THE opening up of deemed university status to standalone engineering and management colleges has enabled some institutes such as Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham  to drastically increase capacity in the last two to three years. While the recent decision by the government to derecognise some of them came as a jolt, the Supreme Court’s decision to maintain status quo has resulted in most of these colleges moving further up on their growth path.

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While some of the deemed universities like Amrita  have begun to produce academic work of good quality, all of them have infrastructure of a reasonable quality. Some of these colleges like SRM have multi-location campuses while many others like VIT  boast of  a truly international student body. Most of them have student exchange programmes with different universities. What stands in good stead for the student is the assurance of a certain level of infrastructure and resource availability, though the level of teaching and learning experience vary widely. With individual admission processes and large capacities, these colleges do provide a better chance of obtaining an admission vis-à-vis some of the comparable state colleges. So  it makes sense to keep some of these colleges in your consideration set.  

College Profile: Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham

Location: Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
Chancellor: Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi
Flagship programme: BTech 
Entrance exam: AEE (Amrita Entrance Exam)
Student intake: 1,240
Disciplines: Aerospace, Chemical, Civil, Computer Science, Electrical and Electronics, Electronics and Communication, Electronics and Instrumentation, Mechanical 
Full-time faculty: Not available
Fees (full course):  Rs. 411,100
Board & lodging (two years): Not available
Approval/Accreditation: AICTE approved, NBA accredited 
Average placement salary: Not available
Top recruiters: Accenture, Bank of Baroda, 
Microsoft, Symantec, TCS 
Other programmes: MTech, MCA, MBA, 
MBBS, BDS, BAMS, BEd, BSc, MSc
Other campuses: Amritapuri, Kochi, Mysore, Bangalore
Web site: www.amrita.edu

HEADQUARTERED in Coimbatore, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham is spread over 339 acres of land, and has campuses at Amritapuri, Kochi, Bangalore and Mysore, and offers courses in Business Administration, Computer Applications, Engineering and Technology, Arts and Sciences.

Extensive libraries exist at all Amrita campuses. The library of the Amrita School of Engineering at the Coimbatore campus comprises of 44,500 volumes of books, 36,690 titles, 278 national journals, 47 international journals, 3,500 online journals, 10 databases and computer and reprographic facilities. All libraries are computerised using OPAC. Library or manual automation software such as LIBSYS is also used. Amrita’s five campuses, put together, have nearly 350 classrooms, and the three Schools of Engineering have nearly 100 fully-equipped, hi-tech labs. 102 classrooms and 45 labs of these are at Coimbatore. 

Full-time students may be employed as Project Associates on funded research projects by the university, provided there is an overlap between the student’s area of research and the focus of the funded project.

The university has signed MoUs with various overseas universities such as  University of California, Davis, USA, University of Tokyo, Japan,  and King’s College, London, to facilitated internships, fellowships and other intiatives.
Additionally, five American Universities including the University of California campuses at Berkeley and San Diego, Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, and State University of New York at Buffalo, will join Indian institutions led by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, ISRO, and the Department of Science and Technology to enhance science and engineering education in India over Edusat. This venture is funded by Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Cadence. In terms of residential facility, the Coimbatore campus has 6 boys’ and two  girls’ hostels, which accommodate 3,515 boys and 410 girls, respectively.