Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) will set up a new campus in Bangalore. The campus, the first one outside Tamil Nadu, is set to admit students by 2015.
Speaking on the sidelines of a press conference in Chennai on the admissions to the institute, VIT Chancellor G Viswanathan said that the Karnataka government had given the nod for setting up the university about a year back. The land for the campus has been identified in the eastern part of the main city. “The construction work has begun. We are hoping to operationalise it in 2015 starting with a few B Teach courses,“ he said.
He said that the Computer-Based Test (CBT) for VIT Engineering Entrance will be held from April 9 to 20, 2014 for B Tech courses in 112 cities including two overseas centres. Registration for the examinations increased from 1,66,978 applications to a total of 1,93,790 applications this year for the 4,197 seats available. Most of the applications are from Andhra Pradesh (37,298) followed by Uttar Pradesh (28,337) and Bihar (18,861). Tamil Nadu comes sixth with 12,555 applications.
On the low number of applications from the State, the Chancellor said that after the removal of entrance examinations for government engineering and medical seats, students from the State seem to be reluctant to take examinations.
“Examinations like VITEEE are like the IIT entrance examinations and require training. Since the entrance examinations are taken away in the State there seems to be a dearth in training and the coaching institutes,” he said.
Viswanathan said that Plus Two toppers from around 30 State and Central boards in the country would be given a 100 per cent fee waiver for all the four years of their B Tech. “VITEEE rank holders between 1 and 50 would be given 75 per cent fee waiver, while those in the bracket of 51 to 100 will be given 50 per cent fee waiver and between 101 and 1,000 will be given 25 per cent tuition fee waiver,” he said. There will be exemption from tuition fee, mess fee and hostel fee for two toppers from each district from government schools in rural areas, he added.
On the campus placement he said that the highest offer made to a student at the campus placement was `16 lakh per annum while the average salary offered by the IT companies was around `3 lakh.