A Comprehensive Guide to the IISERBPR Campus

The curriculums are research based, i.e., they prepare one well for a career in academia. Primarily, the depth of the fields in particular influenced me to take up courses, where they offer quite a bit more than typical application based engineering courses. The labs are excellent, and a pretty good introduction to someone who would like to conduct reserach in laboratories. A lot of people go for PHDs after this course, which is a natural continuation of the rigor inculcated. I pretty much have no complaints about the teaching methods, except they could start offering some more subjects, which is understandable since the college is pretty young. The exams are of normal difficulty I'd say, not too hard that you get completely stumped on receiving the question papers, and not too easy either where you can just breeze through without studying a line. The exam frequency is reasonable too, that being two exams per semester (with optional mid-sem omission for low-credit courses), though the exam schedule itself can be pretty stressful.

There are mainly research internships available, with professors taking undergraduates to assist them in their research work. These internships are typically ones without any stipend, and internship work is mostly laboratory work, though reading projects exist too.

The year-wise fees are Rs 108400 (two semesters), the tution fee being Rs 36700, registration being Rs 1500, examination fees being 2000, cultural activity fees being 1500, library usage fees being 1500, lab and computer fees being 2000, amenities fees being 2000, gym and sports fees being 2000, hostel rent being 3000 and electricity, water and maintenance fees being 2000. The entire program is a five year BS-MS course with ten semesters, the first one costing Rs 61200 and all the successive ones costing Rs 54200. As of now, the course fees are consistent with time.

There is the annual fest, Kyrat, held around March, which is the annual fest of the college. Other than that, fests are held for a lot of festvals like Agomoni, Diwali, Onam, Bihu, Ganesh Chaturthi, Pongal, etc., mostly held around September-November. Books and journals are pretty accessible within the college, and subscriptions to a lot of scientific journals are available. The classrooms are all equipped with air conditioning, projectors, speakers which all function as desired and are used regularly. There are sports coaches and courts for games like Football, Kho-Kho, Basketball, Badmintion and Volleyball, along with a synthetic track at the sports complex. There are cultural and scientific clubs, each pertaining to a specific subject or craft, and all in all, they are run pretty well, with the science clubs organising talks every so often, and club events being ubiquitous from all such clubs.

Each room is provided with an almirah, a chair, a table and a bed along with cloth hooks. The double rooms (for first year students) are pretty spacious, and the single rooms are pretty good too. The meal quality varies from time to time. It is generally good, sometimes tolerable, sometimes not the best. The menu overall is nice and balanced, though lacking in protein. The hostel fees is 3000, so pretty affordable, and the washrooms are nice and clean, with drinking water facilities and wasging machines. The registration for hostels is done alongwith the course registration itself.

I applied for St. Pauls' College in Kolkata and Presidency University and I was selcted in their lists. I was thinking of taking a drop for applying to ISI, but my IAT results were good enough to get me placed here. Since I am interested in mathematics research, and this college was pretty close to West Bengal, I chose it since IISERS already have a good repuations for being elite for research in India. While Presidency could have been good for Mathematics, I only managed to get a seat in Physics there instead, and since the first two years of IISER have multi-discliplinary studies, I decided to join lest I change my opinion on my majors later. The admission for this college is primarily done by the IAT exams, which is the preferred way. Students can also apply via JEE Advanced, but this pathway is not as popular. When I was selected, only droppers upto first year and recent high school graduates could apply. Several rounds of admissions are held, where there is a cutoff rank for getting into any of the IISERS. The lowest it went arounf my time was around rank 3000. The admission is pretty much completed in a single day, and while long, is conducted more or less swiftly.

The faculty to student ratio is pretty good here. It depends on the departments too. Mathematics department almost has a 1:1 ratio while in biology it is more like 1:20. Faculties are pretty chill and approachable for the most part and none have particularly bad relationships with students either. I liked Rahul Sharma from Physics, he is quite the enthusiastic professor and the best teacher of physics I have met in a while. Vyas Akondi from Physics is great too. he is quite organised in his teaching and structures courses really well, and cares a lot about students. Pabitra Barik from Mathematics is amazing, he is the most approachable person ever, and is a great professor too alongside his willingness to interact with students. There are generally two exams per semester, the mid sems and end sems, and the question difficulty depends on the professor. Generally, it is quite easy to obtain passing marks, but acing the course can be difficult. That being said, not a lot of students fail is courses, it is perhaps less than 1% per course generally (again depends on the course). The course curriculum is quite relevant and up-to-date, I must say, since the professors themselves would mostly bring out insights and materials from the current academia in their field of research.

The gym is clean and has more than enough equipments for people to use. There are two cafeterias in the Boys and Girls Hostels respectively, and a canteen for PHD holders, and a general bakery at the Amphitheatre, where the library is also located. The campus in-time is technically 8 PM, one has to authroise their entry if entering after that, and the hostel in-time is 2 AM. People hang out pretty often at the sports complex, amphitheatre or just take a walk along the campus roads. Outside the campus though, you can visit bridges and other villages, which are short distances away, complete with forests and of course, beaches, which are accessible too. The campus interior is safe to roam around at night. The exterior, not so much.