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All You Need to Know About IIT-BHU

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The Indian Institute of Technology, BHU – better known as IIT BHU Varanasi – is one of the oldest and most respected colleges in the country. Founded as the Banaras Hindu University in 1919, it was renamed as IT-BHU in 1968 and finally became an IIT in 2012.

IIT BHU is one of the very best technical colleges in the country. Along with CONCEPTREE let’s find out all you need to know about IIT BHU (Banaras Hindu University) in this article.

IIT BHU Admissions

Like all other IITs, admission to IIT BHU is through the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE Advanced). To write this examination, you must first clear the JEE (Main) and be in the top 20 percentile of your board in the 12th standard.

The programs that are available through the JEE (Advanced) are the Four Year B. Tech. program and the Five-Year Dual Degree program. The engineering departments that can be joined include the following:

  1. Ceramics Engineering
  2. Chemical Engineering
  3. Civil Engineering
  4. Computer Engineering
  5. Electrical Engineering
  6. Electronics Engineering
  7. Mechanical Engineering
  8. Metallurgical Engineering
  9. Mining Engineering

The dual degree programs include:

  1. & M. Tech. (Ceramic Engineering)
  2. & M. Tech. (Computer Science & Engineering)
  3. (Civil Engineering) & M. Tech. (Structural Engineering)
  4. (Electrical Engineering) & M. Tech. (Power Electronics)
  5. & M. Tech. (Mechanical Engineering)
  6. & M. Tech. (Metallurgical Engineering)
  7. & M. Tech. (Mining Engineering)
  8. & M. Tech. (Biochemical Engineering)
  9. (Bio-engineering) & M. Tech. (Biomedical Technology)
  10. & M. Tech. (Materials Science & Technology)
  11. Five-Year Dual Degree Program in B. Pharm. & M. Pharm.

Since this a government institute, standard reservation requirements are applicable. There are also no DASA seats in the undergraduate programs via the SATs. Foreign nationals who wish to secure admission to IIT BHU must write the JEE (Advanced) as per the provisions made available to them.

IIT BHU Ranking

IIT BHU consistently ranks among the best in India. Most rankings and reviews classify it in the top 10, such as India Today (6), Outlook India (6) and The Week (10). As per the QS rankings of the best Asian colleges, IIT BHU appears around the 150 mark, which is quite good, considering the size of the sample set being considered.

Provision for Fee Waiver

  • The candidates belonging to the SC/ST/PH category are eligible for 100% Tuition Fee Waiver.
  • The General and OBC category candidates whose family income is less than Rs.1 lakh per annum are eligible for full remission of the Tuition Fee.
  • The General and OBC category candidates whose family income is between Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 5 lakh per annum are eligible for remission of 2/3rd of the Tuition Fee.

IIT BHU Placements

IIT BHU has an impressive placement record and the following statistics are a testimony to that.

  • In 2016, the highest package offered was Rs. 2.27 crore Per Annum by Google US
  • In 2016, the average package offered was Rs. 10.90 Lakhs Per Annum.
  • In 2015, the top packages offered were Rs. 2.03 crore Per Annum by Oracle and Rs. 1.63 crore Per Annum by Google (including Employee Stock Option Plan – ESOP)

Many prestigious employers such as Agserve Goomalling, Applied Materials, Google, Infosys, General Motors, Microsoft, Oracle, Walmart, Accenture, Vodafone, TATA Steel, etc. recruit from the IIT BHU campus.

IIT BHU Campus

The campus is located on the southern edge of Varanasi on the banks of the Ganga. Given the age of the college, it is understandable that the architectural style is very Gothic. The 2nd largest IIT campus at 1300 acres, it is full of greenery and culture. Every hostel room faces a garden. There are 3 separate colleges within the university: the Institute of Technology, the Institute of Medical Sciences, and the Institute of Agricultural Sciences. At the exact center of the campus, there is a large temple dedicated to Lord Shiva, which conducts prayers every day for devotees.

