what the reason was for not selecting me. But eventually, the perseverance paid off.

The faculty of the college requires a lot of improvement. Being a professor in a reputable college, one must have a good command over English. But this was not the case. Some professors were very good and helped the students whenever possible. But most of the faculty was inconsiderate, lacking practical knowledge and just concerned on maintaining the decorum of the class rather than teaching something useful and also the knowledge about the subject was poor in the case of some professors.