Of Donating to IIIT

I was recently reading Halley's blog post on Alumni Funds. He talks about what some other colleges have been doing with their alumni funds and their targets and so on. He goes on to talk about other things like his experiences with the Alumni fund among others. For those who need a bit of a history lesson Halley and I are perhaps the two most vocal critics of the IIIT administration on both the campus and the blogosphere . It's important that one understand what the Alumni fund is doing and why it's very important to contribute to it.

What does the Alumni Fund do ?

Evey year among the many kids who write AIEEE and get ranks good enough to make it to IIIT, there are a few who cannot afford to come here. Yes the fee at IIIT is very high. But this is a group of students who cannot afford to pay for any form of college. They have neither the savings nor any form of holdings to provide a bank guarantee for a loan. This is a situation unimaginable for most of us. But it happens. The Alumni fund is to help such students whom nobody else is willing to help. The money in the alumni funds is given out as a very low interest loan to pay for the tuition fees of such students. This money doesn't go anywhere else. Yes the money does indirectly go to IIIT but they would get that money anyways. If not form this student than another richer one who can afford it.

Why is this important ?

We all know how hard it is to get into IIIT. Some of us took extra time beyond our 12'th class to get year. And whatever one may say , IIIT has provided us with an education, an exposure and above all access to opportunities the rest of the country can only dream of. When a student who clears AIEEE and gets a rank good enough to go to IIIT, drops that idea because of something like money, it is a collective failure on the part of IIIT community to promote merit. In some sense out-pricing somebody from an education is tantamount to reservation; reservation for the rich. As a community IIIT has always put merit on the highest pedestal, and this would be a step in line with those ideas. The situation is best summed up by what Varun Boppana wrote in a mail on our mailing lists.
"It's not like, we are asking money for IIIT..its for some students studying there...for their fees..just to get to where we are..thats it!."

Why this should not be a big deal for IIIT Alumni

Over the last couple of years the average pay of a IIIT graduate has been about 7 LPA. If you gave just 1% of what you earned to the Alumni fund, it would be enough to support all the needy students. 2K3, 2K4, 2K5 and now 2K6 have about 150+ students who have graduated with pretty nice jobs. That's about 600 people. If we assume 25% people contribute that's 150 contributions. If each of these contributions are at least worth Rs.5000 then that would make up 7.5 lakhs, which is almost 75% of what is required to support students. The rest of the money would come from donations from caution money, loans recovered from students and off course contributions from other batches. As a community that has almost 2000 members we should be able to support about 20 students per batch. It's not a big deal. For starters, donate your caution money. Yes BLN might give you a weird mess bill to settle or the office might have something in store for you, but still donate your caution money to the Alumni fund. That will take care of your first year after college. After that it's up to you and your generosity

Don't mix this with other things

Whatever your experiences/opinions of the IIIT administration may be I think it's not relevant to Alumni Fund donations. I have heard classmates say "IIIT never gave a damn about me, so why should I ?". Well, donating to the Alumni fund is about helping fellow students. Donating to the Alumni Fund, does not imply you are okay-ing whatever is happening in college. Rather, it shows your concern for IIIT and that what happens here is still important to you. In some sense you continue to remain a stakeholder long after passing out. And it's the right thing to do, you know it :)

You can donate here

My $0.02 on IIIT's new admissions Policy

I like certain things in this years admissions process. On the top of my "I Like" list is the admissions to the Dual Degree program for people who have cleared the Math/Informatics Olympiads at the national level. I don't know how many people will apply as most people in this category get admitted to some IIT anyways. For any student who attends a national camp at the Math/Physics/Informatics Olympiads we should
1. Allow them to join any course they want at IIIT
2. Give them a 100% tuition fee wavier
3. Have no limit on the number of such students we admit.
Whatever financial implications this may have will be more than made up for in other ways. This might mean that we would get to see more people like I.V. Aprameya Rao and Anshuman Singh and Nadeem ( Yes they are examples of people who have participated in national Olympiad camps) on campus. Even if we manage to admit say 5 such students every year, we would eventually have 20~30 of them on campus and that would make a great difference to the atmosphere at IIIT.

