Conceived in the year 1947 as centres of technical excellence, the Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs) were meant to train a skilled workforce of engineers and scientists. Since then, the Government of India has declared the IITs as Institutes of National Importance. IIT Kharagpur was the first of these institutes. IIT Kharagpur was founded on the recommendation of the Sarkar Committee that suggested that Higher Technical Institutions on the lines of Massachusetts Institute...

Conceived in the year 1947 as centres of technical excellence, the Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs) were meant to train a skilled workforce of engineers and scientists. Since then, the Government of India has declared the IITs as Institutes of National Importance. IIT Kharagpur was the first of these institutes.

IIT Kharagpur was founded on the recommendation of the Sarkar Committee that suggested that Higher Technical Institutions on the lines of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, should be set up in the Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western zone of India. As per those recommendations, the first Indian Institute of Technology was set up in May 1950 in Hijli, Kharagpur.

The Kharagpur campus is a self-contained township spread over 2,100 acres, and has twenty nine centres, departments and schools. List of its departments, schools and centres are given below:

• Aerospace Engineering
• Agricultural & Food Engineering
• Architecture & Regional Planning
• Biotechnology
• Chemical Engineering
• Chemistry
• Civil Engineering
• Computer Science & Engineering
• Cryogenic Engineering
• Center for Educational Technology
• Electrical Engineering
• Electronics & Electrical Communication Engineering
• G S Sanyal School of Telecommunications
• Geology & Geophysics
• Humanities & Social Sciences
• Industrial Engineering & Management
• Information Technology
• Materials Science
• Mathematics
• Mechanical Engineering
• Medical Science & Technology
• Metallurgical & Materials Engineering
• Mining Engineering
• Ocean Engineering & Naval Architecture
• Oceans, Rivers, Atmosphere and Land Sciences
• Physics & Meteorology
• Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law
• Reliability Engineering Centre
• Rubber Technology Centre
• Rural Development Centre
• Vinod Gupta School of Management

Each IIT is an autonomous body, but the administration process for each of them is overseen by a common IIT Council. The entrance process for all undergraduate admissions is through a common test- the Joint Entrance Examination- popularly known as the IIT-JEE. Every year, almost 4,000 undergraduate candidates are admitted into the IITs. Admissions for post-graduate applicants are done on the basis of their performance in the Joint Admission Test (JAM), Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), or Common Entrance Examination for Design (CEED).

Since its establishment, IIT Kharagpur has become the by-word for technical excellence in the field of education and practical training. Students get good placements even before they complete their studies. Names of a few recruiting organizations are given below:

• Dr. Reddy's Lab. Hyderabad
• HCL Technologies Ltd., Noida
• IBM Global Services, Bangalore
• Indian Air Force, New Delhi
• Indian Oil Corporation Ltd., New Delhi
• Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad
• Oracle Software India Dev. Centre, Hyderabad
• Samsung Electronics (I) Software, Bangalore
• Sun Microsystems, Bangalore
• Tata Infotech Ltd., Noida
• Tata Steel, Jamshedpur
• Tata Technologies (I) Ltd, Mumbai
• Wipro, Bangalore
• VIP Industries Ltd., Nashik
• Reliance Industries (Oil & Gas Division)