The Birla Institute of Technology and Science is one of the premier institutes of higher education in India. Popularly known as BITS, the college is located in Pilani, a small town in Rajasthan, in West India. Rajasthan is famous for its deserts (the Thar desert), its palaces and forts. One would expect the campus to be inundated with sand but on the contrary, it is a sprawling 328-acre verdant oasis, dotted with neem trees and populated by birds such as woodpeckers, parrots and peacocks. The campus can actually be thought of as a small town. Within the campus, there are shopping zones, a gliding club, staff quarters, a dairy farm, primary schools, a temple and playgrounds.
Places of interest inside the campus include C'Not, the shopping cum restaurant area, the Birla Museum (the first science and technology museum in Asia), Sky Lawns (a sprawling carpet of green, where students hang out between classes) and Shiv-Ganga, (a beautiful garden surrounded by a moat, with a guest house in the middle). Off campus, the places of interest are the Birla Haveli (the ancestral home of the founder of BITS), Pahadi Mandir and Panchvati, a small zoo.
INSEAD is the #1 business school outside USA with twin campuses - at Fontainebleau(France) and Singapore. I was in INSEAD for a year (2000-01), during my final year at BITS as an Intern. Apart from the fun that I had roaming around Europe, INSEAD exposed me to a multi-cultural work environment and real-time work pressure. As a Research Associate, I designed and developed applications and tools used by the MBA students, faculty and the International Executive Education Program participants.
