Mechatronics Engineering

MIT, Manipal is one of the few colleges that provide an education in Mechatronics Engineering. The department was branched in Mechanical Engineering earlier, and was separated out 3 years ago. As a student here, I would say this was my best choice (considering I was planning to take up mechatronics at VIT) Why? I would like to briefly explain few points:
1) The course is amazing, and yes involves both mechanical and electronics subjects. They breeze through some topics which mechanical guys would study for two semesters, while also focus on parts like Programmable Logic Control/ Microprocessors, Electrical Drives, Machine Elements and CAD design etc. All the topics are covered up to sufficient level of requirement of an engineer.
2) Facilities: We get to use the labs from about 5-6 departments over three years. Apart from which, there are organizations like International Society of Automation and IE mechatronics which do provide a source for knowledge we won't find in our books. Not only these two, but the college has several projects like A student Satellite project, An F1 car team, a Solar Car team, Robotics team, all of which involve quite a large margin of mechatronics engineering.
3) Placements - I will speak the truth, it is hard for me as well, but mechatronics placements in India is tougher than getting our political system free of corruption. There are few instrumentation and controls/ Electronics engineering and sometimes automobile companies that recruit students, but if you compare to other branches, it may seem like you and your batch mates look like the dumber lot.