I am also pleased that with the different avenues of entry IIIT is considering to look at while admitting CNS dual degree students. The CNS course is slightly different from a regular B.Tech course and perhaps it calls for special admission procedures. The list of Olympiads/Scholarships listed there is quite long and I am hopeful that some of those people who join will be pretty enthusiastic about course. Personally I don't agree with the philosophy of shoving kids into a particular stream without letting them explore other areas of study. I don't agree with either the CNS or the CNL dual degree courses.

There is also this thing to admit foreign students. I haven't a clue about SAT scores and really don't know how that is going to work out. I just hope that we don't end up admitting some yahooo's who think that they own the campus.

Also CBSE and CCB deserve a kick. Their sheer stupidity has forced us into having our own counseling. This also pretty much completely screws up the idea of a national time table for all colleges (Which I thought was a nice idea !) Kapil Sibbal if you read this, fire whoever is running CCB!

I have spent some time looking the dynamics of admissions in US universities. And Indian Universities. The major difference I can see is a lack of diversity on campus in Indian universities. Almost everybody here doesn't have very many skills(of note) other than being good at Phy-Chem-Math. Yes the odd person can sing and paint and dance and some more people can play something but nothing significant. I think that makes for very poor exposure and a sense of elitism that only people really good in PCM have a right to study Engineering at the best places in India. I would love to see IIIT admit kids who are really good at say some arts or sports or something else. Of course we also have to make sure that they have a minimum academic standard as well (perhaps a mixture of 10th+12th Marks + AIEEE scores or whatever) so that they can successfully complete the course. I don't think that studying engineering should be the preserve of only the very insanely nerdy PCM kids. Any sincere kid who does well at school is good enough to go through the curriculum.

IIIT has already been very bold with the present initiatives and perhaps this idea comes ahead of it's time. However I suspect that this is something that the think tank at IIIT has had at the back of their mind. I think having a center like CEH is a step in that direction. The problem with that approach is that you are going to have to deal with kids who have a mindset where joining a place like CEH is simply "not an option". Lets admit some different people for a change !


PS : I don't understand why IIIT has asked people to register before the AIEEE results are declared. Before the results are out a lot of people would like to believe that they have a chance. I can imagine around 6~7 thousand people registering at the very least. IIIT might as well have had people register after the results were declared or at least charged them later. I am not aware of the logistics of doing something like this (I assume it would not be trivial), but if they have done this to make some money then it is indeed very naughty.

Interview shinterview

We have IBM IRL coming to campus 2moro. I did send my resume with 2 recos. It'll be interesting to see what they have to ask me. The only group that I could possibly fit into is their High Performance Computing group. Now, while I do have relevant research work(s) (in a conference titled IEEE-ACM High Performance Computing) I have no fracking idea about multi cores or parallel algorithms or anything remotely "high performance". If the state of my laptop is anything to go by, I barely manage to get any performance at all. They do not have a crypto group, so impressing them goes out the window. The only hope that remains is that they ask me something about distributed computing and preferably PRC :D

But whatever the outcome, I hope to meet a few people from IBM and see what they are up to. It is after all IBM. They have been great pioneers in electrical engineering and computing. I am sure that whoever they send would be somebody senior. I also hope they send a guy called Vijay Garg. He has a nice range of research work covering theoretical and applied distributed/parallel computing. It would be worth my while just meeting him.

Creating monsters.....

I am part of the first dual degree batch. In the beginning there were 60+ of us. After 5.5 years and about a 100+ research papers later, most of us are still here. The question most of me and my batch mates are asking ourselves is "What next ?". Circumstances have conspired to make us unwanted by most and looked at skeptically by the remaining.
As the placement process unravels it's becoming clearer that our degrees, our work and our orientation is becoming an unbearable burden. Companies feel that we are either too "research minded" to work for them or likely to run away for a PhD. So most want nothing to do with us. Those who are ok with us, tend to have a selection process we are ill prepared for. If somebody were to ask me about crypto or cvit people about vision or Sarika about RoboCup we would blow them out of the water. Sadly nobody seems to want to ask us these things. It seems that data structures and puzzles are the flavor of the day. Most ug4's have spent the last 2 months, working very hard to prepare for the placement season. Most of us have spent the last 2 months making a final thrust to get that last paper accepted or to start giving shape to our thesis. Not an ideal scenario.
The faculty would like to believe that having exposed us to top class research, many of us would be motivated to pursue higher studies. 2 out of 60+ have gone for a PhD. Not numbers to go wild about. This begs the question : Has IIIT created a (confused)monster with it's dual degree programs ?
While I leave this question as a topic for open debate, I do have a few questions about the dual degree program.
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Section 1 : Jobs
Q1: Are there relevant jobs for 60 dual degree graduates in Computer science and Electronics ?
Q:2 Has the institute (faculty) spent enough time educating companies about the dual degree program ?
Q3: Has the institute made an effort to educate companies that the hiring process they follow for ug's is not optimal for MSbR
Q4: Has each faculty member asked himself how he can help get his students a job ?
Q5: Do the Institute and the faculty have a burden of responsibility to help get a student a job ?
Q6: Are all faculty members in agreement with or even aware of this ?
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Section 2: The Research

