Ajay Kumar Garg engineering college ghaziabad Facilities & Infrastructure

Every department has its own labs for experiments, practicals and projects, so what you get depends on your branch. Electronics students work on circuits and communication systems. Mechanical students spend time in workshops with machines. Computer branches are mostly in software labs. The college also lists licensed software for design, simulation and analysis. When you visit, ask which labs your branch uses in each year, and how many hours a week students actually get on the equipment. That second question tells you more than any brochure.

Computer centres are there for programming assignments, software tools and project work after lab hours. The Centres of Excellence and R&D centres give students project work linked to industry. In the second year, M.Tech students can even get paid part-time work there, ₹10,000 a month. Ask what the timings are after class, and whether you can use the software from your hostel room.

You'll find the Central Library inside the Admin Block. It's about 1,465 sq m with roughly 344 seats spread over reading halls and small study cubicles. The catalogue runs on KOHA, you can search it through Web OPAC, and there's a DSpace repository with the college's own material. You also get DELNET, the National Digital Library, e-journals and multimedia stuff. Each department keeps its own library of branch books and old project reports, and every hostel has a small one too. Those old project reports come in very handy when you plan your own.

Classrooms and tutorial rooms come with modern teaching aids. The seminar halls are used for talks, workshops and project presentations. Departments hold most of their events here, so this is where you'll end up presenting your projects and sitting through guest lectures.

There are six hostels inside the campus: three for boys, three for girls, in separate complexes. First-year girls are put in non-AC triple rooms. First-year boys mostly get non-AC doubles, and a few triples. A triple costs ₹1,40,000 for the first year, a boys' double ₹1,50,000, and ₹10,000 of each is a deposit you get back. There aren't enough rooms for everyone, so put in your application as early as you can. The Hostel Allotment Committee makes the final call.

Every hostel complex has its own mess, with a kitchen and dining hall, and the mess charge is already inside your hostel fee. On campus there are canteens for both day scholars and hostellers. The hostels have utility stores, and there's a stationery shop on campus as well.

There's a playground for cricket and football, and courts for volleyball and basketball. Indoors, you can play badminton, table tennis, chess and carrom. The hostels have their own sports areas and a gym. If you're a day scholar, ask if you're allowed into the hostel gym, and how teams are picked for inter-college events.

This one surprised us. There's an actual hospital on campus, the Dr. R.S.G. (Indo-German) Hospital, and the college also has a tie-up with Shivam Hospital. Students get cashless medical cover through the ₹1,500 medical charge in the yearly fee, which includes insurance and OPD benefits. There's an ambulance on call, and first-aid kits and stretchers are kept around campus. Do ask what the insurance limit is and what it doesn't cover.

Wi-Fi runs across the campus and the hostels, and the college lists a computer and internet lab too. The hostels mention security, power backup and RO drinking water. Ask how you get your network login after registration, and whether your own laptop will connect in the classrooms.

The college lists 2 buses it owns, 5 on contract and 16 light vehicles. They run on fixed routes for day scholars, and the fee depends on which route you're on. Before you decide between the hostel and commuting, get three things: the route list, the stop nearest your home and the yearly charge.

There's an ATM on campus for basic banking. The college lists five photocopy and printing points across campus and one more in the hostel area. You'll be grateful for those during assignment season and the week before exams.

Once classes are over, students run tech clubs and chapters of professional societies, plus cultural societies and sports clubs. NCC and NSS are active as well, if you'd like some uniformed training or social service on your record. Coding contests, hackathon teams and project groups usually grow out of these clubs. Joining one in your first year costs you almost nothing and does a lot for your CV. Ask which clubs take first-years and when they recruit.

Apart from the rooms, each hostel complex has a common room, a TV room, a small library, a gym, a canteen, a utility store and laundry. Sounds basic, but if you're living away from home for the first time, a quiet common room and a hostel library make studying at night much easier. And the utility store saves you a trip outside for small things. Ask about the gym and TV room timings, and what the warden's rules are for coming back late and for visitors.

The college lists rainwater harvesting, solar panels, tree plantation drives and efforts to cut down single-use plastic. For students, it mostly means cleaner common areas, plus plantation and awareness drives you can join through NSS. Nobody picks a college for this. But it does tell you somebody is actually looking after the campus.