National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are premier institutes of engineering and technology in India and are the new face of the existing Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs). In the year 2002, the Govt. of India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development, decided to upgrade all the 17 existing Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) as National Institutes of Technology (NITs), on the lines of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). The NITs, have the responsibility of providing high quality education in engineering and technology to produce competent technical manpower for the country.

There are presently 20 of them. The NITs are deliberately scattered throughout the country with the idea of having one NIT in every major state of India to achieve balanced regional development. The NITs are rated just next to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in terms of quality of education, research and placements.


HOW THE NITs CAME INTO FORCE?
NITs are now branded among the premier technical education institutes in India. Till their existence as the Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) they were controlled by the respective State governments with lesser funds and at times regional politics too resulted in lack of proper direction.

After getting the NIT status from MHRD, the NITs have started churning out quality graduates who compete with the best and NITs do have some of the best students from all states in India. The student community has started seeing NITs as a quality alternative. The reputation of NITs as centres of excellence has gained acceptance in industry. The various NITs now function autonomously, sharing only the entrance tests between them.

ADMISSIONS INTO THE NITs OF INDIA
Admission to the undergraduate programs is based on the rank obtained in the Joint Entrance Examination (Main) or JEE (Main) conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

Admissions to the postgraduate programmes are made through various other exams, like Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) for admission to M.Tech courses. The NITs may also conduct a separate individual examination followed by an interview for admission to the postgraduate courses. Dual-degree courses in both science and technology in emerging areas are also planned to be introduced from the coming sessions.


NIMCET – NITs MCA Common Entrance Test
(For admission to the MCA Course offered by the CSE Department)
The NIMCET is a National Level Entrance Test conducted by National Institutes of Technology – NITs for admission to Master of Computer Application – MCA course offered at different NITs. The duration of course is 6 semesters / 3 years. The first common admission test NIMCET was conducted in 2005. About 13,000 candidates appeared for NIMCET-05 for 420 seats available in NITs.

CLICK TO KNOW MORE ABOUT – NIMCET – NITs MCA Common Entrance Test


LIFE AT NITs
Hostel facilities are available in all the NITs for their students, research scholars and faculty inside their campuses. Most of the students have single accommodation. Every hostel has its own recreation room which consists Cable television, Magazines, News papers, Indoor Games and Internet facilities in all Hostel Rooms. Each hall in NITs has its own mess. Apart from this all NITs have common canteen for all students and separate canteen for the staff.

The NITs also have high-speed LAN and internet connection infrastructure helping students to do their assignments online (whenever applicable) and some even have facilities for video conferencing with the others are catching up to these changes quite fast under the World Bank funded TEQIP scheme. Technical seminars are also organized from time to time in all NITs by faculties and researchers from organizations like IITs, IISc, Other Universities and Research Labs.

All the NITs have their Central Library with good collection of Technical books, Literature, Fiction, Scientific Journals and other electronic material.