Q1: Has there been an effort to normalize/standardize the quality of MS thesis' ?
Q2: Has there been an effort to analyze the quality of research work done as part of this program?
Q3: Have we asked ourselves if we are publishing for the sake of publishing ?
Q4: Have all students been provided the means to present their research work at the relevant forums (i.e. sponsorship for conferences) ?
Q5: Do we provide enough faculty and by extension research areas for our students to work on?
Q6: Do we always have the resources to help a student complete his/her work ?

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Section 3: The program itself

Q1: Almost all the dual degree students will complete their degree in 6 years. In this aspect is the program satisfactory?
Q2: Why is the proportion of students from DD interested in pursuing a PhD so dismal ?
Q3: Has the institute thought about students stuck in the program even unable to do their B.Tech ?
Q4: Does an average High School student understand what he is getting into when choosing DD?
Q5: Has the institute taken initiatives to ensure that every DD student is at least paid a minimum stipend apart from a tuition wavier?
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Questions for the future:

Q1: Considering the issues computer science and electronics dual degree students have, was it prudent to introduce other courses like PostBSc, DD in computational natural sciences and DD in computational linguistics ?

Q2: Will we have a complete overhaul in the way we go about dealing with the DD students and their future aspirations, be it a job or a PhD or even an MBA ?

Q3: Is the institute going to clean up it's act when it comes to financial planning, to ensure students are paid a decent stipend and provided adequate funds for presenting their research work?


PS1: For fellow students - Don't write comments in a moment of frustration/anger. Think before you write.

PS2: For others - Don't write rhetorical junk. Appreciate reality, and yes....Think before you write too.

Where is the Science in Computer Science??

I ask this question because Raina writes in her blog about people telling her that science has lost a "devout follower" when she joined IIIT. I wonder why people call us computer scientists. Elecrtical engineers are never call Electrical Scientists or neither are mechanical engineers. So what then have we Computer Scientists done to deserve this honor.

Kannan Srinathan once told me that it is the study of "Theory" that primarily gives computing the status of a science. No other discipline apart from perhaps Mathematics carries notions like "impossibility proofs". No discipline can give you unique insights on what can and cannot be determined(or rather computed) the way the theory of computation does. Theoreticians have given the world amazing results that have even bamboozled the best of mathematicians. It is this power to tell people what they can and cannot do (read as compute) is what is responsible for the word science and computers being spoken in the same breath.

No post of mine is complete unless I wind somebody up. So in the context of what is said above, does it mean that people engaged in pursuing improvements in other areas of computing are not doing science but merely engineering ?

PS. I heard about a rather interesting quote from Churchill. "The best argument against democracy is spending 5 minutes with the average voter".

It's that time of the year......

When the hot shot magazines (who don't understand squat) start to rank colleges. In the last two years I've tried to analyze these "rankings" and make sense (or the lack of it) of them. This year seeing IIIT Hyderabad ranked 16th is rather disappointing and I feel that these rankings are doing prospective students a great disservice by advising them to join places like BHU or some of the NIT's or even VIT ahead of IIIT (Rofl. How can you take a ranking that has VIT as 10th seriously ??)

This post is for those prospective students, wondering why they should join IIIT.

