Review of my college life at Manipal University, Manipal

A good college to opt for if you have the money to afford it, and definitely worth the money if you make the most of your college life there and participate accordingly.

The curriculum is designed as per the guidelines mentioned by the Council of Architecture who gives the license to practice architecture as a profession at the end of the five year course. All relevant subjects are included. There are regular juries conducted which have internal as well as external panelists. The architecture building is combined with one of the engineering buildings but there is enough space to work. One drawback is that the engineering students get to sit in AC lecture halls, whereas architecture students who have to work manually and draft on sheets, get non AC classrooms. At times, we found the drafting tables unfit for drafting our sheets. That would mess our sheets up. There is a Computer Aided Design Lab (CAD LAB) which is open during college hours and is available to work in and take prints. There are also site visits taking place from time to time. These visits would be at local tile factories and other small manufacturing units, mostly local. There is also a class visit held once a year to a different city. We has class visits to Goa, Chennai and Pune in year 1, 2 and 3. Fourth year is thesis and fifth year is entirely oractise school i. e. internship.

There was no specific placement cell at the time I graduated in 2017. It has recentle been launched and is still getting shaped. However, the college provides letter of recommendation to us if we ask in case we have to show it to an employer. There was absolutely no campus placement for architecture, but other departments have an excellent placement cell in place.

There is a cultural festival held annually, which includes cultural activities like dance, music, photography etc. The best entries also win prizes and recognition. There is also a sports day held annually with sports like volleyball, badminton, table tennis, swimming and races. Participation by all is encouraged starting from audition and trials stage.

The college is definitely expensive, in terms of fees and also Manipal as a place to stay (monthly expenditure if you are mot a hostelite). There is transparency in the break up. However, the fee has increased a lot over the years. It is much higher for NRIs. The fee at my time was around 2 lakhs per annum so around 10 lakhs for the entire course. It includes a laptop for each student. The fee is much higher now.

No, I did not avail any scholarship. For architecture, I doubt there is any. But Then there are certain categories like Konkani which are eligible for scholarships from their state govt.

Campus life is great, a lot of space to walk around and all sports facilities like recreation club, gym, swimming pool, basketball court are inside the campus. they are well maintained. The Labs have excellent facilities too. A lot of students also come in from other countries for exchange programmes and social volunteering clubs like AIESEC and Rotaract Club. There are also few department stores within the campus itself for students who wish to buy utiities, toiletries, stationeries, snacks etc. There are several clubs like literary club, fashion club, dance clubs (which is doing very well internationally now) and they keep going to different colleges around the country for fests. There is a lot of exposure, almost unending interms of extra curricular activities so make the most of it. Besides, there is a lot of time after classes to participate in these.

Yes, I was in the hostel for three years. There is an option to opt for triple sharing, double sharing and also single rooms. Besides, one can also choose between AC and non AC rooms. There is laundry facility also available and students can use the washing machines in the hostel. The wardens are usually nice and helpful until you meet the curfew time which was 11pm at that time. There is a night canteen, where you can go eat if you hungry late at night. The mess is also decent, better than most college messes in India. They keep changing the menu throughout the week.

There is not much interaction with alumni as such but the seniors in the college are very friendly and helpful.

I chose B. Arch as my course and appeared for a national architecture entrance exam called NATA. The admission criteria in the B. Arch course is NATA score as well as 12th marks. 50% weightage was given to each parameter. My NATA score was 98/200 (pretty average) and 12th percentage was 85%. Both were good enough to clear the cutoff for Manipal. So I filled up the application form and paid the fee along with submitting my scores. There is no separate exam for architecture department. After getting a call for counselling where they allotted students to the sections and also took us for a campus tour alongwith hostel. The campus is extremely beautiful and impressive in terms of infrastructure. There is also a food court where students can have paid lunch with their parents.

The faculty is a mix of experienced and unexperienced faculty. While some faculty is extremely experienced and experts in their fields, other batch of faculty is just Masters students who are pursuing their masters from the same college and are given the task of teaching in their spare time. That is disappointing as they are not efficient in clearing doubts and giving enough inputs. For theoretical subjects, they just keep reading slides thats all. There are no aged teachers, they are mostly young or middle aged.