Life at VIT Vellore

I chose VIT because it offered me the same course(MCA) for the duration of 2yrs while other colleges like NIT were offering 3yrs of academic study. Below mentioned points are all related to Masters students only.PROS:1. FFCS(Fully Flexible Credit System) allows students to choose whatever subjects they want to study apart from the major subjects of their course. This gives VIT students the edge over other college students and makes them interdisciplinary. I personally like this very much.2. Their fast-track program for Masters student helped us a lot to in terms of completing our academics on a rapid pace and focus more on practical aspects of the course. During the entire course we spent out time developing projects parallel to the amount of theoretical concepts being taught in the classroom.3. The Profs in VIT encourage students for more doing research work.4. The college library is very good. There are a wide variety of Journals and books available for you to read till 12 in midnight. And obviously you can borrow5. The college has a very strict rule for everything from Outing timings to inside college movements for every student. 6. Everything is completely online. They have improved their VIT student portal a lot in past years.7. Also, if you are a 9 pointer then you can get the preference in choosing the hostel room. The above all you can skip the entire year of classes(which means no need to maintain the 75% attendance criteria). Pretty cool right, coz' now you can only attend the important classes that you feel so and study at fast pace and can also focus on practical projects more.There are lot of good things like free and paid gym for both boys and girls, DJ nights to cheer up the students, hundreds of clubs and chapters to join and get exposure, good canteens around, annual fests, etc.CONS:1. Though it sounds very fascinating. But one should be ready to face the difficulty/ challenges that comes with the amount of syllabus that one needs to cope up with the project components. 2. The restrictions inside the college, like you can't even go outside your hostel block after 9pm.3. Girls and boys standing and talking inside the campus can attract Annas(the guards inside the campus) towards you. And sometimes they come so close into your conversation that you won't even notice that they are actually eavesdropping. I know, this is sometimes too much. Typical aunties they are.4. The north Indian food inside the canteens is not so good.5. Library is not open all night. Closes at 12am6. You can't stay and research in lab during late at nights. Getting permission for anything like that is a little hard.Admission Process:The admission in VIT happens around the month of June and July. Although the forms for entrance examination generally came out in the month of April or May. The result of entrance exams usually get released in a week or so. At first VIT calls the student who are selected under the course for counselling. One can attend the counselling at any of their campus. The main campus is Vellore, but one can also attend the same at Bhopal or Andhra campus also. At the time of counselling they give you timeline for the date of joining and other orientation related dates. One can discuss about the Hostel facilities query at the help desk that gets setup in the Anna Auditorium (viz. where the counselling takes place usually). The allotment of seat in the course is based on the rank you score in the VITEE(for Undergraduate courses) and VITMEE(for Masters courses).You can refer to Quora if you have any doubts regarding VIT admission process or anything related to VIT. It has pretty an answer for every query that might come in your mind.

The course curriculum at VIT is a bit stringent. I am not sure about the Undergraduate courses but the Masters curriculum is actually vast and sometimes difficult to manage in a short period of time. Since at our time we got only 11 months to complete the entire two year curriculum(they call it a fast-track program). It's pretty challenging to manage the time during classes with the amount of projects tossed at you.I chose MCA(Master of Computer Application) because I wanted to study more about the concepts at research level. Our course was of 11months of academics and then 6-9 months of research work or internship. The faculties were good when it comes to pushing you for more research work rather than a bookish jargon. Though it totally depends on faculty to faculty. Also, every classroom is a digital classroom. The faculty to student ratio is 1:50. Keeping the strictness they follow regarding the 75% attendance rule, generally everyone attends classes regularly but with an exception for 9 pointers(if you are a 9 pointer you are exempt from the 75% rule ;) which means you can skip as many classes as you can).About about the term exams: VIT takes CATs(Continuous Assessment Tests) two times in a semester and then a FAT(Final Assessment Test) which takes place at the end of the semester. The CATs are not easy to be frank, especially the CAT which is an open book carries scenario/application based questions that you'll have to sometimes scratch your head for answers. FAT also carries a broad syllabus to prepare for it. Overall the tests are challenging enough to test your thorough understanding of the subject matter in both theoretical and application aspects. Also because of relative grading at VIT securing a high GPA becomes difficult. One person getting a very good/bad grade in a particular subject can impact the overall relative scores of every student in the class. Therefore everyone here competes for a higher grade or atleast try their best to score above the average relative score of the class. But the higher the better your GPA.Good Luck!

Companies coming to VIT generally offers you Internship at first to evaluate your performance and then people get a permanent place in the organisation.I myself got the Internship at a startup. Mostly startups offer Internships and MNCs go for PPOs during recruitment. Companies like Bank of America, Royal Bank of Scotland, Wipro, Cognizant, TCS and so many other companies takes people for Internships with stipends ranging from as low as 12000 to as high as 25000. The startups tend to offer more stipends up to even 30000 or 40000+ in some cases.At the associate or entry level trainee profile the companies mostly teach about their tools or put you in projects that revolve around a new technology to test out the student's capability to learn and grasp in-demand technology.

