The college life in IIT Kharagpur

During the application process for my master's, I had applied to the top seven IITs, and IISC as my GATE score was eligible for all the top institutes. I had received interview calls from all the applied institutions. However, I was interested to attend interviews for IISC and IIT Bombay, due to high competition, I was only able to reach the final round of interviews and couldn't get a master's admission. But, via a direct selection scheme at IIT Kgp, I received my master's seat where the minimum gate score for the application process was above 400/1000. The admission was purely based on the candidates with top gate scores among the application received. There were three tiers of admission release, the first one has the students who are given the course of choice, the second and third tiers are filled based on the leftover seats after the direct seats are declined by the candidates.

As I was interested in gaining in-depth knowledge in biotechnology and biochemical engineering after my graduation, I chose to do my master's degree at IIT Kgp. The course compiled both life science and engineering application covering both theoretical and practical knowledge. There were 22 students enrolled for the master's course and through out the department 14 faculties were present. All the faculties were Ph.D. holders and the teaching method was always orientated towards the practical knowledge they had gained throughout their experience. The course was monitored by two-term exams which were conducted on a paper and pen basis. The question was set to test the student's comprehending capacity of the course attended by various practical, theoretical and numerical questions.

Apart from the final year placements, the students appear for the internship programs offered by the companies. The time span for the internship is for two months, where companies from different sectors such as e-commerce, banking, hotel, IT industry, etc offer the internship to the students. Also, the students carry their internship program under the faculty of interest who guide them in assigning the project work. According to the departments, the project varies, most of the students opt for software-based projects on web development and application building. Apart from this, few students are potentially engaged in core projects under the guidance of the research scholars. They are eligible to design and execute their project of interest after giving proper objectives for the task to be performed.

IIT KGP has more than 90% of its bachelor's and master's placements, the students have their placement exams happening during the period of September to February. The final-year students are allowed to appear for the placement exams. There are over 200 companies that participate in the annual placement which include day-old recognized organizations and start-ups too. The placements have various designations like support engineers and executives, junior engineers, software engineers, android app developers, web developers, etc. Students have been also offered international jobs from countries like Taiwan, the USA, Germany, Japan, and Singapore. Companies like Microsoft, Taiwan semiconductors, uber, amazon are some of the top tier companies which offer jobs to students.

The program i was enrolled for four semester and the fees were paid per semester, which where approximately 40 to 50 thousand per semester. During my master's program, i was given teaching assistantship from IIT Kgp. I was asked to work for the research scholar in assisting their experiments and managing the lab records and chemicals.

The campus life is best at IIT Kgp, every year we have one spring fest which is celebrated as one of the important festivals for three days. It usually falls during the period between January last week to the 1st week of February. For participation, students from all over the country of different colleges, universities, and institutions come forward to showcase their extra-curricular talents. Apart from this, we have one technical fest named Kshitij, which is conducted during the initial weeks of January. Besides the social life, the institution has digitalized and well-furnished library for different sections which carry all the necessary books for any named curriculum. Also, most of the classrooms are air-conditioned with smart learning. Besides, the institute has its recognition for the sports field and running tracks. Moreover, students are exposed to different sets of groups and clubs like cheese, english, dramatic, and many more, which act as a stress reliever.

The hostel life plays an important phase for any student. The IIT Kgp provides the best place to stay where all the hostels which are called halls of residents are well maintained annually. The interesting aspect of the hostels at IIT Kgp is that they are named after freedom fighters. All the hostels provide quality meals covering different Indian cuisine, also they have a gym and sport section installed in every hostel. The registration of the rooms is done by the direct allocation by the hall of management. The rooms are of single, or double, or triple occupancy in nature. For any other accommodation apart from the hostel, there are guest houses which can provide proper facilities. Also, there are rooms and hotels available near the institutes.