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Everything about IIT Madras (IITM) is huge. Beginning from the campus to the size of faculty and number of students. Spread over 650 acres, 4000 students, 360 strong faculty and 1250 administrative and support staff makes IITM one of the biggest technology schools in the country. Cutting across various disciplines IITM offers B.Tech, M.Tech and PhD programs spread across 14 academic departments. With over 100 laboratories, IITM has unfolded several path-breaking studies in various fields. A prominent one being the corDECT WLL technology developed by Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala and his team of scientists from the Electrical Engineering department. Today IITM has become synonymous with corDECT, which has spread the name of the institution across the world.

The antecedents of IITM can be traced back to the year 1956, when the then prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, while on an official visit to West Germany (now called Germany after unification) was offered a technical collaboration proposal to set up a premier institute of higher technology learning in India. This offer fructified in 1958 with the signing up of the Indo-German Agreement in Bonn.

Since its inception, IITM has grown in leaps and bounds. One of the biggest drivers for distinction not only rests in its high academic level but also the partnerships and collaborations it has forged all through with the industry. The Department of Electrical Engineering is one shining example. Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, professor at the department who also heads the TeNET group and the developer of corDECT has given a revolutionary low cost communication technology that is being implemented in various emerging geographies like India, Brazil and host of others. And one look at the overall research projects IITM is doing drives home the point. For 2003-04 it executed 772 consulting projects and did 103 sponsored research projects. These projects garnered revenues of Rs 8.59 crore and Rs 24.72 crore respectively.

Meanwhile IITM is the only technology school that has a placement record of close to 100%. Also it is the only IIT to have a dedicated office and staff for placement. Says Prema Chakrapani, Assistant Registrar, training and placement, IITM, " We have an excellent placement record over the years. This year Mc Kinsey has taken an IITM student on Rs 7.5 lakh remuneration. Similarly top IT companies like Infosys, Wipro, Samsung, Oracle have taken good numbers this year with average salary ranging between Rs 3.5 to Rs 4 lakh."

All IIT’s across India excels but every IIT has a unique signature of its own. IIT Madras has always been forefront in being ahead of times. And it produces state of the art computer science graduates and it is prevalent that any company hunting for IT talent makes the first stop at IITM. Also the MBA program launched two years back also lays a strong emphasis on IS Management, and hence most of the MBA graduates of the class of 2004 were already placed in frontline companies as business analysts. For instance Rohit Morde, who has taken an offer form Mindtree consulting, finished his MBA this year. Says he, "It has been an extremely rewarding experience for me doing MBA. What I liked most is the routine sharing of knowledge between industry and the students. Even before completing the course we had placements on hand." Most of the students we spoke to echoed the same sentiment and everybody unanimously votes that the beautiful campus creates a sense of bonding and creates a great ambience for intellectual development. Academic excellence apart, IITM has a lot of cultural technology festivals. The famous ones being the annual Saarang and the Shasthra events attract students’ from across India.

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