Murali's Review On IIT Madras - Indian Institute Of Technology - [IITM], Chennai

Overall, an excellent institute with excellent facilities, wonderful faculty, talented peers and plenty of support infrastructure to excel academically and professionally. The four years are IIT are the best years of a student's life.

JEE. The computer science department at IIT Madras is one of the best in India. The campus is beautiful and offers a very peaceful and academic environment for students.

The course curriculum is excellent - encouraging peer learning and a fair mix of theoretical and practical elements of pedagogy. The first year curriculum is common for all branches and students start specializing in their areas starting from second year.

No, IIT Madras does not provide internship and there is no stipend. However, students are allowed to apply to companies for internship and spend around 3 months at companies of their choice. The stipend varies from company to company and could be anywhere between Rs. 10,000 and 100,000.

Job opportunities are plenty. Students who are interested in attending the placement season start preparing for the placement process at least one semester in advance. Almost all the major software companies visit the campus to recruit students and offer attractive packages both in India and abroad.

The biggest events on IIT Madras campus are Shaastra and Saarang. Shaastra is the tech festival of IIT Madras and Saarang is the cultural festival. Both are the biggest college fests for any undergraduate college in south India. Participants from all across the country come to the campus to attend these events.

The fee structure is feasible and depends on the students' family income. Students from poor families are given scholarships based on both merit and means. However, IIT had raised the fees quite a bit in the last few years. Even if the student fails to receive any scholarship, there are several banks on IIT campus that are willing to support the students by providing education loans.

Yes, scholarships are available to students based on both merit and means. Aditya Birla scholarship is one of the popular ones. Students coming from poor families are eligible for means scholarships. There are several nationalized banks that have education loan programs for IIT students. Overall, arranging for finance to complete the education is not very difficult.

Campus life is great. There are plenty of activities - at hostel level, institute level, city level and inter-IIT level. The campus has excellent sports facilities such as swimming, badminton, tennis, hockey, cricket, football, basketball. There are plenty of cultural organisations as well that arrange cultural events throughout the year.

Hostel facilities are average. Mess facilities are also average. Hostel rooms are small and there is just enough space for a single bed, a study table and a wardrobe. The maintenance of hostels is quite average as well and students are responsible for ensuring cleanliness of their rooms and common areas. Food is average, but there are plenty of joints outside the college campus.

The alumni network is strong. There is a mentor-ship program as well where recent graduates volunteer to mentor students and advise them on all aspects of academic and professional options available after graduation.

There are at least 3 exams in a semester for a subject. It varies from course to course, but typically 3 exams in a semester for a subject are conducted at a minimum. However, there are also project courses and grading for such courses is based on project submissions without any examinations.

JEE is the entrance exam to get into IIT Madras. The forms were available at nationalised banks like Canara Bank, SBI. The filled up forms are to sent to the IIT that is conducting the JEE test for the year. The entire process is smooth and well organised.

The faculty is wonderful with excellent academic track record. The faculty is friendly and pays attention to every single student. There is a lot of emphasis on learning by coding, so students are given several challenged coding exercises to complete in almost all courses.