Placements at VIT are decent only. Whatever these guys hype in media is not a complete picture. Almost 80-90% of the students struggle for a decent package. Most of the companies coming here are startups with low salary to offer and even the big MNCs offer normal packages only. And especially for Masters students there is a very limited scope to get placed in a reputed brand. Though if you are a B.Tech student, then you can find a little more options on your plate. You can start sitting for companies during your final year. College will put your batch into a Google Group where all the companies updates are posted on daily basis. And you can apply to their portal called, "Campus Interaction".Mostly TCS, Bank of America, Wipro, and other such companies takes students in good number with average packages. The highest package(CTC) offered is around 40 Lakhs and the average comes down to 4 Lakh or less. Most companies offer profile of a Trainee or some entry level kind of role. Some of the good companies are the only ones that actually offer Software Engineering roles.Therefore most of the students who miss opportunities try off-campus for jobs from other portals after their degrees.Overall getting a job in VIT is a tough deal in most cases. But if you are good enough to prove your mettle then no one cans top you from getting a good package. One advice is to wait for good salary package offering organisations and brush up your practical skills before the recruitment begins.

The fee structure for Masters is pretty straight forward which follows:1. Tuition(annual) - 1380002. Hostel (depends on the type of room you choose and varies every year)3. Caution(varies sometimes) - 2000-100004. Counselling (adjusted in the tuition in 1st year) -12000One can also avail a scholarship. There are a couple of Scholarships but it is hard to get one if you not from a Minority category(by which they take into account your family annual income to be under 100000 which I think is totally illogical keeping coz' you can't run a family in India under 1Lac for an entire year). Also yeah they give around 20 something thousands worth of aid under this scholarship.There are certain scholarships which counts your special achievements if any such as National level player, Published a Research Paper in a reputed journal or in presented one at a reputed conference, selected for other govt. awards and there are so many categories they cover for this scholarship. The Research Assistantship and Teaching Assistance is only applicable for Phd. students at VIT. Maybe you can ask your professor if they have any for that particular year. Though there are not any as such campus jobs at VIT. You are pretty on your own about your expenses. Maybe find some freelancing work that interest you.

Life at VIT is very fast. Being a Masters student I felt it is very hectic for a student to actually enjoy the campus life. For people who come here for undergraduate courses like B.Tech or any other course of minimum 3 years can find a lot of time for fun activities and events that so many clubs are organising throughout the year. There are DJ nights in every month for girls and for boys not that too often but yeah for freshers they organise a few to cheer students up.The annual tech fest Gravitas happens in the month of October. It's one of the biggest tech fest of India organised by VIT, students from all over India gather here to enjoy and to take part in variety of Hackathons conducted by clubs in collaboration with reputed companies. The entire campus is jam packed with students for whole 3 days of the tech fest. There are lot of cool games to play, variety of fun stalls to explore and yes a good variety of food stalls from North Indian to South Indian dishes with so many other things to try.VIT hosts annual culture fest, Riviera in the month of February every year. It is a 4 day event packed with so many stuffs that one can get to do. The last two Rivieras started with the Marathon conducted by some NGO. You can explore the campus full of so many stalls hosting games, short competition of singing, dancing, debating, quizzes, and with other cool stuff. One of the attraction was the 3D printed items booth. Apart from all this VIT invites so many celebrities during Riviera. To name some of them, Sonu Nigam, Ayushman Khurana, Shreya Goshal, Actor-singer Shruti Haasan, Hindi actor-cum-singer, Andrea Jeremiah, and so many famous personalities and DJs in the previous Rivieras. VIT library holds a huge collection of books and journals for one to spend their entire course years there if you are nerd no doubt this place is a heaven for you. There are digital screens through which you can search for any book in the library and also its location. Every book is encoded in VITs database and no one can take the book out with properly borrowing it otherwise the sensors at the exit will gonna catch you for sure.VIT classrooms are decent. Professors use both digital and traditional methods to teach concepts. Mostly the topics are taught by pre-made PPTs by the professors that gets uploaded before every lecture on the VITstudent platform.There are so many sports that one can take part in and can also avail the opportunity to play at a State or National level also if you are really good. One thing that I personally liked was their swimming pool which was of International standards. Amazing it was to practice swimming there. But the only drawback was the 1 hour time they give you to practice daily. And obviously Sundays are off. Apart from this there are so many other extracurricular activities like debating, Hackathons, startup events and that goes on throughout the year with lot of cash prizes to win.One can also be a part of clubs or chapters of their choice. There are Entrepreneurship clubs, Microsoft Student Club, Google Developer Group, various NGOs and other Tech Clubs. You can visit https://vit.ac.in/ to know more about the clubs and chapters there. And you can also run your own, VIT gives chance to everyone in the college to come and propose their idea of running a club in college.

No there was no Group discussion or interview of any sorts. But yes there was a common entrance examination conducted by VIT all over India to select students for the courses.In both Undergraduate or Masters courses there was no GD or Interview. Only the All India Entrance is conducted and on the basis of ranks they shortlist students and allot them their respective seats in the courses. To prepare for the entrance you can refer to their website for the syllabus and can get the idea about the type of questions to be asked in the entrance.