College of Engineering, Trivandrum B.Tech Review By Hari Chettiar

CET may not be the highest ranked college of Kerala, but arguably CET is one of the best colleges that you will see in Kerala. Kerala's state entrance exam (KEAM) for engineering. One thing that CET has done is that they have reserved few seats for students from the North East States and Andaman & Nicobar Islands as the college considers their National Level entrance scores and gives them the admissions. This is a very nice initiative by the college as there aren't many colleges in these states or union territories for that matter. CET, therefore, has a multicultural environment at its campus. Thus, just like NITs or IITs, one can see diversity at the CET campus. Talking about NITs and IITs, students at these colleges hardly get space or time or, let's call it, freedom. At, CET though, there's a lot that students do other than studying.

CET falls under the state university, and Kerala has done everything right other than getting the syllabus right. The more focus of the college is on that student should understand the subject matter rather than marks. Few students maintain 70-80% because they are good at predicting what's coming in the exams and studying that much. Thus, rote knowledge is not gauged with their marks at CET. In engineering college, predicting the question paper is not an art, so students with lesser attendance also pass their exams. The time schedule of CET is just like a school as classes begin from 9 am and a one-hour recess (lunch break) and then again classes till 4 pm.

Faculties holding PhD degree is a common practice in colleges these days. The same is the case with CET. If I have to pick one differentiator, then that would be that the faculty of CET are quite down to earth as they never boast their degrees or make us realize that we are PhD holders. This quality is rare as I have been to one more college, and professors would show that they are something.

The reason why most Malayali people work outside is that there's not many industries in Kerala. Also, even though Kerala is a south Indian state, the industries are happy to take students from Andhra or Karnataka. College displays a list on these many colleges come for placements, but the truth is only 20% of those came and offered jobs to 50% of the students. Companies like Siemens, Bosch, Hyundai offered jobs to mechanical students. The new addition or surprise was the entry of Mercedes India as they came and hired a few students of our batch. The average salary offered to graduates was around 25-30,000. As a fresher, it was a decent enough packages, but the problem is with the number of students that had campus placements. Since it was just the half, I was from the remaining half that didn't get campus placements.

The college has both boys and girls hostel. The boys’ hostel is at the back of the college while the girls’ hostel is in the front. As far as boys’ hostel is concerned, 2 students were staying in each room and only the students who were from other cities than Trivandrum were allowed a berth at the hostel. Not just I missed out on the eligibility to stay at the hostel but also the fun that students had at the hostel. The hostel had few restrictions, but what I heard from the guys staying at the hostel, it was just too cool a place to live. Some had issues with the food as we Mallu's love food cooked in coconut oil while outsiders had their reservations with that style of cooking. Overall, the hostels are great, and students who stayed there have thoroughly enjoyed their stay at the hostels.

The college campus is amazing not just in size but also in terms of facilities. 250-acre sprawling green campus is nothing short of some iconic views that we had at the campus. Right from the architecture as some college buildings are 80 years old. Still, one will get mesmerized by the architecture of the college. Many colleges have started air-conditioning classrooms, but at CET, I guess it will take a while. The college has two canteens that serve some North-Eastern state dishes like Momos and Wai-Wai. All the facilities that CET has is nowadays can be found in almost all colleges but there was a differentiator and that was the Trest Research Park. A complete corporate styled IT park for students interested in research work.

Fun filled and joyous as being local lads, we were given a little extra importance by our mates from other states. Never enjoyed such thing in life before, so that was a new experience. A fancy annual event and some clubs made students engaged with activities throughout the year.