Firstly, from a purely academic point of view, Only the 5 main IIT's i.e. Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Madras can compete with IIIT in CS. I don't think any faculty member from any institute mentioned in that India Today list would argue with that. IIIT has about 55 full time faculty members and about 20 more visiting + adjunct + Emeritus + blah blah blah faculty members. Each one of these people has a PhD and has significant research contributions even before coming to IIIT. Basically they are bloody damn good. Almost all non-CS/Electronics faculty (Humanities) are borrowed from the Hyderabad Central University (HCU), located just next door. They too are really really good.

Secondly, the quality and amount of research being done at IIIT is simply spectacular( Why would a undergrad bother ?? read on..). In the last academic year, papers from IIIT have been accepted to almost all top venues in CS. These are not some crappy local conferences that I am talking about. I refer to conferences and journals where the history of subjects is being made, the big league, where all the top notch people in the field publish. For those who understand I'm talking about A+ and A level conferences. But that's not the impressive part. Almost 90% of these papers have Undergraduate and Masters students as the prime contributors!! IIIT gives an extraordinary scope to Undergrads to publish at the highest level. I am confident that nobody in India comes anywhere close to IIIT in this regard. In my experience, if you have a quality publication(s), you can pretty much go wherever you want for a MS/PhD. IIIT students getting regular admits to all the top 10 US universities (except Berkley ... somehow nobody applies there) is proof of this being true.

Third, the future prospects after graduating from IIIT are pretty cool. For those interested in placements, IIIT averaged about 7.2 LpA for the 2008 batch (about 140 people. Includes B.Tech, M.Tech and MS) and 5.3 LpA for the 2009 Batch (about 160 people) All IT companies that visited the IIT's came here too. Not bad considering whats going on with the job market right now. As for MS/PhD admits abroad, IIIT has the faculty that a) Will help you do enough work to get noticed b) Give you a recommendation that will seal the deal. The reach of IIIT faculty members extends to cover all universities of any significance. Basically IIIT will give you all the tools to work and the faculty to push you to your "dream" admit.

Fourth, the Alumni network. You know your college alumni is doing well when you step into any google/microsoft/amazon/adobe/yahoo/cisco/(endless list) office and cant walk 5 steps without meeting an alumni. You know your alumni is doing well when half the people coming to conduct campus intervies on behalf of these companies are alumni themselves. You know your alumni is doing well when you know that there will be some IIIT student in the university where you are going to join a graduate program. Keep in mind that only 8 batches have graduated from IIIT thus far. Imagine what things would be 15..20...25 years from now.

And now what can you expect to find at IIIT by the way of facilities ? Well this isn't a glitzy glamorous college. IIIT as an institute, has a philosophy of simple living. And that's just how the campus culture is too. Facilities are a mixed bag. Basic facilities like hostels are very good and are much better compared to most of the IIT's. Don't expect any VIT/Manipal style AC hostels. Messes are decent. The canteen is rather average, but that has more to do with the subways and dominos and the likes that surround the college. Recreation facilities are rather limited. A Swimming pool, a gym, a basketball court, volleyball, TT and a Football ground is pretty much all you have. I personally find it rather lame.
Computing resources are again a mixed bag. Large portions of the hostels have WiFi as the only network. It's good for browsing but not really good for movies and LAN gaming. But once you are on a wired network, it's smooth sailing. IIIT is unique in that there is unrestricted internet/LAN access. The labs are pretty cool. They stock some of the nicest hardware around. In that respect IIIT is pretty good.

To summarize IIIT: If you want to study and learn, come to IIIT. There is no equal in India period. If you are more interested in other pursuits, especially extra curricular activities you might end up disappointed here. IIIT is yet to evolve beyond academics. I personally don't see a student having to make any significant concessions by being at IIIT. The only limiting factor for a student here is his/her motivation.

And as far as the rankings go, I don't consider IIIT to be an "Engineering college" per se. IIIT has a specific focus on Computer Science and IT and offers no other dimensions as of now. As far as computer science is concerned IIIT is a unique center of excellence. IIIT has 24 research centers that work on core computing and it's applications. If somebody were to rank CS courses in India, IIIT would be far ahead of the rest (including the IIT's) by a mile. But CS alone doesn't constitute an Engineering college. The diversity on offer at the IIT's is truly wonderful. Perhaps IIIT would catch up in a decade or two. Rankings take a lot of stuff into account. An institute that offers only CS and Electronics as courses can't and shouldn't compete for rankings with other places that offer courses ranging from electrical to mechanical to aerospace to marine engineering. That said, I am of the opinion that you should give up a seat at IIIT Hyderabad only for a seat in CS/ECE/Mech/Chem in the 5 Main IIT's. You are likely to regret any other choice you make. Not now, but perhaps while in your 4th year or after you graduate. That doesn't mean other options are bad or anything. It is always ultimately down to the individual. All I'm saying is that IIIT would give you a most competent platform to excel.

