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Any Engineering aspirant knows that JEE – Mains and Advanced are the toughest exams to crack. It’s not just the level of questions that are asked, but the sheer number of students who appear for the exam that makes the competition even tougher.
In 2021, around 11 Lakh students registered for the JEE- Mains exam. Out of this, only about 2 lakh qualify for JEE Advanced and only the top 50,000 rankers in JEE Mains manage to get a seat in NITs or GFTIs (Government Funded Technical Institutions) or IIITs.
For the top 15,000 rankers, there’s not much of a problem. They will probably get their chosen branches or at least a less-preferred branch in the top NITs. What happens if you don’t get it? Do you have a chance? Can you get an engineering seat without JEE? The answer is YES!
NITs and IITs are not the only places to study. There are a lot of other private colleges where you can get a seat for a branch of your choice. Here are some of the best engineering colleges you can get in without JEE.
BITS Pilani (Pilani, Goa, Hyderabad and Dubai)
The first non-JEE option any engineering aspirant can consider is BITS Pilani. The main Pilani campus was established in 1964. The Dubai campus was started in 2000, while the Goa campus started operations in 2004 and the one in Hyderabad was inaugurated in 2008.
Admissions to the Indian campuses of BITS Pilani are decided on the basis of BITSAT – their own admission test while admission to the Dubai campus is based on your 12th board marks.
Courses offered at BITS Pilani
All campuses of BITS Pilani offer B.E degree in various disciplines. As of 2022, Civil Engineering is not offered in Goa. For individual campuses, please check the official website, whose link is given above.
The campuses also offer 5 year integrated M.Sc degrees in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Ecnonomics. What’s unique about these M.Sc programmes is that they also give you an opportunity to get a B.E branch in the second year and finish with a B.E-M.Sc dual degree. The branch for B.E depends on your first year’s CGPA. Most of the students do end up getting a B.E degree, so it is almost guaranteed, that you will get an engineering degree. The top 20% students (this is not fixed) in the first year get Computer Science as their second degree.
Your M.Sc branch does not matter when your first year’s CGPA is considered for your B.E branch as all M.Sc students (and B.E students in fact) have the same syllabus in the first year.
Placements for dual degree students is the same as the B.E students and some companies do prefer students who have an additional degree, like Math for data science related placements and Economics for Finance related placements.
The infrastructure at all the campuses at BITS is excellent and will offer you one of the best atmospheres to study. The only drawback is the fee. Being a private institution, the fees can be up to 3 times more than what you would pay at an NIT. The institute also has MCN (merit cum needs) scholarship and study loans offered in tie-up with SBI, so studying at BITS is not a major problem.
The syllabus for BITSAT is almost the same as the one for JEE, so no separate preparation is needed for Math, Physics, Chemistry and Biology (for B.Pharma). However, BITSAT also has English and mental ability sections, so you may need a bit of extra preparation for these sections. The paper has more number of questions than JEE, so you will just need to practice for BITSAT by solving papers of previous years with a timer.
Admissions to BITS are completely merit based. Placements are excellent with multiple product-based and core companies recruiting students from all the 3 Indian campuses. BITS does not officially release the placement statistics, but the average pay at BITS Hyderabad campus is above ₹15 Lakh per year. The averages at Pilani and Goa campuses are expected to be slightly higher (as the campuses are older)
BITS also offers a practice school, which is an internship to all the students, irrespective of their branch. This is something which even students in NITs cannot expect, unless they are from CSE branch. The practice school lasts one semester and most of the students also get a stipend.
If you are a student who is considering dropping a year because you didn’t get a great rank in JEE, but you are getting a seat for M.Sc in BITS, you should definitely consider taking the M.Sc degree. You will get to pursue a B.E degree from the second year, that too from one of the best colleges in the country.
Manipal Institute of Technology
Manipal Institute of Technology is another reputed institute that’s preferred by many students. Located in Udupi, Karnataka, the institute also has a campus in Bangalore. Admissions to Manipal Institute of Technology is done on the basis of the Manipal Entrance Test, which also applies to Manipal University, Jaipur and Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology in Gangtok.
Manipal Institute of Technology offers B.Tech in Computer Science, Electronics and Communication Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Civil Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering, Information Technology, and some of the new age disciplines such as Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Mechatronics. For the exact branches available in each campus, visit the official websites.
The campus offers excellent learning facilities and comfortable hostels. In fact it is one of the very few colleges where you can opt for single occupancy, air conditioned rooms with attached washrooms from the first year. (subject to availability)
Fees are on the higher side and can cost over ₹20 Lakh (in 2022) for the 4 year B.Tech Programme. Placements are good for Computer Science students. Students of Mechanical and Civil may also get placed into IT companies by mass recruiters, for a lower pay grade.
Core branch placements can be a little difficult, especially at the Jaipur and Sikkim campuses. For example, on checking the Sikkim campus placements page, you will notice that most of the offers are from mass recruiters, and most of the placed students are from CSE, IT and ECE. Some mechanical engineering students have been offered jobs at Go-Speedy-Go, which is an automobile repair company, which is not very famous as yet.
