IISER Mohali : A potential candidate

I like the overall curriculum , the laboratory exposure from the first year itself provides a really good exposure , the schedule is good as well , it is not hectic and you get time to develope other skills apart from curriculum. You can get engaged with short and long time project while being in your bachelors degree itself . Though there are two mid semester and one end semester exams in each semester and the difficulty level varies from professor to professor thus we have relative grading.

You can contact various professors for internship opportunities. These are research opportunities hench will give you exposure to experimental and theoretical analysis. These can be free and paid depending on the professor and program through which you get into the internship.

The tuition fees is around 50000 RS per semester and mess fees is around 15000 RS for GEN candidate, the hostel fee is included in the tuition fees and the increase per year isn't too drastic. But you get reduction if you belong to SC, ST or have financial lacking. College offers INSPIRE scholarship to those first year students who got under 10000 AIR in JEE Advanced or are in top 1% in board exams that year. INSPIRE gets you a scholarship of 5000 per month for 5 years along with extra 20000 for internships in other institutes or facilities. Institute also provide scholarship based on Income and CPI from second year onwards. You can pursue PhD after completion of the degree and get into academic , can join R&D industry etc.

The overall campus life is fun and enjoyable along with gaining knowledge you get to do a lot of club and cultural activity . There are numerous Academic as well as other clubs including Literature and debate , art and craft , music etc. The Library is one of the best libraries out their in the country which provides thousands of online and offline books, articles, journals to read. The is an annual cultural fest (IICM) played among various IISER's, NISER and IISc as well as an annual sports fest (IISM) played among the same. It gives huge exposure and experience participating in them. Except these there is also the presence of NSS(National Service Scheme) and BS&G(Bharat Scouts and Guides) which holds various indoor and outdoor activities, social welfare programs etc. And student run clubs like Shwamitra(A dog care club) also exists.

It is mandatory for a BS-MS student to live in hostel. The hostels are pretty facilitated with two students living in each room with one provided cupboard, one fan, two sockets, one tube light, one study lamp, one study table, one chair and two beds. Although it is facilitated the rooms are relatively small for two people as it meant for only one while construction and college is working on providing new hostels for the same reason. The food quality here is quite nice as there is a student run mess working inside the campus, so students can decide the menu and can keep an eye on quality of the food. You get a nonveg option in dinner and sometimes in breakfast as well, you get milk/tea/coffee every morning and you get an option of choosing bread , butter and jam instead of provided breakfast. Hostel registration proceeds side by side with academic registration.

You are eligible for the course either via IAT(IISER Aptitude test) or JEE Advanced , for JEE Advanced you have to clear the cutoff of JEE Mains . Forms for JEE Mains releases around between December and April and for IAT around March or April . College gives reservation based on Caste(OBC,SC,ST) or Income(EWS) . Caste based reservation also gets you fee reduction . JEE Mains happens twice a year and JEE Advanced one time after clearing any one of the previous JEE Mains exam that year where as IAT happens only once during a year . Both JEE Advanced and IAT grant you two attempts in your lifetime . One while being in 12th and one in the next year . JEE Advanced is relatively harder than IAT and IAT's difficulty level lies around JEE Mains or between JEE Mains and JEE advanced . You have 3 subjects in JEE Advanced exam (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics) whereas IAT have 4 (previous three along with Biology) . History and Social science(HSS) should be removed from the curriculum