A review of IIT Kanpur by Shamit Kamble

The course curriculum gets updated periodically every decade and my course focuses on exploiting materials to enhance the properties of various objects and systems in engineering. Our course gives a student and all-rounded exposure for pursuing an Mtech or PhD in this field. The professors in the MSE Department are really helpful and go out of their way to guide us during our time here.

The internship drive starts at the beginning of the 3rd year for the UGs and we get lucrative internship opportunities at companies like American Express, Citi Bank, Barclays, JPM in the analytics profile. The major recruiters in the software profile are Oracle, Microsoft and Optiver.

The placements opportunities offered by the Students Placement Office (SPO) of IIT Kanpur is one of the best in the country with big companies visiting for multiple profiles, you have the chance to grab a good package at major MNCs. For the Quantitative analyst profile, Optiver, Jane Street regularly visit the campus and offer the highest package above 1 crore per annum. The average package of the institute is around 15 LPA this year and around 80% of the students who applied at the SPO were placed.

There is no current hike in the tution fee but the overall cost of a UG program is regarded to be high for a general category student. The complete cost of accomodation and messing for the 4 years is approx. INR 432,000. I'm about to undertake the internship drive conducted by the placement office in my 5th semester which will be after the summers.

The campus life here has been brimming with euphoria until now. I was involved in organising the Technical fest here which is named Techkriti. The cultural fest is Antaragni and the sports fest is Udghosh. The P.K. Kelkar Library of IIT Kanpur is one of the best in Indian colleges with a huge collection of all kinds of books. The lecture halls are equipped with digital screens and modern sound systems. There is a community welfare cell that I am a part of that promotes inclusivity and togetherness among the students.

We get a triple sharing room in the sophomore year with a spacious room for the three of us which promotes a bonding that lasts for a lifetime! In the first year, there are double and triple sharing rooms and in the third year, we get a double sharing room followed by a single room in the final year. The mess food is exceptional here and hostel registration process is quite straightforward.

The admission process to the IITs comprises of clearing JEE Main and Advanced with a good score and then participating in the JoSAA counselling and once you have accepted a seat if you get any then you have to pay the acceptance fees and the rest is done by your institute. I belong to the SC category so I get 100% tuition fee waiver for my course.

The faculty of all the departments here are highly qualified with all of them having a PhD and post doctoral experience. The faculty to student ratio is around 1:15 at the institute level (not the department level). The course teachers have office hours meant for doubt resolution and apart from that there are tutorials which are taken by the PhD students or TAs of the course. Many of the department compulsory courses include visits to the cutting edge labs of the department which inculcates hands on experience in that particular course.