First step outside my hometown

The college management was good and continually worked for the improvement of the student and college brand. One negative thing would be heavy tuition fees and due to which good rankers do not turn up to college.

I took AIEEE examination and was admitted into Thapar via AIEEE.I had scored 270 marks in the paper.I was not getting a good branch in any of the National Institute of Technology. Also I did not qualify for the IIT examination. Hence of the available options- Thapar was the best.

Overall the chemical engineering curriculum was average. There were certain core subjects like Fluid Mechanics, Mass transfer, Heat Transfer. There were certain chemical electives as well like Petroleum engineering, Polymer Science, Nano Pharmaceuticals etc. The curriculum should have included more practical aspect of oil and chemical and batch chemical occupancies.

The college had an exhaustive 6 months internship program. I was among a few lucky candidates to have got internship from the companies visiting the college. I did my internship at IOCL R&D Centre Faridabad and got Rs 8000/month during my internship. Generally speaking 50% of the students got internship from College and the rest had to use their links to get internship. There were less than 10% of the students who were paid during the 6 months internship. The other companies which came for internship were Ranbaxy, DCM Shriram, Ballarpur Industries, BILT etc.

The placement for the college was good. However if I specifically talk about the Chemical Engineering branch it was below average. Only 32 students were placed out of the 60 students. One of the reasons for this was that only 42 were eligible for placements as others had a low CGPA and had backlogs, hence could not be a part of the placement program. Also the core chemical companies which visited college were few. Some facts about the placement companies were as below-1. IOCL- CTC 8.5 Lac p.a.2. Ranbaxy Labs Limited- CTC 5.5 Lac p,a.3. GS Engineering- CTC 3.5 Lac p,a,4. Samsung Engineering- CTC 3.5 Lac p,a.5. Linde Engineering- CTC 3.6 Lac pa.a6. Evalue Serve- CTC 3.6 Lac p.a.7. Trident- CTC 9.5 Lac p.a.

College had two major events- Cultural fest and the Technical fest (Aranya). The two fests are perhaps one of the biggest in North India. Both the fests are a 4 day event and we have all the major colleges participating in them. The strength per day in such an event is almost 15000. We have big companies who sponsor the fest- SBI, Airtel, PEPSICO, MTS etc.

Thapar is one of the most expensive colleges in India. During my tenure the Tuition fee was Rs 36000 per semester. Overall excluding the hostel the fees was Rs 54000 per semester. The Hostels were of varying category and I chose the cheapest of the available options whose semester fees was Rs 7200. I find my hostel very comfortable. The food was average.

I was one of the 25 candidates which were awarded scholarship for the academic brilliance. My entire tuition fees (Rs 36000 per semester) was reimbursed. There were two other scholarships as well which were rs 15000 and Rs 10000 each.No loan facilities were provided by college however they had tied up with State Bank of Patiala which used to provide the loan to the students.

I would rate the campus life as above average. There was everything available for the interested students. I was a sports person and I played almost every sport at Thapar. There was a separate cultural group which included the dance fanatics, debaters and singers. Robotics was a separate group altogether and there were different cultural societies which used to organise varying events.

Thapar has variety of hostels. Some were pretty luxurious while some were traditional in nature. I opted for the single seater old hostel which was cheap. The infrastructure was old however it was more appealing and was much greener compared to the newly constructed luxurious hostels. the number of rooms were enough to cater to the batch strength.The mess food was generally good. here I would specially mention the awesome breakfast (variety of paranthas and curd).

Thapar alumni network was very weak during our times. With the increasing technology and digitisation the alumni network has started growing and is eventually picking up pace. This has led to better branding and placements for the students.

The exams were generally every held every 45 days. We had two mid term examination followed by an end term examination. Also there were a couple of quizzes which used to happen per subject in a semester. It was a 5 day college which follows a 8 to 5 schedule. I would not say that the schedule was hectic but it was rightly designed to balance the overall life of a student.

The faculty of the college was average. It was a mixture of highly qualified industrial personnel and then a few Masters who were undergoing their PHDs under the senior Professors. The HOD of chemical engineering was highly intellectual in the process and equipment design and really knew how to correlate the theory with the practical applications.