Good college to explore academic interests.

Unfortunately, I and many other students felt that the administration is sometimes not able to handle issues pertaining to the engineering school very well. They clubbed up the issues together with other schools in the university (humanities, sciences, etc) and viewed them as a whole, which was not in the best interests of the school of engineering which has the highest number of students in any one school. But I hope with time, the administration is able to better understand these issues and handle them appropriately.

AIEEE, AIR 72000 odd. I chose Tezpur University as it was the only central university where I was getting the option of studying Computer Science. I wanted to study Computer Science as I was always interested in theoretical computation and mathematical formulations from school. Besides, it was the best engineering department in Tezpur University in terms of strength of faculty members, at least when I was seeking admission.

The Computer Science and Engineering department is the best department in Tezpur University. This is mostly due to better quality of professors present in the department compared to other departments, which in turn attacts smart students and reinforces the strength of the department. There is not a huge amount of effort required in terms of assignments, compared to some of the best universities in India (like the IITs). The disadvantage is that students are perhaps not as competent in programming as compared to those from IITs. But the advantage is that students get a bit more time and flexibility to explore their research interests more. There is a lot of freedom in what students want to work on, and its completely up to the student as to how much he/she can extract out of the experience.

We had unpaid internships when I was there. My overall experience was good, where I got to chose what I wanted to work on, and choose the professor accordingly.

Placement opportunities are improving every day. Being a new college, the first 1 or 2 batches did not have very good placement statistics. But we were the third batch, and ours was a bit better than the previous 2 batches. Now the newer batches have much better placement records from what I hear from my juniors.

The flagship event in Tezpur University is the annual tech-fest called TechXetra. It is the second biggest one in the North-East region in terms of footfall, after IIT Guwahati. Apart from several technical competitions and workshops, the cultural aspect is very good too. The annual metal music festival called Metanoia is organised during TechXetra every year, where some Indian metal band is invited to headline, and also a metal band competition is organised where artists from the region exhibit their talents.

Tezpur University is one of the least expensive institutes for technical education in the country. When I was there, the tuition fee for a semester was merely Rs 9500-11,500. Maybe they have increased it a bit now, but still, it is much cheaper than most Indian engineering institutes.

Yes, there are some AICTE and other government scholarships given out to meritorious students. For example, I know of one when I was there where any student getting 85% or above marks in Class XII is given a one time scholarship of Rs 40,000. Then, there is also one given out to the class topper, where the tuition fee of the topper from every branch in a semester is waived off for the next semester. Then there were also some minority scholarships available, which I only know of as some of my Muslim friends availed them.

Campus life is pretty vibrant in terms of the different people you get to meet and the various activities and sports that you can play. There are 4-5 restaurants and cafeterias in the campus, which are good enough in number as the campus is not too huge. In terms of gender ratio, I think it is particularly worth mentioning that Tezpur University is one of the better universities in the country. Instead of the usual 1:10 ratio of girls is to boys in other engineering colleges, in Tezpur University it was about 1:5 in my batch. The sports and gym facilities are excellent, second only to the IITs perhaps, if at all, in my experience. There is a healthy robotics society in the campus that was founded by a group of 5-6 students from my batch, of which I was one. The subsequent batches have taken quite a liking to robotics events and regularly participate in robotics competitions actively in the region, from what I hear.

The hostels are very good in terms of facilities, well built spacious rooms with good lighting and other amenities. There are mini kiosks in each hostel too, which come in handy for quick snacks or tea. The mess food, however, is not too great generally, as is the case in most hostels anywhere. However, considering the hostel fee is only Rs 1100 per month including food and rent, there is not too much to complain.

Since the engineering school in the university is quite new (the first batch got admitted only in 2006), the alumni network does not have a huge presence yet. However, it is rapidly gaining momentum with each passing year. When I went to Bangalore to work upon graduation, I saw how closely knit the small but ever growing community of Tezpur University graduates is there. I am sure that it is not very long before our alumni network becomes quite strong not only in India but also abroad.

Exams and labs were not very frequent. Very few courses had continuous evaluation, where there are 4-5 exams in the course. Most courses either had 2 exams (one mid-term and one end-term), or had an exam and a course project. As for labs, I avoided courses that had too many labs, as I was not too interested in experiments. But even those that did have labs, most in the department were programming labs, and only 2-3 courses in my entire 4 years had an actual lab for conducting experiments, which were mostly in first year, and were from the Electronics and Communication Engineering department.

I got admission through central counselling for AIEEE. Once I got the seat, the process of taking admission in the college was pretty straightforward, albeit a bit traditional where we had to fill up forms by hand in counters instead of everything done online.

As I said, the quality of professors present in the computer science and engineering department are much better compared to those from other departments. It was a new college when I joined, so maybe now as the university is maturing, they are able to attract and retain better professors in other departments too.