It was about a year ago around this date itself, that I was any engineering aspirantsfind themselves.

It was time for me d it was a choice which would change my life.I chose (after tense thinking,mindyouBITSPilani,Hyderabad Campus. Andafter he college, I know I made the right choice.

in the position so m to make a choice. An much struggle and in spending a year in t

Disclaimer: Blatant advertising ahead .Read at your own risk, you might just get persuaded to become my junior.I'm here to persuade you to come to BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus. First of all, just to prove I'm not trying to pull your leg, a nd that this college should be a serious contender for your affections, I'll lin kyou to this page -http://admissions.aglasem.com/?p=5649--frYes, BITS Hyderabad (all right, they missed out the S) comes in second in the list of private colleg es inIndia. Interested now? Read on! A bit of background first. BITS Hyderabad was founded in 2008 by the wishes of t he late Dr. KK Birla. He wanted to see the Hyderabad Campus function at full cap acity before he died. Alas, it was not to be.He died on the 30thof that very yea r. As you people might or might not be knowing, BITS Pilani and the Hyderabad ca mpus function on thesame guidelines. Apart from the difference in teachers and l ocation, there is absolutely no difference inthe style and quality of teaching b etween them. Pilani and Hyderabad (And Goa, for that matter) bothfollow the MIT system of edu cation. Students must do a few mandatory courses for their owndiscipline and are allowed to choose some electives according to their interest. The disciplines available are : BE (Hons.) Chemical Engineering BE (Hons.) Computer Science Engineering BE (Hons.) Ci vil Engineering BE (Hons.) Mechanical Engineering BE (Hons.) Electrical and Electron ics Engineering BE (Hons.) Electronics and Communication Engineering B Pharm. (Hons. ) MSc (Hons.) Physics MSc (Hons.) Mathematics MSc (Hons.) Economics MSc (Hons.) Chemistr y MSc (Tech.) Information Systems One of the most important things about the BITS system is our Practise Schools. A Practise Schoolafter second year and a practise school during one half of the fourth year (the whole of fifth year forMSc students) is highly recommended. In fact, one is registered for them by default. You'd have to approach the Student Division to get it cancelled. If one gets an Msc, it doesn't mean that all hopes of engineering are over for the person. BITS has aprovision for giving out Dual Degrees. The course becomes an integrated course so that after five years you w ill be given two degrees instead of one. The Msc you were originally given, and a BE of your choice. The choice, of course, will be influenced by the marks you get in your first year, so make sureto study hard, all you Msc students. If you ask many people, they'll be able to tell you about the Pilani and Goa cam puses. Pilani, becauseit's Godforsaken Pilani,and Goa, because it's been up and running for close to a decade now. Hyderabad is the shiny new campus which came up three years ago. If you are worr ied about the stateof facilities there, I won't lie to you. Not all of them have come up yet. However, the only ones thathaven't come up yet are the Auditorium and the sports facilities. The hostels, the academic block, themesses, the marketplace, all have already co me up. The roads are built, the gardens are maintained (infact,they look like th e gardens of a resort), the music club has a place to jam, the photography club has a place to display its projects and the art club has a room to paint the hel l out of .We also have a great gym. In fact, there are two of them , one for boy s and the other for girls. Presumably, I know nothing about the girls' gym (peeping is kinda hard) but the boys gym is fullystocked. To the best of my knowledge, almost everything require d for a full workout is present there.

