How I chose my course and college: Devlina Roy

I passed my class 12^th in 2013 and took a year gap for preparing various entrance exams. I did self-study at home and borrowed study materials from my friends and brother. Since I had selected a combined stream in class 11^th i.e. Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Biology, I had to prepare for both medical as well as engineering entrance examinations. I always had an affinity towards Biology and Science; hence I was more focused on doing well in that field. I used to write down what I had studied throughout the day and revised it in every 2 days. This has improved my self-learning and understanding. I had a timetable of my courses which I followed in such a way that a particular portion of the course was to be covered every day. Though it is obvious that most of us can’t complete it, I will always suggest to stick to your plan. It’s important to complete your course in due time and then practice different sample papers as much as you can because what I have learnt from my experience is that after solving many papers, I got the idea about the questions and the type of the questions which were usually asked in the examination.

I gave AIPMT (Medical), AIEEE, WBJEE (state examination for medical and engineering) and a few more examinations.  Well, during that time of year, the medical seats were confined to around 2000-2200 and a few colleges were shut down because of low faculty members and bad infrastructure. Hence, I lost my chance of being a doctor. But luckily, my hard work paid off as I got 16000 rank in the WBJEE engineering examination. Hence, I opted for engineering.

In WBJEE, we have to sit for counselling after the results. During that procedure, we had to give our 3 choices for the college and stream that we want. The counselling was conducted in three rounds. On the basis of the rank obtained, various colleges were allotted as a suggestion. Say for example, if I would have got a rank between 1000-1500, I would have been suggested colleges among Jadavpur, Heritage or Shibpur (Kolkata), which were top colleges in the state. Since I got 16000 rank, my options were Techno India Salt Lake, St. Thomas and Netaji Subash Institute of Technology. I opted for Techno India Salt Lake, with the stream Information Technology because it was the best college at that time and still is, among the colleges stated above. At the end of the day, what matters is whether your college provides you with a good environment to study, a room for co-curricular activities, a site to showcase your talent and last but not the least, the placements. More than 40 companies visited our college this year, for example, CGI, Deloitte, Microsoft, Hitachi, MindTree, CTS, Cerner Corporation, Tata Consultancy Services, Persistent, etc., with a CTC ranging from 3.2 LPA to 10 LPA.

I got placed in Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in October 2017, and I am expecting my joining letter in June.

Coming to the college life, I would say that I had the best four years of my life. Starting from academics to making friends to participating in cultural events or being the core committee member, I enjoyed my journey. The college provides you that environment which will help you to groom yourself in the future. Having friends with different cultures, from Gujaratis to Tamilians, I learned a lot. The college life is a heap of experiences. Hence, whenever you get the opportunities, grab them and make the best out of them.

About the Author:

My name is Devlina Roy and I have completed my BTech degree in May 2018 from Techno India Salt Lake, Kolkata. (Session 2014-2018). Since childhood, I was very much inclined towards sports and art, so whenever I get free time, I do crafting or sketching. I create my own canvas with whatever I see and apart from that, I like to read blogs, specifically Quora.