PS: Please don't write any hate comments.

The Privilege of Teaching

This year I had the privilege of being a TA for two UG courses. Data Structures and Algorithms. I am a rather unusual case. I have not had the best academic records through my UG curriculum, but have developed pretty well albeit quite late. I think the rigors of the dual degree program forced me to work very hard and improve myself. This TAship has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my stay at IIIT till date. How well I have done is for UG groups A1 and A2 to decide.

I must admit I was very nervous and rather skeptical of my abilities to teach what could be considered IIIT's premier course for UGs. A few words from K.Srinathan before the first lab I took gave me a lot of confidence. Piyush also told me not to worry and it would turn out to be just fine. To walk into a class with 60~70 people staring at you, waiting for you to give the class direction is a daunting task. The fear of screwing up or worse teaching something wrong was a very big concern for me in the first few classes. I used to prepare for 3~4 hours for a lab and perhaps even more for a tutorial (I later discontinued tutorials for my group but more on that some other time). I think this year has been particularly challenging for the TA's as there is a new curriculum, and a lot of new topics were taught in the DS course. On some occasions, some of the things we were teaching was stuff we had not studied. This made for an even tenser situation. However something Abhilash said, calmed me down at the time, quite a bit. He said that no matter who the TA is and how good or bad they do, the DS course is always kind of on auto pilot. At the time i was relieved as I was assured that UG1 can be sand boxed from any failures that I may be responsible for. In hindsight I find that to be sad because, I believe that TA's can have a fundamental contribution to the course and despite having some wonderful talents among the 3/4/5 years if we are not able to influence a DS course it is a tragedy.

In my opinion, that was not the case. During each lab session I found myself challenged by some or the other student who wanted to implement a particular DS or solve a problem in a completely new way. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by how good a lot of ug1 students are. The way they responded to the last assignment we posted was extraordinary. I was also very impressed by the the assignments Abhilash produced. The assignment set this year was in my opinion was one of the best sets produced during my stay. GG Abhilash.

Over the years, I have always believed that knowing a subject well enough is necessary and sufficient to be a good teacher. Based on my experiences this year, I can confirm that the sufficiency case is false. To be a good teacher requires a unique ability to communicate and get through to people. My experiences have helped me develop a new found admiration for those people who are blessed with the ability to teach well. It is indeed a rare gift.

I hope I do get to interact with UG1 again. It is hard work, but it's also an unmatched satisfaction. To work with some of the best and the brightest truly is a privilege.

A draft

I remember reading last year that of the 250 seats offered in the december course of the Indian Military Academy (IMA) only 84 people joined. For a country of more then a billion that is just amazing. As much as this may say about the youth of our country it says as much about the Indian Army as well.

Entry to the armed forces is after 12th class or after graduation. I feel that the class and caliber of people the armed forces are looking for, do not want to quit studying after 12th or in case of graduates, want jobs that have something to do with what they did in college. Somehow the armed forces haven't quite made arrangements to accommodate such people.

I have had decent exposure to the armed forces way of life. I have a lot of friends who are serving in the armed forces. It is in all honesty a reasonable life. Yes, it is at times hard, but is nowhere as near as "hostile" as it is perceived to be. For what it's worth I feel it is a much more comfortable and meaningful life then the crappy "BPO/KPO dream" that thousands of young Indians seem to want to pursue.

So back to the original piece I had read, The cheif of army staff had suggested that a draft might be a good option going forward. While this works in countries like the US and some EU countries I really don't think this would work in India. Our largely agrarian/service oriented society is a far cry from the gun slinging cultures of the west. Plus I don't think this is something politicians in our country will ever embrace.

