Lots of praises in the answers preceding mine. Let me differ a little!
If you think you’ll have loads of freedom you might be wrong. The authorities in BITS Pilani won’t let you breathe at times.
Privacy is a joke in hostel rooms. They can be checked any time without prior notice even though you are a perfectly grown adult, and yes they don’t need any paperwork to check your room they just can check even though you pay the rent. Also, they are immensely inconsiderate of your problems, your issues.
The chouki and supri will talk like they own you at times (they are not even the faculty). But but, let’s say you got hurt and broke your arm, they won’t even pay Rs.200 even if you promise to pay later. You have to wait for some your friends to come and if they are low on cash may God save you.
Let’s now come to smoking. I’m strictly talking about perfectly legal cigarettes and nothing else here. They have strict rules against it. Most of you will think, oh that’s great! Well, not if you had habit of smoking before coming here. We all know, before coming here people go through a rat race called JEE and its perfectly natural to pick up smoking habits. Smoking banned in institute area, well and good, banned in the library very well. But why it should be banned in a hostel room that I pay the rent for. It’s not a public place by any means. And the fact that, I had this habit even before coming here. Why can’t the authorities simply respect that?