An Honest review of PICT

I chose Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering because of 4 main reasons : 1. ENTC gives scope for me to give government job exams and get hired for one. 2. We all know that there is going to be an electronics boom coming up in few years in India, so it is always nice to get what is coming into the trend. 3. I have primarily enjoyed leaning Physics and Astrophysics and by this way, I get to stay connected with it and also the fact that I can do postgrad abroad and still have a very good research oriented career in physics. 4. I am planning on getting a job in IT field and after second year, most of the subjects in ENTC department are related to coding, which is great. The old curriculum wasn't up to date and was very irrelevant of SPPU, but since PICT has become autonomous and has its own courses, the courses have become quite relevant to the current industry standards, coupled with the fact that after second year there are majorly coding subjects, make you relevant for both Software and Hardware industries.

The Training and Placement cell provides internships to students. The stipend varies, but the companies are always, majority of times, well-known national and multinational corporations. The minimum stipend, though is Rs 10,000/- per month, while the highest stipend recieved was Rs 1,00,000/- per month. The roles are generally of Software Engineering Intern. The projects and outcomes, though, vary from role-to-role.

PICT is known for its placement record, so talking about it more. In the academic year AY 2023-24, even though a massive recession hit the IT industry, PICT students held off and held off quite well. 706 people out of 760 enrolled got placed into a company which makes 92.89% placement. Rest were placed off-campus. The average package CTC was 13.01LPA while the median package CTC was 10.11 LPA. Around 110 companies visited the campus. The hghest package was CTC 47.28 LPA provided by Adobe for Software Engineer role. I am planning on getting placed in a multinational company with a good pay package or do higher studies in physics.

I paid Rs 91,573/- for the academic year AY 2024-25 for my second year. Here is the comprehensive breakdown of the fees for the First Year B.Tech students coming into the college for the academic year AY 2024-25 : The tution fees are Rs 90,000/-, the development fees are Rs 13,500/-, which makes the total fees come out to Rs 1,03,500/- for general category students. These fees are concessed based on the category of the students. This concession is according to the guidelines set by the government of Maharashtra. The other fees include Rs 5000/- as deposit and Rs 1000/- fee per semester as exam fees. There is a MahaDBT scholarship provided by the government of Maharashtra to the students who get admitted into the engineering college via the CAP rounds. In this scholarship, the entire tution fees are concessed for the student. There are other scholarships as well provided by some private firms as well as the government and the college keeps notifying students of them along with all the necessary information.

There are clubs divided into 2 parts : Technical clubs and non technical clubs. The technical clubs include PICT ACM Student Chapter (PASC), PICT IEEE Student Branch (PISB), PICT CSI Student Branch (PCSB), GameDevUtopia (GDU), PICT Coders League (PCL), PICT Cybercell (PCC), PICT Robotics Club, and, PICT Automobile Club (PAC). The non tech clubs include Pictoreal, Entrepreneurship Development Club (EDC), TEDxPICT Club, PICT MUN, PICT Nakshatra, PICT Finance Society (PFiSoc), Debate Society (DEBSOC), PICT NSS, PICT Civil Services Club (PSAC). Almost every club has its own festival which happens around February-March. PICT also has a technical and non technical festivals (INC and Addiction respectively). The library is quite vast with many types of books available for one's disposal. The library is always filled with students studying, which is a testament to the library's quality. There is a small multipurpose ground in the campus for sports. There is also a Table Tennis hall and a gym. The classrooms are well equipped with proper projectors and monitors.

I applied and got admitted into Vishwakarma Institute of Technology - B.Tech in Computer Science. I chose PICT over VIT because of many factors : placements and internship opportunities, coding culture, campus life and overall studies. PICT is better in almost every aspect than VIT except some college life and syllabus strictness. Yes, I applied to COEP and VJTI but didn't get expected branch due to less marks in my JEE Mains. I also got rejected by IIST, IITs, RGIPT, BITS because I got less than 75% in my boards which didn't satisfy the eligibility criteria. I got into PICT by JEE Mains. The last cutoff for JEE Mains is 97.5 %ile to get ENTC in PICT. You require 99%ile+ in MHT-CET to get into PICT.

The faculty-student ratio is 1:80 for almost every subject. The faculties are pretty much approachable outside the work hours. The faculty-student relationship, though, is quite subjective, based on how the student is performing in the class. But as a student myself, I advise you not to strain any kind of relationship with the faculties as it may have adverse effects on your academics. For every semerster, there is an in-semester exam of 30 marks each and end-semester exam of 70 marks each. Apart from this, there are internals and term work for first year and term work and practicals from second year. The insems and the endsem exams are quite straightforward, 90% of entire paper being repeated from the past year papers. But the real deal are the practical exams as there is almost no one with a back(fail) in theory but back in practical is quite common. The practical exams are hard if you didn't pay attention during the laboratory sessions. The old curriculum of SPPU was outdated, but the new curriculum introduced by autonomous PICT to the first year students is pretty relevant as far as the industry standards are concernced. I am in Electronics and Telecommunication department, which is the strictest department of the college. The faculties are strict and the course is also comparatively tough.

You will not find much of nightlife around the campus as the gates of college close at 10PM sharp everyday. The gym closes by 8PM and the canteen closes by 9PM. The library and public area remains open until 12AM. The hostel in-times are also 10PM. The only legible area where people can hangout is the main road of the college. The outside area of college is also relatively safe than not. But after 12AM, the locality may be unsafe due to alcoholism in public.