Student life at IISER Mohali

The course curriculum is very nice, as it is a national level institute of the government. It is excellent for people who want to pursue research. There are excellent faculties that encourage people to take up research. The degree is recognized worldwide. I personally don't think the frequency and timing of exams needs any improvement. The difficulty level is also not very high.

As far as the internships are concerned, we are free to do internship anywhere in the world, in our summer or winter breaks, provided that we get the prior approval from that professor under whom we are trying to do the internship. For that, we have to mail them expressing our interest in doing internship under them, attach our cv and then it is upto them if they reply to our mail, or if they like our cv and agree to provide internship under them.

The fee for a semester is approx 50,000, except for the first semester which is approx 60,000. Fee doesn’t increase much, as it is a government institute. For example, the fee of my second semester was 49,304. It included convocation fee (2000), alumni fee (1000), tuition fee (40,400), examination fee (720), student amenities (720), gym/sports (288), lab contingency (576), hostel seat rent (2,880), and electricity and water fee (720). The fee is same for all students. There are 2 types of scholarship opportunities available for students, the INSPIRE scholarship scheme and the merit-cum-means scholarship scheme.

The annual festival is called insomnia, which usually happens in October. Other than that, many festivals are celebrated, as students come here from all over the country for their studies. There are a lot of books and journals available in the library, which can also be issued. Apart from the wi-fi facility all over the campus, classrooms have a big blackboard, a big digital touchscreen (only in the bigger classrooms), two screens and two projectors on either sides of the room and a sound system with speakers. There are plenty of sports and extracurriculars present on the campus and anyone is free to participate. There are many clubs, like darpan(drama club), itehad(dance club), aria(music club), curie(chemistry club), phi@i(physics club), bdf(biology club), adaa(fashion club), lds(literature & debates), rang(art club), astronomy club, lumeire(photography club), miles(running club), turing(programming club), infinity(maths club), robotics club, movie club, ambiente(nature club), etc.

Each room has its own balcony. We were provided a room in sharing, so the room had two beds, two mattresses, two study tables, two chairs and two cupboards. Although the mattresses were not provided to the new batch that came in 2024 this year. The food quality is generally good in both the messes, the student run mess and the tendered mess. Even if you don't like both of them, you have other options, such as canteens and a dhaba inside the campus. The campus is completely residential, so it is compulsory for us to stay in the hostel, with an exception for phd students who have an option of staying outside as well. So the registration process for hostel is done along with the admission process.

I chose this college over the other colleges that I applied to, because it is a national level institute that is excellent in academics, and a boon for people who want to do research. Also, it was nearest to my home than the other colleges. The admission process of IISER Mohali is through 3 channels - JEE-Advanced channel, KVPY channel and IAT channel. Most of the students come through the IAT channel, in which there is a computer based test consisting of Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics. Then according to the students' marks, the merit list is prepared after which the counseling process takes place jointly for all the IISERs in the country. For the detailed cutoffs, you can visit the website of iiser admission. The overall admission experience was pretty good. Apart from IISER, I had applied for PAU Ludhiana BSc Hons Agriculture and PGI Chandigarh Nursing and Paramedical. I got admission in all of them but as I wanted to do research, I chose IISER Mohali over the others.

There are around 200 faculty members in the institute. Well, the students in each year of BS-MS dual degree program are around 260-270 approx. The faculty to student relationship is generally nice, but it depends on the nature of both. According to my personal experience, all the faculties I met have been very nice and supportive. As for the exams, we have mid semester 1 exams, mid semester 2 exams and end semester exams, except for the first semester only when there are only 1 mid semester exams. The exams are usually easy, depends if you've studied or not and sometimes also on the professor's mood when they are making the question paper. The course curriculum is very good, and it has relative grading, in which the grades are given according to the marks of the students in that course, i.e., the grade boundaries are not fixed, they are relative to students' marks.