The trip to Vellore-PART I

Vellore in the past was known in the educational domain solely because of its Medical College, CMC(Christian Medical College). However, the past few years another institute has been coming up, or so the media claims, this one is in the engineering stream. I'm talking about Vellore institute of Technology
An interesting fact to note is that the isntitute received 7000 applications in 2004, 45000 in 2005 and 89000 in 2006. Quite a progress dont you think? Well most of it has to be because of their huge budget of advertising. I remember during the days I was preparing for my JEE, I'd see VIT's sprawling campus on the last page of every major daily every alternate day. Huge, Lit up, Bright!
I too was mesmerised by those huge pics of the campus. I gave their exam. And it has the weirdest syllabus of all the exams, those who gave it this year know what I am talking about.
Anyways, I gave their exam, and cleared it with a very good rank(according to my peers). Their counselling was in a month. Another interesting point about Vellore Insti's counselling is that, its a month before any of the other counsellings, and so is their fee due date. I guess that says it all.
On 16th of this month, I left for Chennai, with my dad, from where we'd catch a cab to vellore.
Chennai to Vellore in an AC cab cost about 2500 Rs. It was later that we realised that the AC cab wasnt very meaningfull, since the temperature suddenly fell down drastically once the late hours of the night started to pass.
I was listening to some Nirvana on my dad's lappie, and the our Cab broke down. In the middle of nowhere.On the highway, which had no divider, no lights, nothing. And we were in Tamil Nadu, we couldnt understand what the cabbie was saying, and the feeling was mutual.
He had spares thankfully,and after 30-40 mins, we were back on track.
We had a room reserved in a hotel, which was 7-8 kms from VIT.
Next morning, we took an auto to the institute, my dad communicated with the guy in telugu. I told my dad, "Hey, he's tamil, he doesnt understand you"
"Arrey you dont know, its all the same"
"No its not dad"
Apparently it was.
We reached safely, and he didnt loot us too.

There were huge posters with VITEEE counselling
"WELCOME STUDENTS AND PARENTS" written . Deep blue they all were.
The institute was pretty green and clean. It was really quiet, probably because only the 4th year students were on campus( that too only a handful){ got to know this later}
They explained to us all the formalities for the day, we sat in the auditorium, where some old dude was going on and on about the college, I heard phrases such as "You're ward is in the safe hands of our esteemed faculty...", "...we teach basic SW skills to each and everyone...", "....having a tie-up with *some german* university, and have introduced *some degree related to energy*", "...the insti is great in harnessing...", "...saale jaldi join kar na bhe...", ok maybe not the last one.
The days ranks were from 750-1500. I had got a 1400 something rank, which basically meant that I had come really early, and my turn would come towards the end of the day only.
The wait wasnt too bad, as I found a pal of mine from college. We talked about the college, saw its library, which was infact the most impressive of the buildings in the campus. It was totally air conditioned, and had a huge multimedia room, with LCD monitors, and a huge database of cd's etc.. I saw some seniors there, and we started talking to them about the placement, and ambience, and student-teacher realtionship, and branch preference etc.
They gave us some official and some *ahem* non official info.
Anyways, we returned to the counselling hall. The counselling was simple. we were in an auditorium, where the number of seats admitted and remaining in each course flashed. They'd yell out the rank and name, and we'd have to give the xerox documents and select our branch. But something was happening. All everyone were taking were Computer Science(CSE), and Electronic and Communication(ECE)
No one was taking anything else. It was shocking( well not really). And then it happened, CSE and ECE seats got over. Now came the funny part. No one wanted anything else. It was as though the other brances were for people of smaller dreams and ambitions, and they were'nt worthy of taking. This included Electrical, Electrical(Instrumentation), Mechanical, IT, Bio, Civil, Chemical, basically everything else. It was funny, that for the next half an hour the counselling progressed very very slowly, and we'd see that only after a long period of time would someone select a branch.

end of part I