Mohammed Sathak Engineering College, Kilakarai

That is where I did my Mechanical Engineering course. Nilu has been calling for college reviews, so I thought I would brush up my memories. For those who are unaware of Tamilnadu Geography, Kilakarai is about 14 hrs and 600 km from Chennai. The college was started in 1984, one of the first Self Financing Engineering colleges in Tamilnadu. I was there from 1992-96.

For those who are travelling outside Chennai for the first time it would be a culture shock. The college is situated 3km from the village of Kilakarai on the route to Ervadi. It is nothing but Kaadu, Pottal Kaadu all around. As the apocryphal story goes one of our senior classes decided to go on strike and sat on the road to ostensibly block traffic. After an hour the Correspondent of the college came and told them, "Idiots. Don't you know that there is only one bus every two hours in this road? No point in going on strike. Get back to your classes". The point about hardly any buses on the road is true. Hence 90% of the students stay in the hostel. The remaining 10% come from Ramanathapuram, the purported District HQ.

When I was there the college offered only 3 courses - Mechanical, Civil and Electronics & Communication. Now they have a lot more - Architecture, Chemical, Computer Science - check their website.

Now to rate them

Faculty - Obviously because of the remoteness from civilisation (I am not joking), it is difficult to find good faculty resources in the college. In Mechanical Engineering course when I was there we had good faculty for Engineering Design and Fluid Mechanics. But our faculty for subjects like Production Technology, Heat and Mass Transfer sucked big time. Same was the case of with other departments too.

Buildings - Even in 1992 when I joined the college had adequate building infrastructure. Now they have added on to it.

Lab Facilities - Mechanical Engineering Workshop had all the required machines and was good enough. The computer science department had enough boxes to seat the entire class. You can say it was slightly better than other self financing colleges in terms of lab facilities.

Research - You must be joking.

Placement - You really must be joking. In our class of 180 (Mech, Civil & ECE) campus recruitment led to placement of about 2-3 students in ECE. In Mechanical I was the only one to have a job on completion of the course, but I entered SPIC through open recruitment. Things might have improved in the last 10 years, but I very much doubt it. It is difficult to get companies to travel to Kilakarai. If at all possible, the climate there is worse than Chennai.

Hostel - The college always had more than 90% hostelers. It was 4 students per room even in the final year. Water was always scarce. Food was horrible. Every hostel food is horrible, but this was really the pits. Finding insects in the food was a routine occurence. I personally have removed a lizard from the serving bowl. There was no serious case of ragging other than the regular singing, dancing stuff.

Health - Kilakarai is a Malaria prone area. Any student is bound to get an attack of Malaria. I was a special case and had 3 attacks of Malaria in the first year.

Religious issues - Since it is a minority institution, people might have a worry about religious issues. In this regard the college scores well. The management went out of the way to make sure that the institution remained secular. Much praise for this goes to Dr. S.H. Ibrahim then Principal and now Director. It is not a Karunya type institution.