The armed forces need to be thinking in other directions to attract people. One of the areas where I am personally disappointed with the armed forces is their capability to absorb and more importantly, utilize the skills of highly educated people. In the west, working for the armed forces and/or law enforcement is a very attractive proposition for the best graduates. For example the US armed forces, intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement make it a point to try and absorb the best talent graduating from top notch US universities. Today the Indian armed forces do not have a place for high skill graduates. It is time that the armed forces realized that there is much more to forming an effective military then conscripting able young men and packing them off to 18,000 feet. Yes we need people to do that as well, but there are high skill graduates in India who might wish serve in the armed forces, whose skills the armed forces could very well do with, who don't see a place for themselves in present armed forces setup.

And as for those people who join the armed forces after their 12th class, it's really not much of an education. In other countries joining the armed forces is a route to college. In India sadly, the options of education for a young officer are rather poor. The so called engineering that people study through the technical entry scheme of the army is at the college of military engineering which is really not much better then any B-grade college. I feel that people in the armed forces who wish to study must be allowed to do so at top places like the IIT's or AIIMS. For those who cry about merit: These people have committed to serve the country. Letting them study in good colleges is the least we can do for them. At any rate 50% of people in these places aren't exactly meritorious.

It's time the armed forces offered something concrete to those who join them. Simply calling India's youth unpatriotic and driven by the greed for money is just not on. It is a lame excuse to sidestep the problems the structure of the armed forces faces. The armed forces must wake up to the reality that they face direct competition from India Inc. They must face this competition with the same flair that has made them a respected force in the world. A draft will not do!

Outlook rankings 2008

This refers to the outlook survey of colleges. For those wondering,Yes! it was done with a random number generator. I was surprised to find IIIT-H in the government colleges list as it is not a government college. But particularly interesting was the score IIIT Hyderabad had in a category called "Pedagogic system". From what I could see the average score in this category was something around 130. IIIT -H managed a score of 13( Thirteen). The lowest score apart from IIIT-H in this category belonged to a certain Jabalpur engineering college(???) with a score of 80. Surely something has gone terribly wrong here on the part of outlook!

But my heart goes out to my IIIT brothers at Allahabad. I wonder what sins the college has committed for Outlook to suggest people go to NIT-Jaipur, Andhra Univ, Harcourt Butler and Coimbatore Insti of Tech before having a look at IIIT Allahabad. Surely, Outlook deserves a thunderous kick on it's rear end for this. I remember last year when IIIT-H was ranked just behind Harcourt butler I was laughing my ass off. I'm not sure people at IIIT-A would be that generous to outlook though!

There were some other weird scores. Outlook says IIIT-H has the second highest placements with 7.2 lpa and 100% placement. However we are ranked 7th in it's placement performance parameter. Self contradiction! Intellectual capital is another interesting thing. Among all the institutes raked ahead of IIIT-H only PEC and DCE supposedly have inferior Intellectual capital. If you tell me that places like NIT-S, ISM, NIT-Allahabad,NIT-Jaipur and Andhra Univ have better faculty and students then IIIT-H (here by students i mean the AIEEE ranks only:P) or for that matter IIIT-A, you can kiss my ass.

But the icing on the cake has to be the ranking parameters. Apparently 30% of the weightage goes to the opinion of aspirants! i.e. people from class 11 and 12. That has got to be the joke of the millennium. I couldn't stop laughing for a good 10 mins after I read this.

Vinod Mehta if you some day read this......Do you know how people in college campuses across India are laughing at you and your magazine? You make an ass out of yourselves every year. How how how do you manage to pull it off year after year?
And for the geniuses at Synovate, the company that did the rankings for outlook. I would safely assume that this would be that last survey you ever did. God knows whatever prompted you to come with out such BS. When you rank college A ahead of college B it means that in your opinion a student should join college A ahead of college B. Surely your rankings are not correct if admission trends are anything to go by. And whatever prompted you to go and get 11th/12th class students involved in judging colleges! Do you know how stupid that is?

Yet another ranking, yet more stupidity.

PS: Here is a link to last years ranking from outlook. Randomness re-visited :)

A visit to VIT

In a older post I had said that VIT's position in India Today's ranking was undeserved. Well yesterday I had the chance to go to VIT. My cousin sister had counselling in VIT and my Mama had asked me to come along. What I saw at VIT is divided into 3 parts. The good, the bad and the ugly.

