Visitors at the career fair in Patna on Thursday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, June 16: After the result turmoil, the situation seems to be looking up for students who have cleared the board examinations this year.

Admission Expo — a two-day career fair organised by a Jharkhand-based company —kicked off at the planetarium today. The fair has a mix of traditional and unconventional career opportunities and has brought more than 80 institutions from 22 states, including Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bengal, Rajasthan and Bihar.

The organisers conceded that it is the right time for such a fair because most of the Plus-Two-level boards have declared the results. Narendra Kumar, organiser of the fair, said: “The response from the fair is great. Students are thronging the stalls since morning. Hope the trend continues.”

Narendra said the fair would remain open from 10am to 6pm and no entry fee would be charged from the visitors. He said the speciality of the fair is that most of the stalls have representatives of colleges, who are either faculties or students of that particular institution.

Piyush Kumar Jha, faculty of hotel management at Sanskriti Group of Institutions, Mathura, said: “Our faculties are from IIM and IIT-like reputed institutions. Even the director of our institute comes from one of the reputed institutions of the country.”

Amit Khan, a passout of Uday Institute of Management Studies, Jaipur, was one of the representatives at a stall. Khan, who is the customer care manager and business developer of the institute, said: “We don’t provide simple MBA. It is a full-time residential programme, a PGDM course that will deal with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and statistical package of social science (SPSS). One will get specialisations in other institutions as a single course, which will cost Rs 1,50,000 for ERP and Rs 50,000 for SPSS. At our institute one can avail both at Rs 2 lakh in the two-year programme.”

Twenty-five-year-old Sujit Kumar Kapri was looking for a suitable course for his younger brother. He said: “I don’t want my brother to go to Mumbai or Delhi for studies. He might get addicted to something if he goes to such cities. I prefer places like Madhya Pradesh and Haryana for my brother’s higher studies.”

Girls of Patna seemed keen on a more glamourous career. A stall of TCA, a local institute that prepares girls for an air hostess job, was the most sought-after counter in the fair. “We have been getting enquiries in deluge,” said Mona Gupta, the academic head of TCA.