If you are interested in an IT career and are getting admissions to the CSE, IT or ECE branches, you may consider Manipal Institute of Technology as an option, especially the Manipal campus. Though your initial pay may be slightly lesser than your IIT or NIT counterparts, you will be able to catch up in a few years.
Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT)
VIT is one of the most preferred colleges by students who are unable to crack JEE. VIT has 4 campuses – Vellore, Tamil Nadu (Main campus), VIT-Chennai, VIT-AP at Amaravati and VIT- Bhopal.
VIT Vellore is the most sought-after campus, followed by Chennai and then the Bhopal and Amravati campuses. VIT Chennai is kind of an extension of the Vellore campus. VIT-AP and VIT-Bhopal are separate entities, as you can see that VIT Chennai website is on the same domain as VIT Vellore (https://chennai.vit.ac.in/), where as VIT-AP (https://vitap.ac.in/) and VIT-Bhopal (https://vitbhopal.ac.in/) have their own separate websites.
VIT Chennai students sit for placements at the Vellore campus at the time of writing this article, but may change in the future.
Curriculum-wise, VIT offers some of the best courses and have a flexible learning format, where students are allowed to choose their subjects, faculty and class timings every semester. VIT offers many of the new-age technological courses like Blockchain, IoT, AI-ML etc as specializations with B.Tech (CSE).
Placements are also good for IT-based careers. As per VIT’s placement statistics, the average CTC is around ₹8Lakh per annum. Some students do get super dream offers from Microsoft, but they are very few in number.
A lot of students in Mechanical and Civil too get placed, but in IT companies, and mass recruiters like TCS. Core companies are very few.
VIT Bhopal and VIT AP too have decent placements for IT companies, but as per their official website, the average salary has dropped a little in 2021 for the Bhopal campus, which could be due to the pandemic effect.
Source: VIT Bhopal website
Overall, if you join VIT and perform well, you will most probably walk out with a job offer, though very few students end up with the ₹40L dream offers.
The main drawback of VIT is the size of the campus and the strength. VIT Vellore campus is nothing short of a mini town located on either sides of the railway track near Katpadi. VIT Vellore alone has around 3000 seats for CSE, CSE specializations, IT and Circuit branches put together. Add to this the 1500+ students from the same branches in Chennai campus who will attend placements in Vellore. The competition can be intense and may require multiple rounds of attending interviews before you grab an offer. It can be frustrating and draining.
Hostels do offer the comfort of AC to some students. However, these hostels also have rooms where 6 students are accommodated together. It can be at times, difficult to get some personal space but can improve your social skills. 😁 Room allocation from the second year is based on your CGPA, so if you managed to get an 2-bed AC room in the first year, may be disappointed if you get a 6-bed non-AC room in the second year.
Admission to VIT is done via VIT entrance exam (VITEEE). Normal fee for B.Tech can be above ₹20L for 4 years. However, VIT has 5 slabs of fees, where the top rankers get to choose category 1 slab for which the fee may be only half the regular fee. Category 2 is slightly higher and so on up to category 5 which is the highest fee slab. You are asked to fill your choices based on category and branch. For example you can prefer category 3 CSE at Vellore above category 1 ECE at Chennai and so on.
Overall, a seat in VIT Vellore for IT related branches in lower fee categories is worth it. Higher categories are fine and better than taking a seat in a less known local engineering college based on state level entrances. VIT Vellore has a good NIRF rank and is a known name across the country.
VIT Chennai may be fine, if you are getting the lower slabs. The AP and Bhopal campuses may be chosen as a last resort as some local colleges like VJTI Mumbai, PSG Coimbatore, CoEP Pune, CBIT Hyderabad etc. are probably better than these 2 campuses in terms of teaching and placements.
Some other colleges you may consider
In addition to the above, there are a few more colleges you can consider joining.
- Amrita University: The first branch was started in Coimbatore. They also have campuses in Amritapuri, Kerala, Chennai, Bangalore and Amaravati. Teaching and campus facilities are decent. Placements are good for IT sector, like most other colleges. However, students do complain about the uniform and vegetarian-only menu in the hostels. If these are not a problem for you, this college can be considered.
- SRM Institute of Technology: The main branch is in Kattankulathur, Chennai along with more campuses in Chennai, Delhi, Amaravati, Delhi, Sikkim, Sonepat. Admissions are via SRM-JEE. Placements for CSE branch are pretty good in Chennai.
There are many more like KIIT, Thapar, LPU, Symbiosis which can make this article too lengthy.
Final Words
To be honest, if you are an average student, you can get a seat into VIT, SRM, Amrita or Manipal, at least at their non-main campuses. If you work hard, you will surely be able to get an offer from a mass recruiter. Once you get that first push, the rest of your career entirely depends on your own capabilities.
A seat in BITS is definitely tougher to get and you should probably choose BITS over VIT, Manipal, etc. You may probably be getting a CSE in VIT or Manipal but Civil in BITS (happens to a lot of students every year). In that case you may choose CSE in VIT, as your placement opportunities with a CSE in VIT are definitely better. (If your passion lies in Civil, please go for it by all means!)
However, if you are getting an M.Sc in BITS, you can consider taking it over VIT, Manipal and the others because you have a decent chance of getting at least circuit branches in BITS in the second year, if you work hard and it will be worth the extra year.