The good
1. The buildings at VIT look absolutely gorgeous from the outside. The library in particular was really well done. I wish we had a library like that (I'm talking just about the building here) in IIIT.
2. A building called the technology tower was also very impressive with it's hanging gardens theme.
3. Canteen Rocks!
4. Sports facilities were pretty good. A tad over-indulgent to be honest.
5. Nice lawns. the walkways have small shades built all over them to escape from the sun which I hear is pretty strong usually.

The Bad
1. During the counselling they totally mis-represented the placements. When I asked for an average for the CS department the answer was it's somewhere between 3 and 5 lpa. When I asked for a number, I was, after a lot of persuasion, given a number of 3.3 Lpa by somebody in the PAT dept.
2. I wanted to go and check out the the CS department. I was stopped by one of the many rude security guards present in the campus. When I insisted he took me to some faculty member who was apparently a prof. He asked me stuff like "why do you want to see the dept.?", "What is the point in speaking to he faculty?" etc... I then walked into the office of the Public relations officer who, scared of me creating a scene told the guard to take me to the CS department. Why would you stop people from checking out departments?
3. There are apparently 500 students in a single batch of computer science. I enquired about this branch coz this is the one my cousin is joining. 500 people! Source P.R.Officer


The ugly

1.In the batch of 500 students 266 seats were offered through counselling and the rest i.e.234 were offered under the management quota. This is shocking. So much so that I confirmed this thrice. Once with the PRO, once with the admissions office and once more with some CS faculty!! Apparently the numbers for ECE and some extent EEE are also rather identical!! For those people who had commented on my blog about VIT offering only 10% seats through donations....People go check you figures. These are shocking proportions to take through management quotas!!
2. After I manged to get into the CS dept. I spoke to some faculty members. I cannot express in words how poor they were. VIT has about 180 faculty members in the CS dept. Of these 3~4 have PhD's the rest of the people have a B.tech/MCA background. I spoke to about 15 faculty members and hardly anyone was capable of carrying out a conversation on any academic lines. I was left speechless at how unbelievable bad there are. I have absolutely no idea of how these people are going to educate students in the art of CS! Here is a part of a conversation I had with 3 faculty members. All 3 were senior lecturers. I will not use names :P

f1: What are doing(as in where are u studying?)
me: sir I'm at IIIT-h. I'm a dual degree student. I'm doing my ms/r part right now.
f1: what is ms/r
me: This means you will get your MS for research work and not coursework. You will have to produce some research work that will form your thesis and after that you need to defend it.(some more explanation about msbr followed)
f2: So you don't do any courses in your final year?
me: yeah pretty much. The focus is on research.
f2: Tch Tch what kind of a PG course is this? You should look at the M.tech course at VIT. We teach our students advanced concepts like software engg and java programming!
f3: so You need to just present a few papers and you get your MS?
me:(utterly shaken state) Yes thats it ...just a few papers(sigh!)

some time later we came to the topic of placements.

f2: we had very good placements this year. M$ , google and yahoo came here.
me: How many people did google hire?
f2: Google didn't hire anybody.
f3: actually google's selection process was wrong. They allowed only computer science people to sit for their written tests and in that written test they asked things that were out of syllabus.
At this point I started to giggle!
f3: Why man ...what is so funny?
me: Nothing sir...I was just thinking how silly these IT companies can be! Asking things out of syllabus is really atrocious :D

There is a lotta more masala where this came from but I shall not write it in respect of those Studying at VIT (which includes my cousin :P)

But on a more serious note what I saw at VIT was the unholy nexus of money and education in it's full fury. While I'm not against institutes charging very high fees, I'm against institutes selling them. Also I have now developed great respect for those who study at VIT and manage to do well with their careers. It's a credit to them to be able to emerge from this mess and do well. I hope my cousin can do the same.

And for India today and all those who campaigned for VIT on one of my previous posts. It is very irresponsible of you to attempt to position VIT as a top class institute ahead of NIT-T,NIT-w and IIIT-h. For those who study there and know the place I'm even more shocked that they would consider lobbying for VIT. With the faculty you have and the method of admissions....all your infrastructure counts for absolutely nothing. I never ever imagined that the faculty would be so so atrociously bad. Good luck to whoever studies there.

PS: This post contains only my opinions and shouldn't be your guide to choosing/rejecting VIT. Go there and check out the place to form a educated opinion.