My Experience as UG student at SCS Autonomous College, Puri, Odisha

In terms of teaching, they teach you well. Ofc like any other educational institution you may find some teachers "boring but at the end it's all about how well you as a student are able to grasp the subject matter. Once you've studied psychology you will get to know a lot about people. It paves a new path to discovering yourself. You will want to know the hows and whys of human behaviour. It gives you a whole new perspective of the world. One thing that I'd suggest is that students must be guided and given more opportunities for doing projects and dissertations. Students do not get any experience in internships. Which I think should be included in the curriculum as well. The exams are pretty much held after the syllabus has been completed. There were a few times where the professors and to rush because the time given for one semester was not enough due to various reasons. Mid-sems (internal) exams are held mostly after 2-3 months of the commencement of the new semester and end-semester exams are held 1 or 1 and half month after the mid-sems.

At the time of admission you need to pay somewhere around 900-1200 rupees depending on your reservation facilities. Every semester you have to pay examination fees and since psychology is a practical subject you're ought to pay more than other non-practical subjects. It's 400 rupees extra per practical in addition to the number of papers you will be appearing. So approximately you will be paying around 3200 per semester. The examination fees is lesser than unreserved male students than that of reserved males and females belonging to all categories. So an estimated cost of about Rs.18000 can be made for 3 years. As for scholarships, there are numerous scholarships available for students under various schemes introduced by the state government. But most of them have the criteria of annual family income not exceeding a certain amount. Like for example if your family earns more than 800000 then you might not be eligible to apply for the scholarship. There is one scholarship that is available to all students regardless of their gender or category i.e. Laptop DBT scheme. A financial assistance of Rs. 30000 is provided to students who have scored above 70% (for reserved candidates) in their +2 and above 75% for unreserved candidates. Eligibility criteria to apply for this is that you must have completed your +2 under CHSE board.

The infrastructure is just the same as any other government college in Odisha. Campus is not that big. It's almost the same like regular government colleges. There is a library where you can find any book relevant to your course of study but sometimes they do run out books so you'd have to wait for the person who took the book to return. Apart from that every department has their own libraries. You can borrow books from their as well. In terms of extra curricular activities, you get opportunities to participate in many literary, sports and art competitions. These are mostly held the end of each academic sessions. Apart from these you may have other competitions too. These are often held unofficially in the college. There was no student run club or portals during my UG years.

My first preference was SCS but since the system makes you add other colleges so I had also applied to Government Women's College and Private Women's College. Since my I got into my first preferred college, the admission to other colleges got cancelled automatically. So I didn't have any other choice left. Once you've been accepted, they'll send you an intimation letter via email or on the portal. They'll give you a date on which you need to be present along with the documents mentioned. Once you're done with the payment you will officially receive your college roll number.

The faculty-to-student ratio is very low. There are both UG & PG students in the department and in addition to that there are UG second year elective classes as well. So it put tremendous load on the professors' shoulders. Even though the faculty is very small, they are very kind, helpful and supportive. If you have any problem, be it personal or academic they are all ears. There are total 6 semesters (2 in each year). Every semester the exams are divided into 2 parts: mid-sem (15 marks) and end semester (60 marks). And the rest 25 marks are for practical exam. 5 for writing practical record, 5 for viva and 10 for written. The mid semesters are pretty easy if you're clear with basics of the current core paper that's being taught. And for the end semester, you need to work harder. You need to score atleast above 40 out of 100 in order to pass the exam. In my batch around 6-7 students got backlogs in some papers. These were the students who didn't attend classes regularly or were not that serious about continuing their studies after graduation. The course curriculum is very relevant as the field of psychology is expanding more and more as time passes. The syllabus consists of cores like any other UG college in India. It's almost the same.

There were no GD or interview foer admission. The entire process of admission was done on the basis of merit. You get admission in the colllege based on your marks/percentage secured in your 10th and 12th.

There is no canteen inside the campus but you can find a lot of bakeries, cafes, food stalls, restaurants around the college. The nightlife around the college is safe as the food stalls still keep running until 9-10 or sometimes even much later. So it's lively. Girls hostel buildings are located inside the college campus whereas the boys hostel buildings are outside the campus but adjacent to the boundaries of the college. Hostel timings are quite strict, for winters it's limit is 5:30 pm and for summers it's 7 pm I guess. As I wasn't a hosteler I can't be sure of the exact timings.