Engineering grads strike plum deals

While the average salary at the top B-schools in the country grows around 25-30 per cent every year, engineering graduates don't seem to be doing too bad for themselves.

The average annual salary for students who passed out of engineering schools this year grew around 28 per cent "" to Rs 3.41 lakh from Rs 2.66 lakh last year.

The highest salary drawn in campus placements in an engineering college in 2007 was Rs 45 lakh per annum to a student from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology in Delhi.

The maximum salary offered by an IT company increased from Rs 15 lakh per annum last year to Rs 18 lakh this year to a student from IIT Kharagpur, according to a Dataquest-IDC survey.

Almost one-third of the engineering students from the top 100 engineering schools were lapped by IT companies. IITs, however, seem to be losing out as IT firms recruited only 28 per cent students from IIT in 2007 "" down from 35 per cent in 2006. This could be due to rising average salaries demanded by students of these premier institutes and the fact that IIT graduates are now looking at non-IT sectors too as a career opportunity, the survey reveals.

"Engineering graduates are keener on joining the financial sector as a large number want to do an MBA after B tech. Also the manufacturing sector has started paying good salaries which is another reason why IT companies are not as attractive as they used to be for these students," says Rishi Das, co-founder of CareerNet Consulting.

Of the top 117 technology schools in the country, Bangalore has the maximum followed by Chennai and Ghaziabad. While Bangalore accounted for 22 of the top 117 tech schools listed in the survey, Chennai had seven of the top 117 tech schools, Delhi had five and Ghaziabad had six.

According to the survey, the intake of students in engineering schools has been rising in a number of institutes. Going by the final year student strength, Jadavpur University, Kolkata is the topper with 850 students; Manipal Institute of Technology, Udupi with 829 students came second, followed by BITS-Pilani with 785 students.

The IITs have around 3,300 students in the final year, averaging 471 students per IIT. IIT-Kharagpur is the topper with 650 students, and IIT-Guwahati produced the least number of all IITs, 209. According to estimates India will produce about 5 lakh engineers in 2007.