The day that unfolded a new journey, Common Entrance Test seat selection process day. I would rather quote it as “The Turning Point”. When I told my friends about my selection there were a lot of speculations I had to go through, “it’s a minority college, you will not be respected there”, “and no companies visit that college for placements “,” students’ competency level is very low” and many more. Bugged with all the rumors I decided to pay a visit to the college campus and the very instance I saw the campus I was awestruck by the architecture design. It was awe-inspiring sight. “HKBK College of Engineering”, the most sought after institution for technical education is located at Nagawara, which is about 7 kilometer away from the heart of the Bangalore City. It is situated nearby to a famous IT Tech Park, so called as Manyata Tech Park. Acclaimed as one of the best equipped institution in the country compared to other colleges in Bangalore. HKBKCE offers a wide range of degree courses in engineering for the young minds who desire to achieve technical knowledge, industry insights and soft skills. Here present students are trained as skilled future engineers.
The institution has the curriculum as required by the University which includes well quipped labs, spacious classrooms, extensive library and separate hostel for boys and girls. The focus is to provide the best possible education that translates into lifetime learning, individual is recognized and groomed. At HKBK, this challenge is achieved by highly personalized approach. It provides effective learning opportunities through its well qualified and committed staff .HKBK offers a wide range of engineering courses that has international recognition. The College is affiliated to Visvesvariah Technical University (VTU) and is recognized by the All India Council for Technical Education (AITCE), New Delhi.
If you see the distribution of seats, 40% of seats are allocated for Common Entrance Test (CET) conducted by the Government, 30% through a test by AIEEE, and the remaining 30% for NRI and others.
HKBK offers following disciplines.
Bachelor disciplines: Computer Science & Engineering, Information Science & Engineering, Electronics &Communication Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Civil Engineering.
Master disciplines: Master of Business Administration, M.Tech (Computer science), M.Tech (Electronic &Communication Engineering) and M.Tech (Thermal Engineering)
As I went around the campus I also noticed there was lot of green cover in the campus, every building was covered with trees surrounding it and my friends from Reva, MVJ told me their colleges had Air Conditioners in every class rooms, well now I will tell them” we have natural way to keep our college surrounding cool”.
Going further to explore my new hive I found guys moving in and out of a room with track and t-shirts, curiously I inched close and found it was a gym, the one of the kind that is shown in these telebuy ads, very sophisticated and very well maintained. While I was glancing at all the things inside I noticed a big photo of a guy on the wall, below it was the guy name on the Mr. India stage meanwhile a well built man approached and asked
“How may I help you?”
“Hi, can I know what the cost to get trained in the gym is?”
“It’s Rs. 150 per month”
“What!!! 150”
The man replied yes and walked away to help the others. I came out of the room thinking just 150 for all that!! That is so cheap. I don’t know if it’s the same with other colleges. On the way to the admission office I also noticed few mementos put up for display, they were trophies the students had won in inter college competition. That was very encouraging to see students are allowed to compete outside college. I really doubt other colleges encourage their students the same way or just ask them to concentrate on studies. The people in the admission section responded very gently giving us all the details of the college and the fee structure. I saw my mom was pleased to see the fee structure, the fees was so less that anyone could study in this college and with this kind of small fee this college is still in the top 30 of 125 engineering colleges in the city.