We've got footballers, power lifters (Yes, we do have a power lifter and he love s the gym. He alsoknows what he's doing seeing that he broke the BOSM Power lift ing record when he went to Pilani.), casual gymmers and people like me who go on ce in a while. The gym accommodates us all.The Academic Block is awesome too. Se eing that we have no compulsory attendance, we just go thereto give tests (just kidding, we go there to collect papers too), but in our short time there, we can tellpeople that the place is amazing . Every classroom is fully air-conditioned (beat that Pilani!) and thelecture halls are amazingly modern. You can hear tea chers boom out on JBL speakers and pretend to study. We have excellent faculty. The teachers know what to do and are not afraid of their students. Theyencourage you to seek them out at all times of the day and have no qualms in answering do ubts wayinto the evening. They give out our results on time (how we wish they di dn't) and keep us on our toes .True, we bitch about them, and insult them behind their backs (err. sometimes, not always), but everyone of us realises that the people we have are experts in their fields. Many of them get grants from various organisations (there are TVs in the lobbies of the Academic Block which show wh ich professorgot what grant, those interested can bore themselves there) and do research in their own time. Theygive a lot of time in designing our question pap ers (we wish they slacked off.) and spend a lot of timein checking them well. An d frankly, they spoil us. We don't go to classes, don't listen to their advice t hroughout the year, and yet when we come to them with doubts just before our exa ms, they greet us with smiles and answer us pretty well. Enough about our faculty. I'll spend some time in explaining our society there. First, the students.See, the first thing you must know is that since we qualified for BITS, we can (and do) considerourselves the crme-de-la-crme of th e engineering world. And oh yes we are! We encourage you to think the same (and recognise that as seniors, we are infinitely greater that you will ever be, but tha twill be impressed upon you when you come to campus). People expect to find a bunch or nerds in a top Engine ering college, or a bunch of geeks discussing Quantum Physics all the time. You will find them, true. But remember, they are not the majority. Avast majority of us here have worked long and hard to get where we are and now we want to stretc hourselves. Polishing our hobbies comes first, and studying comes a distant last in our priority list. I ama keyboard player, my best friend is a singer and a dancer (or so he thinks) , my neighbour is a reallygood footballer, and I've probably introduced you to t he power lifter already, no? Another friend is acomputer whiz (and a coward to b oot), I have friends who love keeping up with current affairs (likeme) and then we have those who scoff at our hobbies. We repay the favour by scoffing at their s. But in the end, we remain good friends. We go to the city together, discuss g irls, watch movies late intothe night, listen to music, jam in my room (and dest roy people's hearing), watch sitcoms and anime,and at times we shed aside the ge ek in us and turn into rabid LAN gamers. We make the most of ourtime in college and have fun like nobody's business. And when come exams, we run for books like the hounds of hell themselves are on out tails. At this point, I'll reassure you about the ragging thing in our campus. There is none. There are hugeposters in campus listing phone numbers to call if you get ragged. And plus, we're too good to rag you. We'll make you suffer in other ways ! Now I turn to Clubs, First off, I'll tell you about the music club, since that 's the one I'm the most familiar with (I'm in it). Ourequipment is awesome (real ly, no other word for it). We have a Pearl drum kit, Marshall and RolandAmps, a really expensive mixer, a damn good keyboard, an octo-pad, huge speakers from JB L, and more importantly, amazing people behind those instruments. The people who aren't very good workpretty hard, and the ones were really good work harder sti ll. The music club also has a classical aspect(I'm in the western half, so I'm n ot that familiar with it) and has all the instruments you'd normally associate w ith classical music. Starting from the Tabla to the Veena, we have them all. Eve n better is the fact that the administration is very receptive to what we want.

