My college experience

If a prospective student is reading this, I'll make things easy for you and say, don't waste your time. My overall experience was poor and I didn't get much out of my 3 years at SICSR.

Symbiosis has its own entrance examination called SET. Its pretty easy. I scored around 139/150. I chose this college because of its reputation and course options.

The course is inadequately structured to be very honest. They try and cover too many subjects in the span of 3 years i.e. 6 semesters. You get a basic / broad understanding of every subject but don't get the chance to master any single subject which leaves students pretty ill-equipped upon graduation. I graduated on top of my class winning the Chancellors Gold Medal at the end of 3 years and I felt it wasn't the best use of my time. There is scope for the course to offer a more in-depth experience.

No, it didn't! Not sure if anything has changed since I graduated though. Some real world experience during the 3 college years would have been helpful.

Roughly 2 IT Companies offered placements with starting salaries of Rs. 20,000. That was fairly poor in my opinion. The college could have surely done more to attract more and better companies. I chose not to apply for a job through college placements which was a great decision in hind sight.

The college hosts an annual festival. Only 3rd year students take part in the organisation. All students are free to attend and watch. The year we were to organise the festival, it was called off due to some riots in the city so I don't have much to say about this. The lack of support from the administration made this festival rather boring and badly organised.

The fee from 2006 - 2009 was exactly Rs. 45,000 a year which is very feasible and can almost be considered cheap. This fee is payable by students who joined SICSR on the regular lists. I believe there was a "special" quota for those who didn't make the lists. NRI students paid 2.5 to 3 lacs a year - a complete waste of money.

I was fortunate enough not the have to take any loans to afford this education. I am not aware of any scholarship facility.

The college attempted to focus more on academics (very poorly though) so no importance was given to extracurricular activities / sports / competitions. Self organised sporting tournaments were great but the college had nothing to do with those. The campus has 2 computer labs with terribly outdated systems - nothing to boast about.

There are no hostel facilities. There is a mess/cafeteria on campus which manages the basics rather well. Although the cafeteria looks very unkept, the food was surprisingly hygienic. I can't say it was very healthy though. There is a better cafeteria in the campus next door so we'd walk over to get lunch everyday.

There is no official alumni network. Other than a Facebook page and an email thread, there is no communication channel between alums. Interactions with students and classmates during college was fine. I did make some good friends during my time at SICSR.

Every semester (6 months) hosts 2 sets of exams, (1) Internals and (2) Externals. The internals accounted for 30% of the overall grade and Externals, 70%. 6 exams were usually spread over roughly 10 days with one 3-hour paper a day. The exams were not very challenging.

Since I scored well on the entrance test, my name was on the first admission list. Just had to fill out a simple form and pay the fee. Nothing to it really. However, others waited for the 2nd and 3rd lists after which they followed the same process. SICSR has an NRI quota too. This didn't require any admission test, just a payment approximately 5x the regular fee.

Its unfortunate to say but only a handful of teachers really knew what they were talking about. The rest would read out of a book or from a power point presentation. Students would often correct teachers. Sometimes teachers wouldn't show up, but no complaints about that! An overall rating would be 3/10. i.e. Poor.