Larina Fernandez's Review On TISS Tata Institute Of Social Sciences, Mumbai

TISS NET - National Entrance Test for admission in TISS. TISS is India's best institute in social sciences. The course structure which is a mix of both classroom learning and field exposure was an added advantage.

The course structure mainly concentrates on Disaster Management from a social perspective. Our final semester in college is completely dedicated to research as our department expects us to come up with quality dissertations. There are also papers on Remote Sensing and GIS in Disaster Studies but the technical aspects still needs to be developed.

Yes, A compulsory internship in the 3rd semester. Stipend is non-mandatory. It totally depends on the organisations that come for recruitment. Mainly we have interned with state disaster management authorities, UN projects under state authorities and NGOs like AIDMI, ANANDI, SEEDS and TARU.

There is a Central Placement Committee which caters to ensuring placement of all students in TISS. We also have a Department Placement Committee who works towards bringing companies and organisations that work purely in the humanitarian sector working towards disaster reduction, recovery, preparedness and others.

Expensive for a college providing specialising in social sciences. My fees for the two years came around 2 - 2.5 lakhs. This includes mainly hostel, mess, tuition fees, exam fees, computer etc. Moreover, first year students are not provided hostel accomodation so they are supposed to rent a flat or pg outside. Average monthly rent comes around 8000.

We give exams at the end of every semester. However it also completely depends on the professor as to whether he wants to take an exam or an assignment. Otherwise, the general pattern is as follows: 50% exam and 50% assignment. However, this is completely a teacher's call.

Firstly, you have to clear the TISSNET - National Entrance Test which is normally conducted in Dec-Jan every year. This is more like a prelims. Once you clear the prelims (decided on the basis of a cut-off) you then move to the second and final level of clearing the admission process - this includes a detailed written exam and an interview.

Our faculty hails from different distinguished backgrounds. They are the backbone our department. Our professors have immense experience in the field which had benefited our learning a lot. Most of them have a Ph.D from distinguished universities abroad and are engaged in driving and leading various government and international projects.