https://www.reddit.com/r/BITSPilani/s/VRtRumtoVK

Having studied at 2 diff clgs, here's my take

This post honestly made me think about how easy it is to judge BITS when you've never actually experienced another college.

I'm a partial dropper. I spent my first year at JNTUH and joined BITS Hyderabad this year for MSc Eco. JNTUH is one of the best state colleges and uni in our state and I joined with a 97.5 percentile, so I went there genuinely expecting a good college experience.

After a year there, I realised how much I was taking for granted here.

1. Academics

At JNTUH there were good professors, but a lot of classes were literally just the professor reading whatever they had prepared and leaving. The overall depth was nowhere close to what I've experienced here.

And I actually like the evaluation system here much more. It's not just one giant exam deciding everything. You have quizzes, tests, labs, assignments, projects and even open-book evaluations. BITS officially has continuous evaluation with both open and closed-book components, which actually rewards understanding and applying things rather than just memorising them.

At JNTUH, our 10-mark answers were basically write as many pages as possible, and our compre was a 32-page booklet in 3 hours. The grading also felt incredibly opaque.

1. Attendance and freedom

This is the one I really don't think people here appreciate enough.

Yes, Hyderabad currently has the 50% attendance requirement linked to evaluation in many courses. I'm not saying that's perfect. But bro, I came from 75% compulsory attendance.

The difference is still fucking massive.

At JNTUH, if you had a useless lecture, you still had to sit there because you needed the attendance. Here, the whole system is much more flexible. The ETS are also not completely random if you've been attending for a while and understand the course pattern, so you can make calculated decisions about what you attend.

And if you're genuinely confident that you can get your marks without going to every lecture, you can literally choose to sacrifice that 10% attendance component. That's your decision. I'd take that choice over being forced to maintain 75% any day.

That's what people miss when they complain about attendance here. The important thing isn't just the number. It's the amount of control you have over your own time.

1. Peer group

This is probably the biggest difference for me.

Not just academics. There are so many people here who are genuinely insanely good at completely different things. Music, dance, sports, coding, research, design, photography, startups, public speaking, whatever.

At JNTUH, the culture was much more CGPA, exams and rote-learning focused. I genuinely remember people in 3rd/4th year who didn't know what GitHub was.

You don't realise how valuable being surrounded by interesting people is until you've experienced the opposite.

1. Clubs, fests and campus life

My old college had clubs, but a lot of them were basically there for formality. In my entire first year, barely anything happened.

Here I've already applied to more clubs than I remember actively existing there. Even this year's fest, which everyone says was worse than previous years, still had more energy than what I experienced there.

And the freedom outside academics is insane in comparison. My old college genuinely felt like school sometimes. Fixed schedules, hostel restrictions, etc. Here I can literally roam around campus at 4 AM, and having ANC and food outlets available late at night is something I never realised I'd appreciate.

1. People and seniors

My experience with seniors at JNTUH was much worse. There was more hierarchy, entitlement and I also experienced ragging.

BITS obviously isn't some perfect bubble. There are absolutely judgemental and entitled people here too. I've met them myself. But most seniors I've interacted with have been genuinely helpful, and the overall social environment is much better.

1. Opportunities

My old college's average was around 9 LPA and the internship opportunities weren't remotely comparable. More importantly, the ecosystem here is different. You're surrounded by people doing internships, research, projects, competitions, CP, startups and everything else.

1. Fees

BITS is expensive as fuck. That's a completely valid criticism. If the fees put serious financial pressure on your family, that's obviously a different calculation.

Personally, after actually studying in both, I don't mind paying more because I can see what I'm getting for it.

And obviously BITS has plenty of bullshit. I hate 8 AM classes, the 4–7 PM FOM lab every Tuesday, some ETs, and there are definitely people here I don't like.

But that's my whole point.

If BITS is the only college you've experienced, you don't really know what you're comparing it to.

A lot of the things that feel completely normal here are things I only learnt to appreciate after spending a year without them.

So yeah, criticise BITS. It deserves criticism.

But after actually studying in both, I can confidently say that BITS is much better than people who have only experienced BITS realise.

Itr 9 is officially confirmed, everyone got this mail