Life as a Mechanical Engineering student : IIT Guwahati

A hard nut to crack, Mechanical engineering is for anyone and everyone who loves the concept of machines and has the zeal and passion to play with it. This branch of engineering has its own pros and cons. While the list of pros is long, one of the most commonly reported and experienced con is the lack of girls in this particular branch.

Read - Engineering Colleges: Where are the girls?

Here is Piyush Raj, a fourth year Mechanical engineering student from IIT(Indian Institute of Technology) Guwahati who, in a candid conversation with shiksha.com, talks about his life as a Mechanical Engineering student. Besides this, he also shares insights from a typical day in college for an ME student and what kind of hostel life do they lead.

A typical day in college

A typical day in college largely depends on your time schedule and the courses you’re taking in the semester. You can broadly divide it in two ways, Theoretical Classes and Practicals (includes Lab Sessions and Term Projects). On a daily basis excluding weekends, both of them will take minimum three hours respectively. You can enroll yourself in self-study and recreational activities, the rest of the time. A lot of it also depends what one wants to pursue in future, for example, a guy hoping to do MS in future, needs to devote more time in his studies and projects than any average student. The guy hoping to go into managerial field bounces between preparations for exams and various positions of responsibilities. A guy participating in inter-IIT Sports meet would have to report to field every evening.

Roughly speaking, 9 to 12 classes, 12 to 2 lunch/recess, 2 to 5 lab and then 5 onwards is completely on how you utilize it.

Practical and theoretical aspects of the course

It’s Newton Laws of Motion everywhere most of the time. You have to play with it in various machine. For example, if you’re studying machines and mechanism, you study various formation with joints and linkages, you study static and dynamics balancing. If you’re studying the design of machine elements, you put together force and moment equations so that the machine parts do not fail and meet the required criterion. The laws appear simple but the application part gets difficult with complexities.

However, the science of Thermodynamics, Heat and Mass Transfer and engines requires you to deal with different equations altogether where you have various cycles and methods of heat transfer.

Most of the time, the topics transcends the boundary of structured coursework i.e., the things taught in one course get it’s application in other courses as well. For example, boundary layer taught in fluid mechanics is readily used in heat and mass transfer. Fluid Flow equations are used when studying casting in manufacturing technology etc.

A great emphasis these days are also on computer simulations. For that you need to have basic coding skills.

The practical consists of verifying the theoretical results and takes consideration of practical losses which occurs and how to make tackle the loses. For example Strength of Material (SOM) will teach you about hardness and flexibility of materials. How the system fails at high load. Theory of Machines (TOM) lab will teach you about different mechanisms. Fluid Mechanics will teach you abour Reynold’s number and flow losses and flow friction etc.

Industry visits/ exposure

Industry visits are part of curriculum. It is done with the consent of HoD if the instructor feels the need of it. It is not compulsory though. At least in our college, industrial visits were not a compulsion at all.

Time spent on studies every day

It is difficult to put a number on it on a daily basis. Depends on the day, depends on the deadline of submissions.

Projects

There are term projects as a part of curriculum. The instructor evaluates it at the end of the semester and in the final year there’s a Bachelor Thesis Project which goes on for two consecutive semesters. Projects are mostly based on curriculum and the subject being taught except for the BTP where you get to choose your topic of interest.

Internships

Variety of Internships:

Technical (Industrial and Academic), Managerial (Industrial and Academic), Working for NGO’s. Working on your own start-up. Internships are compulsory at the end of third year for a period of 8 weeks. It is included as a non-credit course. A good internship increases job prospects for career oriented people, MS/MBA admittance chances for the one who’s eyeing for it. One should be sincere about it since, it makes you stand out from regular work/courses/projects.

Foreign Academic Internships is a great opportunity to learn and travel at the same time. Foreign Industrial Internship is very difficult to bag. Industrial Internship here in India, increases your chance of getting a Pre-Placement Offer.

Things I miss and wish to learn

My more emphasis on practical aspects is what I’d like to learn say, Making a machine from scratch all by myself. Apart from that, I have interest in, Language, Literature and humanities, that is something, I’d like to pursue.

As for the course is concerned, it needs to be structured. Mechanical Engineering is a very vast field of study. A little part is only fed during the undergraduate level which makes the student feel like, they know very little about the subject and even though they are graduates, they still aren’t mechanical engineers because they can’t fix a machine all by themselves. A student having interest in manufacturing technology should be allowed to take electives in manufacturing every semester apart from regular courses, for that he might need to skip a course on say, solid mechanics.

Similarly, the one eyeing for Robotics needs to know his electrical and electronics well. He should be given facility to skip advanced manufacturing technology. Such kind of flexibility is missing.

College life and hostel life

There isn’t any specific college or hostel life style specifically defined by the label of mechanical engineers. Yes, we don’t have girls in our batch but the college is a big place in itself. And we hang out with friends from other branches all the time. College life is very similar to other engineering undergraduates.

Hobbies

Travelling, Reading. Writing

Extra-curricular activities, societies and more

Technical and Cultural Fests namely, Techniche and Alcheringa.
Technical Clubs like aeromodelling, robotics, astronomy, finance etc.
Cultural Clubs like Drama, Dance, Fine Arts etc.
Sports club, the Inter IIT sports meet.

Student Gymkhana which is the student governing body. There is a structure in place which take care of day to day execution and the planning is done in consent with the deans and chairmen

5 good and 5 bad things about the course/branch.

There isn’t anything bad about the course or the branch. You’ll find it good if you took this as a major because of your interest in it. But there are areas which need modifications and that academic modifications are very slow in India.