As I can understand from the description you’ve given, you’re primarily interested in securing a job after your bachelor’s. I do not have much idea about IIST except the fact that most of its students are eventually absorbed in ISRO. You must also consider the fact that your goals might eventually change with time. In the later half of your bachelor’s, you might decide to go for a higher education. So, what’s most important is to choose an institute which provides you a wide range of career options. It immensely increases your chances to succeed as an young undergrad. To be very frank, you won’t be having much career choices if you choose to join IIST. One of my very close friends decided not to join IIST, instead he joined BITS Pilani and he is doing great. He was crazy about aerospace but still declined IIST as he realised he won’t be having much career choices after he passes from this institute.
Now, lets discuss about new IITs. IIT Hyderabad is doing great among the new ones. As far as IIT Patna is concerned, please do not get demotivated by its location. People often comment without even knowing the inside story. As an alumni of this institute, I can fairly assure you that you would be having a whole lot of exciting career opportunities here in IIT Patna. Let me discuss IIT-patna-story in two parts,
- Placements: In terms of placements, IIT Patna is doing great and what’s more important is that it’s growing rapidly with time. All big names like Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco, Samsung R&D, UHG, Practo, Yodlee, Flipkart, Arista Networks, Texas Instruments, Finisar, Tata motors, L&T, Mahindra & Mahindra, Bank of America etc. visit our campus and placed plenty of our B.Tech students over the years. Moreover, if you are bothered about job security and want a peaceful and high-paying job then you have PSUs like Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum, HPCL, DRDO, Coal India, etc placing plenty of students from IIT Patna. Also, if you do great academically in IIT, you’ll always have the option of getting placed in companies like Google and Facebook, which would pay you beyond your imagination. Trust me you can! One of my friend from IIT Patna CSE got placed in Google with a pay package of roughly 1.8 crores in Indian currency. You could be like him if you utilise your time wisely at IIT. Please do not compare new IITs with the older ones. While IIT Patna admits roughly 50 students per engineering discipline, the older ones have batch-strength of almost 150 per stream, which automatically increases the probability of getting more number of placed-in-Google and placed-in-Facebook examples. As far as I know, no more than 5 students are placed with such huge packages and rest are the same. So wait for few more years, even IIT Patna would be producing such numbers! General people only care about these numbers, they judge the institute only based on these numbers which cannot be any more wrong.
- Prospects for higher education: If you join an IIT, you would eventually understand the significance of the IIT-brand which plays a crucial role in your prospect for higher education or even in securing a top-notch internship. IITians are always preferred over others, no matter how suitable the profiles are for all the other candidates. Just to inform you, I got my 3rd year internship in Germany only because of this brand value thing. Let me quote my mentor, “you are very good if you’re in top 1% in IITJEE”. This was a part of the 1st email reply from my mentor in Germany. My mentor had studied in UC Berkeley and still she is aware of the IIT-brand! Every year at least 10 students go for foreign internship from IIT Patna. From my department, 4 students of us went abroad for our 3rd year summer internship and my department strength is only 37. Isn’t that amazing! What’s even more surprising is that every year the count is increasing. Our student has gone to even the top universities like Stanford, CalTech, etc. for their summer internships. Every year our students get nominated for DAAD WISE scholarship for Germany (with which I went to Germany last year), Charpak scholarship for internships in France, MITACS for Canada, etc. Every year a bulk of our students go to Singapore for their internships. That’s all about foreign internships. Now lets talk about the MS and PhDs from abroad. I don’t want to convey any wrong information and that is why I’ll talk my department only. A total 18 of almost 150 pass-outs have gone for higher education in US and Europe, mostly master’s but a few for their doctoral studies. Most of them are placed in companies like Intel corporation, Texas Instruments, Intersil Corporation, etc. in their respective countries. All their pay packages are beyond imagination!