Its 4 years now that I have been in this institute, Computer Science Engineering is my major. Every year the students and Faculty’s of this department present plenty of research papers in various national and international levels. For the matter of fact there are over 20 PhD holders currently in the teaching staff, over 30 pursuing and all the departments together present least 50 technical papers each year. Mechanical department receives close to 30 lakhs rupees as research fund from various industries, the lab facilities of this department is mind blowing, I have visited their laboratory in my initial semesters. The machine shop lab having lathes are very new and the foundry and forging lab that’s the funny thing we get to see when students play with sand and that is a subject… anyways joke apart, that lab is very sophisticated. The CAD\CAM lab is epic; it has close to 200 computers in a single big room. The students of this department are so crazy that one of the student ended up making a real time flying miniature plane, this made news around the city, in the times when students are making cars and bikes here is one student who makes a plane using a car engine; The Electronics department also receives close to 5 lakhs as research fund from various sources and they have fully fledged laboratories namely Communication Lab, Analog Electronics Lab, Digital Electronics Lab, Microcontroller and Microprocessor Lab, DSP and HDL Lab, few faculty members in this department hail from IIT’s. The Computer science and Information Science branches together receives fund for their respective projects undertaken. Also Computer Science and Information Science branches has tie up with Computer Society of India, this organization visits our campus every year to conduct inter college competition and identify talents that they can use, why does this prestigious organization have to visit my college of all the big colleges in the city? The question itself answers it all, well it’s because the infrastructure is so good also both these departments have MOU signed with various IT firms, as a result of this “Student Development Program” has been introduced and each year the students get to visit the company campus and take part in the events hosted by them, for instance Microsoft professionals walk in every year to the college to train the best of best minds on coding skills that would get them a high profile job, ORACLE professionals train students on ORACLE DB for free, and there are plenty of student clubs for different purposes like android club, environment club, literature club etc. as a result there is a overall exposure to the students and they are not restricted to just technical concepts. The Indian Army, Navy and Air force also chooses to recruit from our campus. YouTube and Google is all the proof I have to claim what I said is true.
My college has 12 departments, it includes 7 discipline based department(CSE, ISE, ECE, EEE, ME, CV, MBA) and 3 basic science departments and 1 sociology department, avionics research facility was set up by IISC Bangalore in my college to help electrical students in R&D. The student’s community is so diverse here, 30% of the students fly in from rich Middle East countries and South Asian countries to graduate from this college; I wonder how many countries students have even the slightest knowledge of other big players in the city. My college hostel facilities are far better compared to PG kind of hostels other colleges offer. The girls hostel is placed inside college campus, every parent with a daughter in my college can now go back home peaceful. In the 18 years history of my college there is no record of any ragging case registered neither in the campus complaint record nor in the local police station. The college is very close to the main road bus stand yet very far from noise and dust pollution. We here in college have our annual college festival called CALYPSO, oh yeah you read it right; the fest is named very aptly. Music is the main crowd pulling event, my college band has won Golden medals at the university level, and the best of best colleges are no match to my college when it comes to music.
It is also a matter of pride that one of our 7th semester students has won the first place in gaming competitions at national and international level. Students have contested various events like debate, paintings, sketching, quiz…..etc., in VTU /State / National Level. More than 30 students were rewarded with their achievements. The annual college fest is completely organized and executed by the student community, no where will the management or the faculties take an independent decision without the student committee, VTU organized a state level cricket tournament for staffs and guess what the responsibility was given to my college. Over 60 colleges took part in the opening edition of the tournament, the following year the number of colleges participating increased. Here too the entire tournament was organized and executed by the student community without any hassles.
The college has an entrepreneurship cell that encourages students to develop their ideas to reality the effect of this initiative is humongous for instance the college has a in campus startup company called PentaP systems, this company was started by the students of computer science engineering department and have provided opportunity for M.Tech. students to do their internship as part of their curriculum, this start up also bagged a few offers to make software’s to enterprises and there by earned out of it, they are encouraged by the management by providing all facilities and privacy as asked. The science exhibition which happens once in a year allows students from the 2nd year and pre-final year to build their ideas as a prototype model and put it up for display, it’s a fun day for everyone. The students slog day in and day out to make sure their competency is unmatched, this move by the management is very useful because in the final year, the students need not start something from the scratch clueless about what to do and how it might pan out and therefore their final year projects are always made in pre-final year and the students can concentrate on getting placed in the final year without tensions. I doubt many colleges have such initiatives or even if they did I really doubt the result of it was not as exciting as ours.
One can never find a human being like my college administrator, a man who can speak for hours to inspire his students; he always treats every student in the college with equal respect. No bias absolutely. If not him the college would not have reached the state it is in currently. He is a man who believes the purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open mind. I have personally witnessed the generosity this man shows towards students who were unable to pay their tuition fees. Who does all this?? In the age where education has become business, here is a man who offers it for free. I can be sure no colleges will do this such things to promote education.
The college library started to over flow with book resulting in relocation to another part of the college building where it is now in 5000 square feet 2 storied set up. There are always abundant books available in the library for all, the library management also maintains a very streamlined process to govern the dispatch of books, I have also come across situations where in my friends from different colleges ask me to get few references books from my college library. Every department has a separate library set up in their respective departments apart from the college public library, each of these department libraries have least 500 books in their collection.
