My journey at CUSAT: A students perspective

Cusats new 2023 Btech scheme is well updated with new world technologies and all. In first year everyone has to study basics of programming and also from second year students can take minor from other departments too. Cusat have included topics like Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Neural Networks, MEMS and NEMS etc in their new syllabus which I guess is a good this for students considering the global change and AI awakening. And when it come to frequency of exams we do have two internals for a subject and an external at the end of the semester which are mandatory. Some faculties also does assignment test for internal assesments.

From 6th semester onwards students can sit in placement. Many companies like Google, IBM, CISCO, TCS, Accenture, TATA ELXSI, AIR INDIA, Shell, Polycab had visited cusat in previous year. CS/EC/IT have same placement cell hence these students appear together for placement in which most jobs are offered in IT sector. Due to this EC students do not get much offer from core electronic companies. Most of EC students end up in IT sector. SFE has the best placement record in cusat with almost 100% placement every year where even offer are made from public sectors. Companies like BHEL, Coal India etc had history of hiring cusat's SFE graduates. The placement statistics of EE/ME/CE are quite less comparing to other branches eventhough the ones with good skillsets are placed. Personally as an EC student I'm not planning to sit in placements and is planning to do my master's from an IIT/NIT or overseas.

Seat categories: State Merit, All India Merit, SC/ST/OEC, NRI Seats. Fee Structure: 1.Tution Fee: --State Merit ~50k per year --All India Merit ~96k per year --NRI ~128k per year --SC/ST/OEC students are excempted from paying tution fees. 2.Other fees(Library fee, Lab fee, Exam fee, Misc fee..) --State Merit ~10k per year --All India Merit ~15k per year --NRI ~15k per year --SC/ST/OEC ~500 per year SC/ST/OEC student are excempted from paying tution fees and also students of some other categories with less income can also avail some government scholarships(Egrantz..)

Soe, cusat has an annual techfest DHISHNA where the lot events and proshows are done. Personally Dhishna times gave me some good memories. Cusat has a large univeristy library where thousands of books and journals are available in which students have free access too. Other library is also present in Soe. Most classroom here are equipped with either smartboards or projector. When it comes to sports the university ground is under maintenance therefore playing sports like cricket, football and athletics is quite of a hastle till the works are completed. Eventhough other games like basketball, volletball etc can be plated. There is also a campus amenity centre with an indoor stadium, a gym and various other amenities like FABLAB etc. Cusat has a wide range of clubs like the iconic Mars Rover team Horizon which was ranked 17th overall and 1st in India in the European Rover Challenge happened in Poland later this year. Horizon also did well in last year too. There are other technical clubs like Tinkerhub, IEEE, GDSC etc which are very active will various events and all. An annual hackathon called Make-a-ton is conducted every year where student of other colleges from various other states are appeared. There is a club called SEDS cusat for space lovers and also there is a TEDxCUSAT club.

I also wrote KEAM exam along with CUSAT in which I was able to secure a rank well enough to get Mechanical Engineering in CET, Trivandrum which I got in allotment. But since my mind was already set to take ECE as my degree due to my interest and passion for electronics and computers. And yes I do recomment CUSAT to everyone. To join CUSAT you have to write the CUSAT CAT entrance exams and then the seat are allotted based on the rank you earn in the entrance examinations. And usually a rank around 1k can get you CS, 1.5k can get you ECE and SFE, 2k can get you IT, 3.5k can get you EE and 7k can get you ME and CE.

There are some faculties who stand out from the rest when it comes to their student teacher interacton an teaching methods. As an ECE student Dr. Binu Paul and Dr. Rekha K James were few of the best I seen. There are other good faculties like Dr. Mridula, Dr. Deepa Sankar and many other who are great. In ECE core subjects the papers are usally tough where we had history in more than half the class failing in exams like Network Theory, Digial Signal Processing etc but most of them will still find a way to pass in the external exams.