There are 12 boys’ hostels and 1 girls’ hostel with 2 extensions. The accommodation is 2 to a room from the first year onwards. All the hostels have LAN connectivity, and some have Wi-Fi as well. First years have separate hostels, while the other students are allocated hostels randomly, with students from all years being in one hostel. Each hostel has its own common room and sports facilities (badminton, volleyball, etc.), as well as a canteen and a few smaller eateries. Inter-hostel events, such as sports competitions are common.

There is a separate complex devoted to athletics, and the sports facilities (apart from those in the hostels) include 2 football fields, a hockey field, a cricket field, and so on.

IIT BHU Clubs

The clubs are divided into various councils under the central Gymkhana. Each council has a few related clubs. Some of these clubs are described below:

Cultural Council

  1. Fine Arts Club: The FAC is involved in sketching, painting, calligraphy, sculpting and so on. They organize various events such as IIT Open (internal to IIT BHU) and Toolika (part of the fest Kashiyatra). Other activities include decoration of the college for the various festivals conducted. They also participate in the fests of other IITs and have won prizes at their events as well.
  2. Indian Music Club: This club is dedicated to the promotion of Hindustani and Carnatic classical music, Bollywood music, folk songs, and so on. Members of the club include musicians, lyricists, composers and sound mixers.
  3. Quiz Club: The Quiz Club regularly participates in quiz competitions organized by various colleges and is ranked 5th among the equivalent clubs of all IITs and IIMs. Notably, they regularly win the Tata Crucible quiz, one of the most competitive quiz events in the country. The club also organizes quizzes during the various fests of IIT BHU, such as the IMS India quiz of Kashiyatra 2014, which saw a footfall of over 5700 students!
  4. Literary Club: This club organizes the reading, speaking, and writing sessions on a variety of topics.
  5. Masquerades (Theatre Club): This club enacts various street plays, skits, stage plays, and mimes. Some notable alumni of the club include Varun Grover, Vaibhav Suman, and Sumit Saxena.

Film and Media Council

  1. Animation Club: This club works with animation and 3D-modelling. Among its most important tasks is creating teasers and videos for the various clubs and fests of IIT BHU. All their content is created using software such as Adobe After-Effects, Maya, and 3DS Max.
  2. Cine Club: This club focuses on producing short films, music videos, and trailers. It uses a similar software as mentioned for the Animation Club above. It conducts workshops for the freshmen and other interested students to teach them about the basics of cinema and cinematography.
  3. Design Club: The Design Club makes posters, T-shirts, magazines, newsletters and other merchandise. The software used includes Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, and Corel Draw. Like the other clubs, they also conduct regular workshops and sessions to train freshmen.
  4. Media Club: The Media Club publishes the institute newspaper, Quest, and the Freshmen Survival Guide. It provides a platform for writers to hone their skills and showcase their talents. They organize various workshops and writing competitions as well.
  5. Outreach Club: They act as the voice of the FMC in the student body, conducting surveys and publishing the opinions of the students.
  6. Photography Club: They act as the official photographers of the events occurring in the college and also organize independent competitions. They also conduct workshops to train freshmen in such matters as the functioning of DSLRs and the usage of relevant software.

Science and Technology Council

  1. Astronomy Club: This club organizes amateur astronomy activities and various discussions and workshops. They have participated and won various astronomy events held in the IITs.
  2. Club of Programmers: They aim at developing an interest in the various fields of computer science and its applications. The members of this club maintain awareness of the latest developments and technology and conduct activities in fields such as App Development, Algorithmic Coding, AI, Cryptography and Data Science.
  3. Robotics Club: This club undertakes projects in fields such as manual and autonomous robotics and embedded systems. Some of their projects include: Energy efficient path planning for a UAV, Water quality estimation, Head mounted display with voice commands using Raspberry Pi.
  4. Club of Economics and Finance: The purpose of this club is to develop interest among the students in this field and educate those with little to no knowledge of economics and finance.
  5. SAE-BAJA: The automotive enthusiasts of the college work together here to build, from scratch, an all-terrain vehicle and compete in SAE BAJA India, where the vehicle is subjected to a number of tests to prove its quality.

