Pune Institute of Computer Technology M.Tech Review By Nik Tandel

Pune is world famous for its engineering colleges. The reason I say world famous is because one will see a lot of foreign crowds in Pune colleges and city in general. I have never seen anything in Ahmedabad and therefore coming here was a pleasurable experience for me. PICT was an obvious choice as the course I wanted to do, PICT was the best college in it and more importantly when I checked the placement record, they were immaculate. The study at PICT was neck breaking for sure but at the cost of great placement, one can surely cope up with. PICT is a small college with just two streams and therefore it becomes an ideal choice for students doing CE. PICT management is good and it was like a second home for me as every other student was from my state. I loved being a part of PICT and I am sure everyone who pass out from here will take back some of the nicest memories.

Masters from PICT was more like a safety net and as even if you screw up in academics, you might still land a decent job. PICT masters was a specialized one as we were mastered in one domain and thereby could cut down on competition of various highly paid jobs. Masters of Engineering are mistakenly considered with par of graduate engineers but what they might not know is at least 10-12 hours were spent in libraries during the weekend. We could earn stipend while doing masters from PICT as that was the biggest motivation of academics at PICT.

I was highly impressed by my faculty of grad college and even more from the faculty of PICT. All the faculties believed in research based academics and made us believe the same. Microsoft has given the college various research papers and faculty helped us doing that. IBM has set up the labs at PICT and to use those labs, experts were needed. Needless to say, PICT faculties were more than capable of making the best use of those labs for their students. The faculty on the whole were some of the most amazing and charming personalities of the campus.

If IBM and Microsoft are partners of the college, then you can imagine why won’t they hire students from PICT. Apart from them all the big Indian IT companies too were present for the placement drive and almost the pay scale offered by all was more or less the same. The average payment offered was double than that of grad students, i.e., 6-7 LPA and highest gone all the way down to 22 LPA. Figures may look astonishing but I am painting the exact picture of placements that happened during our time. These figures may have attained new highs as IT industry have leaped frog many a mile post pandemic.

Hostel were quite close to the campus in fact right next to the college gate. So, walking through was never the longest walk only when I walked in for the last time around because the hostel life of PICT was amazing. Most students with whom I stayed at the hostels had the experience of staying at the hostels, while it was my first-hand experience. All I can say, student life is incomplete unless and until you spend some part of your college life at the hostels. Once you have had hostel food means you can learn compromising because on some days the food was exceptional while on most days, Khau Gali close to the college bailed us out. For, M. Tech students the in-time to the hostel was as high as 10 pm and so going on a city tour while staying at the hostel never been an issue.

Honestly the infrastructure was not that impressive neither was the college location. There was nothing in and around the college and even the college campus was so small that once the classes were over, we rushed back to the hostels. Yes, all the facilities required like the auditorium, library and a canteen were there but not much sporting facilities. Almost all of us were into sports and had to go elsewhere to play. The college’s strength is low so the campus never looked overcooked with people but still having a nice campus especially when is out of the main city is must. Colleges like Sinhgad and MIT have such nice campuses but PICT campus was a mismatch to the kind of rapport that it holds.

Firstly, in Pune, the campus life is always good because the campus operates till 8 pm. The canteen and the college library on request were extended till 9 pm. So, to burn some oil for research, the college library was the place as it didn’t maintain the pin drop silence that it required but had some of the most productive moments of my college life. I was so impressed with the fests at the campus as colleges in Gujarat need to buck up because the standard of college fests in Pune is of next level.