Students fill up admission forms at IIT, Bhubaneswar, on Friday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, July 27: Admissions for the fifth batch of IIT Bhubaneswar began today. Registration was done for students of BTech into the civil, electrical and mechanical branches, each having 40 seats. About 120 students got themselves registered into the streams allotted to them. “Classes will begin from Monday,” said registrar B.K. Ray.

Admissions are also on for MTech and the PhD seats in each of its seven schools — school of basic science, school of earth ocean and climate sciences, school of electrical sciences, school of humanities, school of social sciences and management, school of infrastructure, school of mechanical sciences minerals, metallurgical and materials.

“While 42 students will be taking admissions for MTech programme, 21 will be taking admissions into PhD,” said Ray. A new hostel has been established at Madanpur area in the outskirts of the city to house the MTech students,” said Ray.

This time too, the number of girls taking admissions was far from impressive compared to previous years. Thirteen girls were there for admission last year, but this year there were only 10. Authorities said women accounting for only 10 to 12 per cent of the IIT population have been a continuing trend. Although girls outperformed boys in the boards and their numbers in engineering colleges was high, the representation of female students in IITs has remained low. The government had this year decreased the application fee for girls to encourage their participation.

The fee was Rs 200 offline, it was free of cost if registered online. To help freshers with registration process, senior students of IIT had formed helpdesks. Student volunteers explained the juniors on how to go about with the registration process, thus making the things easier.

The authorities addressed the students, who welcomed them later on campus, following which there was an interactive session with the students and parents. Anti-raging messages dotted several places on the campus sending a strong message of not to resort to any kind of ragging.