The parking facilities in the college is awesome, it is in a private space outside the college premises, the parking area is big enough to accommodate least 500 bikes at the same time, and there are 2 such parking spots. The college also has a very decent fleet of buses which go across the city to get the students using it.
The campus also has 2 canteens and a cafe coffee day, the canteens are very well maintained and the food served are far more hygienic compared to the other big colleges, this I can tell with my personal experience which I have come across while visiting other colleges for inter college competition. The classrooms have plenty of windows and thereby it is well aerated, so there is lot of electricity saved with respect to AC’s. All class rooms are equipped with digital projectors. The college management never stops students from celebrating festivals inside the campus unlike other colleges; the college also has 2 big seminar halls that are used to make national and international level thesis presentations. Like many other big players we also have an Alumni association which is an association of graduates of former students. This association provides a variety of benefits and services that help alumni maintain connections to their educational institution and fellow graduates. We had interactions on industrial experience and its application in general and air bus industry.
I now laugh at my friends looking at them going in formals to college while I go in casuals, my college believes in talent and focuses in sharpening it to gain benefit, unlike other colleges which impose rules like to wear only formals, opposite genders must not talk to each other. My college is so student friendly that the students hangouts are no way close to the staff quarters and therefore everyone have their own space; best part is nobody misuses it. I can bet top notch colleges like RV, PES and BMS don’t give so much privacy to its students. “Respect for talent” is the motto of this college management and it works, proof is the placement record of this college, 70% of students are place in their 6th and 7th semesters, colleges like Reva, MVJ, Cambridge, Global academy, Oxford, CMR, JSS etc keep their students waiting till the final semester to bring in a company for in-campus placements, this waiting period has a adverse effect on students they end up having soaring anxiety levels leading to bad performance in the semesters. The placement department of my college is very proactive in this aspect, they make sure students enter their final year in a peaceful mind and concentrate on what is required the most. The placement department also makes sure they don’t get in any mass recruiters which is always a dangerous move because in case of untimely recession all of those students selected will end up losing their jobs even before they begin working, Just to mention a few the companies visiting my colleges are s follows: IGATE, IBM, ORACLE, Tech Mahindra, Syntel, Subex, Mphasis, Aditya technologies, ABB, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, Indian Air force, HCL etc. My college students have never faced a scenario where they have to plan what to do after studies, why? It’s because everything is all planned for them already. Recession or no recession does not matter, what happens always happens and it happens only here in HKBK.
My friends and I are now working towards our final year project; we do in-house projects guided by our professors unlike other college students who buy readymade projects from various consultancies and small time firms. We are always motivated by my faculties to learn more and try out new things, making mistakes is never criticized here, they instead appreciate the effort put in, alternate thinking has been the key mantra for this college faculties. The awards and acknowledgement received by the passed out students from various university level competition are confidence boosters for all of us. My friends in other colleges tell me they procrastinate and become lazy as they move towards their final year, while here it is opposite, we become more proactive as days pass.
My parents are happy with my performance in studies; I know I have NOT made my parents spend their entire fortune on paying my college tuition fees. Instead save it for the unknown future expenses, in the time where education is business, this place lets you breath. They are not money oriented, they are value oriented, teaching is not what they do, creating the future minds is what they do, I am not going to argue this is the best place on the planet to study and rest are always after us, all I am saying is that we are no less compared to those old and prestigious institutions who are now working for many years. We shall continue to strive harder and keep pushing the limits to the next level.
Many students join engineering but only few pass out as engineers, in this place many students pass out as engineers, I am not telling all the student pass out as engineers because many students start to realize what they want to do in life only after doing something that never pinched their curiosity or got them excited towards it.
It’s all said and done, we had fun and we will move on. As the saying goes “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end”. Our start to this life in HKBK was exciting, fun filled, intellectual, rigorous and most of all it was worth it. This place not just teaches its students to learn and earn out of it, it teaches values and more importantly it guides us to use our common sense more than mere money oriented thinking.
-By Pavithra Pavi
Rating of HKBK College of Engineering by its students.