They acquiesce to our demands(within limits) whenever we feel the need to make t hem. The only thing we're lacking is acousticpadding on our walls. I am in the l iterary club as well, whose job it is to hold debates and essay competitions, to run the magazine and other fun stuff. Its the most active around fest-times, so look out for it then. The club iscalled ELAS English Literature Appreciation So ciety. Other clubs include the Dance club (Its oriented more towards Indian dances), th e Quiz Club (We havevery good quizzers), the Photography Club, the Art Club and various others whose names I've forgottenand never bothered to learn. All of the m come together during fest time. Our cultural fest is called Pearl, and it is a grand affair. The last time we had it was our first experience at having a fest at the national level and I tell you. Wepulled out all the stops. The highlight of the show was the Swedish Death Metal band DarkTranquillity . The image of fans and non-fans alike screaming themselves hoarse and head-banginglate into the nig ht comes to mind. Lots and lots of fun. And then came the Pakistani band Strings . 'Nuff said. Do invite your friends to the next one. It will be one hell of a rid e.There is one club I'd like to devote some more space to. It's called CEL, or C entre for EntrepreneurialLeadership. It is a club devoted to furthering entrepre neurial feelings within the BITS population. The people part of it are usually those who wish to either do an MBA afterwords, or want to set up their own businesses after graduation, or both. These guys se t up competitions for judging ideas on what canand cannot work in a home grown b usiness. For those of you who are a bit sceptical about this idea(Like I was whe n I came), do remember that a lot of BITS Alumni went on to become businessmen. Most of you, however, will have ambitions to go on for an MBA after this and I a ssure you, you willfind like minded people there .A programme which will be impl emented as soon as we go back is the Student-Mentor Programme.The objectives are to designate a senior mentor for junior students (a third or fourth year mentor, andfirst and second year disciples) to help them out in case they have any problems. Since this will be thefirst time this progr amme will be implemented, we have no idea as to how it will work. I guess a litt le amount of co-operation will be needed from the sides of both mentor and disci ple in order to oil thegears for this. I wouldn't be too afraid, though. The fin est minds of CEL have come up with it and the best brains of the campus will be there to help you out.We'll go to sports next. A football ground is coming up, a s is a cricket ground. We do have temporary grounds though, where we play till t he permanent ones finally come up. We do, however, have indoorBadminton courts, a big Table-Tennis cum Carom room, two well-maintained Lawn Tennis Courts and a couple of Basketball courts. Notice my emphasis onwell-maintained. That's becaus e everything isextremely well maintained. They don't just remove excess grass fr om the courts, the courts are kept intip-top condition. I'd be damned if Roger F ederer or Michael Jordan could say a thing about it. Our next pit stop is the hostels. They are good. Everyone gets single rooms. You can do whatever youwant in it and no one gives a damn. It is, after all, your r oom. I have a friend who eats eggs twenty-fourseven in his room and another who watches anime all day long. No one cares. We get cold water to drink at all time s of the day, very well cleaned toilets and bathrooms, and clean corridors. No o ne hasyet to fault the cleaning staff for neglecting their duties. And if it con tinues the way it has been going, then I bet no one will have to either. We have this huge ground in the middle of the Hostel which has a couple of volleyball c ourts and twobadminton courts. People can be seen playing volleyball at two in t he night at times. The mess is. the mess. Simple as that, no other answer. There are two of them, but seeing as myarguments pertain to both, I will refer to both the messes as it . It has a huge capacity, makes tons andtons of food (some of which we avoid) and the taste would make any seasoned wine tast

er cringe, but since I am not one, I can live with it. For those of you who are Jains, the mess people have no qualm sin making food without onions and flavour, so be happy. The cycle of food repeats weekly. There are,of course, numerous ar guments about which mess's food tastes better. None of them ever come to a conclusion. For all you g ourmets out there, you will have another eating option in the Campus,namely the restaurant Temptations . Next we move straight towards the library. It was in the process of completion t he last time I saw it, and I swear to god, if the construction workers relaxed t he instant we left, then they will regret it. The library is supposed to be real ly huge (one of the biggest in India, I'm told) and will hold untold volumes of wisdom. The temporary library we had was also pretty good. It had magazines rang ing from digit forthe technology-freak to the Harvard Business review for the en terprising CEL-man. You will find textbooks and reference books galore and many works of fiction on its hallowed shelves. You will alsocome face-to-face with an irate librarian if you do anything bad in the library, so be careful.What else is to be described? Oh, the campus is a ways off from the main city, so you might only be able to ge t out on weekends. That's not too bad, though. Just a short ways off from the Ca mpus we have a four-star resort called Alankrita and a really good Dhaba called Vic eroy . Since most basic needscan be met in the campus marketplace, you will have t o venture towards the city for extras. That,however, is a non-issue. There is a special bus provided by the APSRTC to go from Secunderabad Station to the Campus and back. It runs more than ten times a day. Since Secunderabad Station is a tr ansportation hub, there are no problems. If you manage to miss the bus, there ar e always buses willingto take you to the city from Thumkunta (the closest villag e). To get to Thumkunta, just pay an autorickshaw 10 rupees (each) and hop off a t the village. There you go. That covers everything which has been built and stuff that is stil l to come up. Except forone thing. The auditorium. It will be built soon, and wh en it is built, it will be the biggest auditorium ofits kind in Asia. That is al l I can say about it since the foundation stone was laid in the last week of Apr il.The first batch of students will be graduating this academic year, and we all wish them luck from the bottom of our hearts. We hope that you will be as integ ral to the college as they were (Don't count on it Bits Hyderabad - an Overview) Edited by Pikachu94