Computer science is the most favoured choice of engineering course aspirants at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs)
A quick glance at the opening and closing ranks of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE Advanced) at the top IITs and NITs in the past few years shows that candidates do have a positive bias towards B.Tech computer science.
The opening and closing ranks (gender neutral) for computer science at IIT, Bombay, this academic year were 1 and 59; 3 and 100 at IIT, Delhi; 51 and 200 at IIT, Madras; 92 and 272 at IIT, Kharagpur; 103 and 213 at IIT, Kanpur; 278 and 416 at IIT, Roorkee; and 333 and 554 at IIT, Guwahati.
At the same time, the opening rank for JEE (Mains) for outside students at NITs in Surathkal and Tiruchirappalli was 278 and 338 and 3,382 for home students at the NIT, Calicut. (In all NITs 50% of the seats are allotted to students of the home State).
However, the opening and closing marks considered at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, were 340 and 260 out of 360 in the JEE (Mains).
Better avenues
Why the top ranking students choose computer science over other disciplines have many factors, including the possibility of better placements. The average annual salary offered for computer science students at the NIT-C, ranked 50th in the engineering colleges category at the national level, was ₹12.5 lakh.
Three students were offered the highest salary of ₹40 lakh and three others ₹33 lakh, all by multinational companies.
T.K. Suresh Babu, head of the NIT-C Training and Placement Cell for 2017-18, said computer science provided challenging opportunities including app development.
Besides, the training period during the post-hiring period is less for computer science graduates when compared to the other engineering streams. Working with multinational companies and the prospects of going abroad also attract the students, he said.
Incidentally, the Analytics Special Interest Group set up by NASSCOM has predicated that there could be a shortage of around 2,00,000 data scientists in India in the next few years.
Employability factor
However, employability factor has also been the biggest issue for companies since data analysts are drawn from different fields, including mathematics, information science, and computer science.
Sanjay Sharma, an IITian and a faculty at a JEE coaching institute, says engineering aspirants choose computer science because of the good departments at the IITs, especially Bombay and Kharagpur. “But many candidates have wrong notions that computer science is an easy branch when compared to the other B.Tech. courses. Many have been compelled to go for extra tuition. Besides, students at IITs face a tough syllabus than their counterparts at the NIT,” he said.
