Semi-Column
Oasis Review Committee
As is the case with all people who assume power,
there must be at least one
occasion for the whole lot
to flock together, only to
learn that they aren’t exactly birds of the same feather.
A manifestation of the
mentioned adage was the
Oasis Review Committee
convened on 15th Nov.
More on Page 2
SU Midterm Report
Aditya Bhatt speaks to the
EPC about changes the SU
has brought about already
and those in the pipeline.
He talks about the Career
Mentorship Cell, the book
bank, the much debated
meal cancellation system,
Oasis and APOGEE, MB
and SR Redis, RO purifiers
in bhawans, and the sad
state of the SU servers
stemming from apathy.
More on Page 4
SSMS GOES ONLINE
For those of you who are
always in for a shock when
you get your monthly semester’s mess bill, SSMS
has taken the tech-savvy
route and started an online
portal to help you monitor
your monthly expenditure
on food. Visit ‘ssms/’ using the hostel LAN, and
you can view your dues,
ANC bills, split-ups and
the like.
We’re listening!
Hate mail or fan mail, we
welcome all kinds of feedback. You could even write
for us in the future. Send
us a mail at
[email protected] or
drop a message on our Facebook account ‘The Fine
Print Online’.
Placement Review
The end of the semester is nigh;
for fourth and fifth years, so is
160
the end of their affiliation with
140
the college. It is also the start of
120
a new one somewhere else, de100
pending on how well placements work out for them. More
80
than one hundred companies
60
have come to Pilani this semes40
ter and a good percentage of
20
students from every branch
0
A5
A1
A2
A7
A3
A8
A4
AB
C6
C7
have been placed. Whoever has
% Placed
seen previous years’ statistics
44
81
69
94
94
91
89
33
83
67
will not be surprised to see the
Ave (LPA) 7.93 6.82
6.5 27.11 8.92 9.67 6.55 9.46 14.7 6.81
A7 bar towering over the others
Max (LPA) 23
12
12 147.62 27
27
27
27
28.87 11.2
in the graph. While the averages
have been grossly inflated by a handful of fulfilments of so called “dream jobs”, the graph does give a rough overview of the
relative differences in the packages that companies kindred to various disciplines offer.
Across the Disciplines
WINTER WINDOW
EPC spoke to the Coordinator of the Placement Unit, Syed Ain
Ahmed, to learn the details of the new module that will be tested later
this year, the winter placement window.
ompanies will be coming to the campus during the
winter break, from the 20th of December 2013 to the
12th of January 2014.The fact that many more students
will be able to participate in this than in first semester or
second semester placements makes it a win-win situation.
Students who are off-campus in the first semester of the
year often complain that they lose out on trying for many
core companies – this grievance will be addressed as all
students will be able to attend this new placement session.
Also, this window gives a company incentive to come on
campus by offering it a much larger talent pool to pick from.
There are certain constraints to this initiative, however,
Ahmed warns. One is that the IIT placements that happen
C
at the same time can potentially divert some big firms from
coming to BITS. The extreme winter climate here in Pilani is
another factor that has dissuaded the PU from trying this
initiative in the past. This year’s pilot run will have
companies coming for Mechanical, Chemical and
Manufacturing disciplines. (These disciplines are eligible to
sit for regular placements as well, by the way.) The fact that
most companies already have a fixed recruitment schedule
does make the task difficult but around twelve firms have
already confirmed that they will come to campus. Ahmed
expects that this number will go up to around twenty.
If this first trial works out smoothly, the winter window will
expand to hold more companies and more branches next
year. Computer Science, E&I and EEE may not be part of
this scheme, though, looking at their already excellent
record.
THE YEAR GONE BY
We ask Syed Ain Ahmed how his tenure as the coordinator of the Placement Unit went, what it was new and what else he wishes had been done.
Ahmed came to Pilani on 10-January-2013 and hasn’t gone home in over ten months; he and his team have been working
into the night ever since. The results of their effort show – placements have been bigger and better this year than ever before.
We have already had about a hundred companies on campus and this will rise to 120 by the end of the semester, the highest
ever. At the summer workshop held in Goa earlier this year, Ahmed says, the PUs of all three BITS campuses decided to
share their databases. Although Pilani didn’t seem to stand to gain much from this exercise, the PU deliberated on the matter
and decided to go ahead with it, and we have benefitted by being able to call many more firms on campus than we did before.
PU also pushed for companies like Vodafone to come on campus and recruit students for summer internships, and this has
been a successful project. Another highlight of the placement process this time was the PU’s conscious effort to get students
placed in core jobs of their respective disciplines. The ambitious Syed, however, is still not satisfied – hoping that someday
BITS would achieve 100% placements. (Contd. On Page 3)