BITS Review

The college management is a little too authoritative, with the Wardens randomly breaking locks to check student rooms, and most management wanting students to come to their office everyday and beg them to get a very small task done.

I gave the BITSAT and JEE, and came in with rank 91 and 2602 respectively. I chose computer science in BITS Pilani to keep my career options more open.

The course curriculum is mainly focused on problem solving skills needed in the industry or software engineering jobs. The focus on research can be obtained by making use of special provisions in the system, like study oriented projects, thesis, papers, etc.

Our college provides two internships, one two month summer internship, and one six month semester long internship. These are called Practice School. The best companies in India usually accept students based on CGPA for these, for eg. Larsen and Toubro, Capital One, JP Morgan, McKinsey, Bain, Flipkart, etc.

Like internships, the placement unit of out college makes sure the top companies in India come to recruit our students. Companies include Google, Facebook, Flipkart, McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Blackstone Equity, etc. The top packages (Google, Facebook) are usually ~1.5cr per annum, with the average package being around 14l per annum.

We have a few festivals in our college, with three major ones. They are the Birla Open Sports Meet (Sports festival), Oasis (Cultural Festival), and APOGEE (Technical festival). Out of these, Oasis receives the maximum participation with hundreds of colleges participating and the budget of the festival being around 50L, with famous artists and speakers performing on stage.

The fee structure is quite modest, with two semesters in a year, each semester costs around 1.6 L including electricity, water, food, accommodation, and facilities. Extra facilities like nonveg, medical expenses, groceries and travel can be added to the semester fees paid at the end of the semester.

There are scholarships for merit-cum-need, if your academics are good beyond a certain point, and you have proof of a low family income, then you may avail this scholarship for tuition and mess fee.

The gender ratio in BITS is quite skewed, about 10:1 in favour of boys. The cultural life is quite rich, with a number of highly competitive clubs and departments ranging from music, art, organisation, debating, acting, literary activities, astronomy, etc. to technical fields like robotics, automobiles, F1 cars, sound systems, etc. These take part and excel in many national and international competitions.

The hostel facilities are quite average, with small rooms and indian style bathrooms, slow internet, and extremely old buildings and furniture. The mess food is healthy, but soaked in water and oil for the most part. We receive two seater rooms for the first year, and one seater rooms for the rest of our time in college.

BITS Pilani has an extensive network of alumni that it constantly stays in contact with through a student organisation called BITSAA (BITS Alumni Association). They help with knowledge, contacts, referrals, donations and expertise.

There is a zero compulsory attendance policy in BITS, which ensures students spend their time how they want to most of the time. There are only two exams that are compulsory in a three month semester, the mid semester exam and the comprehensive examination.

I filled up the BITSAT form on the BITS website about two months before the exam. I gave the exam in the allotted centre in Bombay, after I had filled my preferences for the course in the form. The marks and rank were announced after a month. I got my preference in the third iteration of the list, and subsequently packed up and moved to Pilani.

BITS Pilani, Computer Science department has always had high standards when it comes to accepting faculty members, the faculty is highly qualified in terms of research papers and experience in teaching. A list of the faculty credentials is publicly available on the BITS website.