The best 4 years of my life

The college management was good in controlling ragging issues for the 1st year students. They always used to make sure that these students are never hurt/harassed beyond a limit. It always used to be on the safe side. No harm. This was taken care of in hostel as well. Overall I would say that my 4 years in VAST was really great. When I look back I feel that after my college days, I have never enjoyed life. It was eventful, crazy and memorable.

I had taken AIEEE and I don't remember my score exactly. But I do remember that my rank among all the candidates was 19000 something like that. I had taken this exam from Dubai after completing my 12th in the year 2007. I had opted for this college because I knew some of the faculty there. Also I had heard about the infrastructure and other facilities there and was impressed by all that. Also I had heard that the college hostel food was good in all the ways and these are the reasons why I had opted for VAST.

Course curriculum was really tough. I had opted for ECE and so the circuits and graphs and all used to drive me crazy. The electives I had opted were Television engineering, Biomedical instrumentation in 7th semester and Microwave devices in the 8th semester. It used to be really confusing. Among these the easiest was Biomedical instrumentation because it was simple to understand and also a little different from other subjects we were learning that time. So it never confused me. The other 2 were core subjects which were like extensions of what we had learned in the previous semesters.

No. My college never provided any such internship opportunities. So here I don't have anything much to share.

When I had joined this college, the placements were all poor. Very few companies used to come to our college as it had started only 4-5 years before I had joined. It wasn't reputed at that time. But when it was time for me to leave college, things improved and more companies started coming for recruiting candidates- like Infosys, TCS, Tata Elxi, UST Global etc. The packages they had offered was something like 20000 to 25000 a month. I was placed with UST Global and they had offered me 22000 a month initially.

We used to have Annual day function and also college cultural & sports competitions every year. It used to be really grand with lot of music, dance, drama and all. Especially the cultural & sports competition used to be a 1 week event were I used to participate in outdoor as well as indoor competitions. There used to be both individual as well as group category for this. Then we used to have IEEE paper presentation and other events by them. Once in a year there used to be technical exhibitions where each branch used to participate as a separate team- like ECE, CSE and so on. It used to be a lot of fun as it was mainly based on team work and we used to gain knowledge also while participating.

The fees structure used to be feasible. I feel even though I was staying in the college hostel, the total fees every month used to be really less. I have never heard any one in my batch complaining about the fees and also if you have had good percentages in your 12th, then you can study on a scholarship with lesser fees compared to the other students. The management was always supportive of intelligent students and their expenses.

I have never heard of any loan facility there in my college. They used to provide scholarships for poor students like these students never had to pay any fees based on their finance.

In most of the branches except mechanical, girls used to be in more number than the boys. Especially for ECE. Since this college was located in Kerala the students who used to study there were all from Kerala itself. There was no one from other parts of India or even abroad studying there. So whatever events used to happen at college/hostel used to be common for all the students. There was never any specific kind of event/workshop held there with respect to ethnicity, religion, race, gender and all.

Hostel facility used to be really good. There was power back up and all provided which was not a common thing in other hostels at that time. Also the food they used to provide was really hygienic and healthy. There used to be varieties every day and we could take unlimited quantity of food which was another point of differentiation from other hostels.

Alumni network is really good because every year in December get together is conducted for all the pass out batches. Even though there are social networks which lets us keep in touch with each other, meeting everyone in person deepens the relationships. Regarding seniors some of them used to be really helpful. They used to lent us their previous year books and also sometimes take sessions on their experiences at college and how to tackle issues. They used to advise us and I remember that for our mini project there were a group of seniors who had assisted us technically. They also gave us an idea on how to prepare the report and related things.

The exams were always in a way that we felt relaxed. I t was not very frequent. We used to have gap and time to relax as well. Usually we used to have 1 set of lab exams and 3 sets of written exams in 6 months. This was fine because it used to help us to keep in touch with the topics and remember things for the main exam. Also one good thing about the main exam was that, if you have passed your lab exams, then you would get a moderation for written exams for getting a pass in that also.

The faculty there were fine. I had felt many times that the faculty needed to be more experienced. Most of the teachers were very young- ones who had completed their engineering 1 or 2 years back. So they were all new to the teaching profession and so that made some of the subjects a bit difficult for us. Especially the core subjects. But still I would say that they were all friendly as they could connect more with us than the senior teachers due to the age similarity.