A glance at IIT Roorkee through the lens of a Ph.D student!

First, It is close to Delhi so I can easily visit Delhi on weekends as it is my hometown.Second, IIT Roorkee is one of the oldest IITs and is well known for its placements and research.Third, apart from studies, IIT Roorkee has a lot of extra curricular activities. The institute has all sports facilities, swimming pool, students club for indoor games, dance and music classes. So, one can learn many things during their stay at IIT Roorkee.Fourth, the college is located in Uttarakhand and is very close to Rishikesh, Dehradun and Mussoorie. So, for people who love to travel, IIT Roorkee will be your gateway to many weekend trips and treks. The college has a trekking club which takes students to various beautiful treks in Uttarakhand as well as Himachal Pradesh and that too at a nominal cost.

I'm doing PhD in Finance from Department of Management Studies, IIT Roorkee. I chose this course as I was interested in Finance. However, the college offers Ph.D in all the departments in various fields. On an average, one faculty supervises around 4-7 scholars. The faculties are highly qualified in their fields and have good research experience. Initially, the PhD students have to do coursework which varies from 6 months to 1 year in most of the departments. During the coursework, students have to attend classes and give semester exams, mid term exams and few assignments and/or presentations. It is mandatory to get a minimum of 7cgpa in the course work to continue your PhD. If you study well, it isn't difficult to get 7cgpa. After the coursework exam, there is a coursework seminar which is mandatory. The seminar is like a research presentation given by the student in front of faculties and other fellow PhD students. The basic purpose of seminar is to check your English proficiency and decide whether some English course is required or not.Once you are through with the coursework, the actual research begins! You need to be in the research lab daily from Monday to Friday.

PhD students are not required to do any internship. We get stipend for the research we do as part of our PhD.However, b.tech, m.tech and MBA students have to do internship during the summer break. Many companies offer internships with a good pay to the students of IIT Roorkee and later give them Pre-Placement Offer if the work is satisfactory.

The college has good placement for btech students which goes upto more than a crore! However, for PhD there are very less chances of campus placement. The placement cell is dominated by the btech students. However, some job options come for PhD students too, specially some colleges offer faculty positions. The average pay offered for faculty positions ranges from 75k to 1.2k per month depending upon your field, research publications, teaching experience and the paying capacity of the college. We are working on to make a separate placement cell for PhD students! Once it comes into action, more placement opportunities will come for PhD students.Anyways, keeping in mind the research quality of the PhD students at IITR, most of the students easily get faculty positions in various esteemed colleges when they apply. If I talk about the management department, most of our alumni are working at IIMs like IIM Ranchi, IIM Sirmaur, IIM Kashipur, IIM Amritsar, IIM Rohtak etc. While others are working at IITs, NITs, BITS Pilani and other prestigious private B-Schools.

The fee for PhD is around 35,500 per semester. The fee hike is done usually after 4-5 years. However, your fee will remain the same in every semester since your joining.This fee includes tuition fee, hostel accomodation, mess fee and medical and sports facilities as well! So, it isn't a big amount keeping in view that the major expense of food and accommodation is also covered in this amount.The stipend for PhD students is 31000 per month for the first two years and 35000 per month after completion of 2 years. Keeping in mind that Roorkee is a small town, this amount is more than sufficient to bear all your monthly expenses and save a little.

The campus life is amazing at IIT Roorkee. The college hosts one cultural fest in the month of October which is named Thomso. A host of cultural events are conducted over a period of 3 days which includes singing, dancing, acting, fashion shows, Mr. And Ms. Thomso and many more. There is one DJ night and singers are called to perform on other 2 days. In 2019, Jubin Nautiyal performed on Day 1 and Vishal and Shekhar performed on Day 2. The fest could not happen in 2020 due to Covid.Apart from the cultural fest, there is a technical fest in the month of March every year. People from renowned colleges come and participate from all over India. The college has 2 lecture hall complex where most of the classes are held. Apart from that there are class rooms in each department. All the classes have projectors and are air conditioned. Infact all the labs are also air conditioned.The college has a central library named Mahatma Gandhi Central Library. The library has a huge collection of books, journals and databases. The library has a computer section where you can sit and work on PC provided by the library. There is a huge reading hall for those who want to study. The library is air conditioned and has a serene environment which makes it a must visit place for the studious ones.Coming to sports, the college has almost every outdoor and indoor sport facilities and coach for every sports. Also, there is a swimming pool which has a swimming instructor. So, you can learn swimming. There are groups for all cultural activities ranging from dance, music, dramatics, to fashion and photography. They select students every year in these groups and compete with other colleges in annual cultural fest and Inter IIT Cultural meet. Apart from this there are few technical clubs as well like finance club, robotics club etc.

There are 10 boys hostel, 2 girls hostel, 1 co-ed hostel and a few married hostels in the campus. The hostels have two types of rooms. In the starting years you will have to share your room with one more person. After 1 or 2 years (depending on the availability), you will get single room. The rooms have almirah, bed, side table, study table and chair for the students. The boys hostels have balcony as well but unfortunately girls don't get attached balconies in their hostel. The hostel rooms are decent in size and have big windows for ventilation. The only con is that the rooms are not air conditioned and the washrooms are common! Coming to the mess food, a weekly menu is set up and put on the notice board. The menu changes every week. There are a few things which are given every day and some food items change. In breakfast, we have bread, butter, jam, coffee, milk, boiled egg, cornflakes and sprouts every day. Apart from it there is one main breakfast dish prepared each day. So we get poha, paratha, maggi, idli, dosa, cholle kulche, burger, pao bhaji, dosa, uttapam etc on rotational basis. For lunch, we get one vegetables, one daal, rice, chapati, salad and one curd item everyday. For dinner, we get one vegetable, one daal, rice, chapati and sweet dish everyday. The meal quality is above average. However, with time you might get bored of it.IIT Roorkee is a residential campus, so all the hostel and mess charges are included in the fee itself and they are quite nominal. The room rent in hostel is just 500 for one month and mess charges are approx 3000 for a month.

UGC NET, 2017, 68%