Academics @ IIT Mandi

Unlike other IITs, IIT Mandi has schools instead of departments. Currently there are four schools

1. School of Computing & Electrical Engineering
2. School of Engineering
3. School of Basic Sciences
4. School of Humanities & Social Sciences.

The Institute offers B.Tech. programs in Computer Science & Engineering (CSE), Electrical Engineering (EE), Mechanical Engineering (ME) and Civil Engineering (CE). These four schools also run individual research based postgraduate programs. Currently, IIT Mandi offers the following Post Graduate Programs:

1. M.Tech. in Energy Engineering with specialization in Materials.
2. M.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering with specialization in Energy Systems.
3. M.Tech. in Electrical Engineering with specialization in VLSI.
4. M.Tech. in Biotechnology.
5. M.Sc. in Chemistry
6. M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics
7. Integrated-Ph.D. (I-Ph.D.) in Physics

The institute is planning to start the following three new programs in academic year 2017–18:

1. M.Tech. in Communications and Signal Processing
2. M.Tech. in Power Electronics and Drives
3. M.Sc in Physics

IIT Mandi has fairly a good number of faculties in all these schools, a majority of whom are under 40 years of age. Information regarding the same at institute website. The curriculum of IIT Mandi is bit different. It focuses on inter-disciplinary studies, which is appreciated as well as criticized by one or the other. Refer to this for B.Tech Curriculum:Courses << IIT Mandi

Faculty to student ratio is quite low, so you get a chance to interact more freely and frequently with faculty members which helps in overall growth.

Brief Overview of UG Programs offered at IIT Mandi

1.Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

It won’t be wrong to say that its an era of technology and CSE is one of the branch that is booming a lot in this era. IIT Mandi has a quite good faculties including Director of the institute who is himself from CSE background. As far as the coding culture is concerned, it has improved a lot in past few years. Read this answer to get a bigger & better picture of coding culture at IIT Mandi- Sahil Arora’s answer to What is the difference between IIIT Delhi and IIT Mandi, in terms of coding culture?

If you are looking for high packages, then placements here are pretty good. We host a mix of both Indian(Amazon, Microsoft, Flipkart etc.) and foreign(Worksapp, Capital Dynamics etc.) companies.

2. Electrical Engineering (EE)

EE is one of the core branches. IIT Mandi curriculum is defined such that one gets a taste of more or less or the possible career options that one can get after studying EE viz. VLSI, Communications, Microelectronics, Signal processing, Electric Drives, Nanoelectronics etc. As far as the placements are concerned, we’ve hosted companies such as ISRO, Mathworks, BPCL, HPCL, Texas Instruments, Tejas Networks, LnT etc. The packages are not very high as compared to that of CSE.

3. Mechanical Engineering (ME)

Similar to EE it is also one of the core branch. IIT Mandi has a number of faculties from mechanical engineering background. The main areas of research are broadly classified as Materials and Design, Thermo-fluidsEngineering, Energy Efficient Buildings and Infrared Signatures. Other than that IIT Mandi has following labs for enhancing practical knowledge of students:

• Vibration Acoustic lab.
• Smart material and structure lab.
• Biomechanics lab.
• Building physics & advance material mechanics lab.
• Multiphase fluid & particle mechanics lab.
• Energy material lab.
• Nanoscale Materials and Devices lab.

Regarding the placements, IIT Mandi has hosted companies such as ISRO, BPCL, Mahindra, HPCL, Coal India, Hyundai, LnT etc in the past. The packages offered are also quite good.

4. Civil Engineering (CE)

Compared to others, it is a fairly new branch at IIT Mandi. Before the starting of civil program, IIT Mandi organized workshop to decide on the curriculum and labs. Participants were Prof Balthasar Novak, Stuttgart University, Germany and a number of academics from IITs and other Indian institutions. So, quality time was spent on designing the curriculum.

Currently there are eight faculties in the civil department and more are being recruited .Regarding labs, environmental, structural, geotechnical, survey concrete and building material labs will be funded(a large amount of money have already been sanctioned). But, it will take time to built but for the time being students will be taken to IIT Roorkee for some labs which institute will take care off so that study doesn’t get affected. Since the first batch is yet to graduate, so no data for placements is available as of now.

Branch Change

Branch change at IIT Mandi is pretty easy as compared to other iits. A total of 20 students collectively from (Mechanical + Electrical + Civil) can change the branch to CSE. However the number can increase if someone from CSE jumps to other branch. Also the CGPA cutoff is not too high. It depends on the performance of batch and number of students who apply for branch change. It can vary from 8.3 to 8.8.For the exact set of rules, refer to this link: http://iitmandi.ac.in/academics/branch_change.php

Student Exchange Programs

For the students interested in higher studies, an excellent opportunity available in IIT Mandi is the semester exchange programms which provide a lot of exposure to students. IIT Mandi currently has MOUs signed with: Higher Education Institutions,University(Ontario),Finnish RWTH Aachen University(Germany), McMaster IT University(Copenhagen)Blekinge Institute of Technology(Sweden), University of Stuttgart(Germany), TU9 Germany. Detailed info is available at https://students.iitmandi.ac.in/...