Santhosh Mallikeswaran's Review on SASTRA University, Thanjavur

Many independent communities in SASTRA University conduct a yearly event known as Internsfair, through which they contact startups that are located primely in Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. Students who are interested to do an intern in the finalised list of startups need to take up an aptitude test, based on the aptitude score one-third of total participants will be shortlisted for the next round. The next round varies from company to company. Few companies prefer to have a direct Skype interview or phone call interview. Few companies prefer to have further shortlisting of candidates to match the required portfolios. Then the offer letter is provided to the candidate by the company. The selected student pursues his/her intern in the company according to the time constraint the company and student agreed upon. The stipend varies from company to company. Everything including the date of working, stipend details and address of the company will be mentioned clearly in the offer letter.

I have an experience of doing an internship in four startups namely Snackexperts(Chennai), Startup Xperts(Chennai), Apprao Gallery(Chennai) and Sellergro(Chennai). My first internship was a virtual intern and took up the role of Business Development Executive. I was paid a motivating stipend of INR 1000. The second internship was an in-office internship and took up the role of Marketing executive. I was paid a stipend of INR 5000. The second and third internships again was a virtual intern for the role of Social Media Marketing and Email Marketing respectively. I was paid a stipend of INR 7000 and INR 4500 respectively for the complete duration of the intern.

Key companies for placements include Freshworks, MuSigma, PayPal, Amazon, BridgeI2I, ABCO, Informatica, Latent View, Go Frugal, Zoho, Standard Chartered Bank, City Union Bank. These are companies that will recruit 10 people on an average. The bulk recruiters are TCS and IBM. The highest paid package is INR 27 LPA by Amazon, followed by INR 21 LPA by PayPal. The average LPA of all companies coming to the campus for recruitment will be INR 6 LPA. 

70 Percent of the people get placed in TCS and 20 Percent will get placed in the above-listed companies. Few people will pursue their higher studies directly after their Under Graduation.

There are twelve hostels for boys and girls with different accommodation capacity. Of the total seven hostels(boys), two hostels are for first-year intakes(i.e.freshers). The accommodation varies from a single room, two in one room, four in one room, five in one room. According to the capacity, the fee for the room varies. The maximum being INR 18000 p.a. and minimum being INR 10000 p.a. for the single room and five in one room respectively. Monthly mess fee and the miscellaneous fee will come around INR 3500. The hostels are maintained in a very good condition, to the extent that there has been no record of massive spreads or outbreaks of disease in hostels.

There are many PGs outside the college that will be suitable for boys because sanitation has always been an issue therein outside PGs. If girls, need to stay outside it is always advisable for them to rent PGs or houses in Thanjavur which is 12km from SASTRA University campus. But transportation from Thanjavur will always be an issue because of the crowded buses and infrequent bus timings.

The food in college hostel will be of an average quality and will not affect our health. There are two canteens in the college namely KRISHNA Canteen and Canopy. The first one is run by a third party inside the campus and they also do deliveries to the girls' hostel at nights. The second one is run by student community which will work from 8.00 am to 8.00 pm.

The campus has full Wi-Fi connection with a minimum speed of 100 Kbps and a maximum speed of 1 Mbps. There are routers in each classroom and in each corridor. There is a specific auditorium for each department and will be used to conduct workshops, events and meets.

There are two kinds of intake procedure for SASTRA University namely through JEE MAIN marks and the board marks. People who are from another state than that of Tamil Nadu has to come through Stream I (i.e. based on JEE MAIN marks) and people from Tamil Nadu have the leverage of separate reservation based on their board exam marks. But I wrote JEE MAIN, scored 189 out of 360 to book my seat at SASTRA University. I was not confident of my Board exam performance so I came in through Stream I. The cutoff mark for the top tier courses which includes Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Communication Engineering, Computer Science Engineering was 90 percentile of the top mark that has been applied for admission in the University. So the cutoff calculation goes like 30 percent considered from your JEE MAIN score and 70 percent considered from your Board exam score.

The University works based on the rules framed by UGC, it works for 90 days or 16 weeks which comes first. The classes start at 8.45 am daily. There are two short breaks at 10.45 am and 3.00 am respectively for 15 minutes. The lunch break will be for one hour. The lunchtime for each department will be different. The prime slots being 12.00 pm and 1.00 pm. Few departments will have lunch at 2.00 pm also. The weekly working hours differ according to the year of study. First-year students have to work for 31 hours a week, Second and third-year students need to work for 28 or 29 hours a week. Fourth-year students in the odd semester need to work for 26 hours a week and in even semester needs to work for 12 hours a week at maximum.

There is a system of study known as ACRS (Accelerated Course Reservation System). It provisions students who have CGPA of more than 7.5 to take up one eight-semester course otherwise known as Open Elective during their current semester from the fourth semester. So from fourth till seventh which amounts to four semesters the student can take one course each and complete four courses before the eighth semester. So that they can pursue Semester Abroad Program during their final semester.

The course fee for Bachelor of Technology for the batch 2014-201 was INR 45000 per semester. But the course fee has been revised twice. Now the current fee structure for one semester is INR 60000 + 10 percent of previous semester fee. So cumulative fee system has been followed from the batch 2016. 

Two kinds of scholarships are available, one being DEAN'S Merit List for the top 2 percent and 9 percent of the rank holders and Mess FEE Scholarship for people who meet certain disciplinary criteria. The Dean's Merit List for top 2 percent of the people will be INR 18000 and for people between 2.1 percent to 9 percent will be INR 9000. The mess scholarship for an academic year is INR 16000 which will be awarded to students who have attendance percentage more than 90 percent and who have also paid their monthly mess fee on time.

One scholarship is for academic excellence and another scholarship is for Conduct excellence. There is no cap limit on the number of students who are awarded scholarships, students whoever satisfy the criteria mentioned above will be awarded scholarship.

People who annual family income is less than 8 LPA may need to avail education loans for pursuing their under graduation at SASTRA University. The two banks that avail loans easily for students of SASTRA University are Indian Overseas Bank and City Union Bank. The university has allowed to set up the branches of the respective banks within the campus for the fast approval of education loans for the students of SASTRA University.

There are many student-run communities at SASTRA University.

Cultural Team - Kuruksastra

Technical Team - Daksh

Entrepreneurship Cell

Sastra Community Outreach Program

National Service Scheme

National Cadet Corps (Women Battalion)

Campus Startup Community

Each community has its own motive and works towards that. Apart from these communities which are common for all the departments, there are also department clubs like Robotics Club, ICTAS, Protocol, etc., So SASTRA provides a wide range of opportunities for the students to explore and get exposed.