Engineering colleges in India

The first engineering college was established in the Uttar Pradesh in 1847 for the training of Civil Engineers at Roorkee, which later become IIT Roorkee and an Institute of National Importance. There are 4000 engineering colleges in India with around 15 lakhs seats. Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu has the largest number of engineering colleges in India.

These engineering colleges and institutes are run by both government and private trusts. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are the renowned institutes in the country. 

Besides these institutes of repute some of the other top rated engineering colleges in India are Jadavpur University (JU) Kolkata, the Indian School of Mines Dhanbad, The College of Engineering Guindy, VIT University Vellore, Thiagarajar College of Engineering Madurai, Punjab Engineering College University of Technology Chandigarh, Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology Delhi etc.

Fees for the course in these institutes varies. Institutes like Symbiosis Pune, Sharda University, GNDU Amritsar, DIT Dehradun, IIIT Delhi and Mukesh Patel SoT in Mumbai charge anywhere between Rs. 1.4 to 2 lakhs per annum whereas others such as Jadavpur University, JNTU Hyderabad and CoE, Trivandrum offering the same in the range of Rs 3000 to 6000 per year.

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has sixteen centers located in different parts of the country. The National Institutes of Technology (NIT) has 30 NIT Centers all over the country. In 2002 Government of India, upgraded all the original 17 Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) as National Institutes of Technology (NITs).

Some of the popular engineering courses available in these engineering colleges are Aeronautical Engineering or Aerospace Engineering, Biotechnology, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Communication Engineering,

 Materials and Metallurgical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Mining Engineering and Petroleum Engineering etc.

The admission into these engineering colleges are through different examination both at All India level and regional level like- All India Engineering Entrance Exam (AIEEE) as Joint Entrance Examination (Main) (JEE (Main)) Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) ) Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) to name a few.

 These engineering colleges are doing yeoman service in the nation building process.

 NIT Rourkela offers 31 undergraduate programmes and IIT Kharagpur is the leader in postgraduate studies with 58 programmes. MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology Bangalore awarded 1406 B. Tech degrees, Jadavpur University’s Faculty of Engineering has awarded 123 PhDs in the year 2012-13 alone. With 1035 women students, Government Engineering College Bhavnagar has the largest number of enrolled women engineering students.  Amazingly Karunya University, Coimbatore have 7000 hostel residents of which 2582 are women.