Games and Sports Council: This council organizes all games and sports events in the college. Being an IIT, the facilities available for all sports are top notch and leave nothing to be desired. An annual sports festival, Spardha, is also organized. Some of the sports played include football, tennis, cricket, table tennis, swimming, basketball, and so on.

IIT BHU Fests

There are a number of fests at IIT BHU. These include Kashiyatra, Technex, and Spardha.

Kashiyatra: This is the annual cultural festival of IIT BHU. Held in the month of January, it covers a number of fields such as literature, music, dance and the fine arts. Some of the notable artists who have graced the stage of KY in the past include Shaan, Javed Ali, Parikrama, Indian Ocean, Lucky Ali and Coke Studio. It is widely considered to be the largest college festival in North India.

Some of the events in KY include:

  1. Enquizta: This mini-fest within Kashiyatra is organized by the Quiz Club. A number of quizzes are organized, such as the 90s themed quiz, Biz Tech Quiz, India Quiz, and a SpEnt (Sports and Entertainment) Quiz.
  2. Bandish: Bandish provides a platform for budding musicians to showcase their talent. The competitions within Bandish are Sur, Sanlayan, Kriti, and Advaita.
  3. Natraj: As the name implies, this is a series of dance competitions. There are opportunities for group, solo and duet performances (Bliss, Cut-A-Rug, Ecstasy).
  4. Crosswindz: This is one of the flagship events of Kashiyatra. Bands compete against each other in the preliminary rounds in various cities prior to KY. A few are chosen to perform in the final event. Some of the more famous bands to have participated in recent years include Undying Inc, Albatross, Underground Authority, and Tiny Fingers.
  5. Toolika: This is organized by the Fine Arts Club and has the following events: Soap Carving, Rapid Fire, Spoil the Tees, Paper Costume Designing, and Clay Modelling.

Given the scale of the festival, it is understood that it has big-ticket sponsors. The sponsors for KY ’17 were LIC, Hero, KUV 100, Sunburn and Ola, among others.

Technex: This is the annual technical fest of IIT BHU and is held in February. Technex organizes workshops, lectures, and events in various fields of science and engineering, and sees participation from teams across the country. The prizes are commensurate with the scale of the fest, ranging from a few thousand rupees to over 1 lakh rupees for an individual event.

Some of the events in Technex include:

  1. Robonex: This is a series of robotics competitions-Maze Explorer, Robowars, Hurdlemania and Pixelate.
  2. Ascension: This is a set of flying events, where one builds and flies RC aircraft. The events in this are Drone-Tech, D’Aero-Glisseur, La-Trajectoire, and Momentum.
  3. Byte the Bits: This is a set of coding competitions including Capture the Flag, Appathon, International Coding Marathon, and Mlware.
  4. Creatrix: This has competitions involving animation, design, documentary, and photography. The events are 2D, Animaze, Avant Garde, Collage, ISO, and Minimise.
  5. Game Dungeon: Possibly the most fun aspect of Technex, tournaments in all the popular E-Sports such as DoTA 2, CS, FIFA and NFS are organized.

Other events organised are a Startup Fair, talks by eminent personalities (Dr. JN Reddy, creator of FEM; Sam Pitroda, and Balaji Viswanathan (highly popular personality on Q&A website Quora)) and workshops on 3D printing, Swarm Robotics, Bridge Design, IoT, etc.

Spardha: This is the annual sports festival of IIT BHU, held in October. Tournaments are organized in hockey, basketball, cricket, boxing, tennis, etc. Interestingly, LAN Gaming competitions are also organized in CS: GO and FIFA.

IIT BHU Notable Alumni

The notable alumni of IIT BHU include:

  • Krishna Kant: Former Vice President of India.
  • Varun Grover: Lyricist and Songwriter.
  • Nikesh Arora: President at Softbank, highest paid Indian executive in the world.
  • Palle Rama Rao: Scientist and Padma Shri.
  • Thomas Anantharaman: Developed IBM Deep Blue supercomputer.

That’s all you need to know about IIT-BHU. To know more about such colleges stay in touch with CONCEPTREE.

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