You shall be allotted a hostel room as soon as you arrive on the reporting days both for the orientation and pre-orientation.
Parents will be provided accommodation for pre orientation phase i.e. from 12-14th July. However, from 15th July onwards no accommodation will be provided to parents. It is requested that you make reservations outside the campus. Parents are not allowed to stay in the campus under any circumstances after 15th July. Please find the list of hotels attached.
It isn't mandatory to open a bank account here. You can very well open an account elsewhere and transfer it to the IITK branch. (Note that cheque payments from accounts in other branches is not allowed). But we would suggest that you wait to open the account till you come here. You would not require any specific documents, ID proofs etc except those issued by the college upon your arrival and also you will be provided with assistance in form filling and opening account
A mess advance has to be paid in the respective hall offices.
Regarding the monthly expenditure, the basic mess bill for a vegetarian comes to about Rs.1200/- per month. Items like milk, eggs, butter, and non-vegetarian preparations are available on extra payment. Apart from the basic
mess expenditure, about Rs.1000/- per month should be sufficient for other expenses such as washerman, stationery etc.
Kanpur is well connected by rail to all parts of India. IIT Kanpur is situated on the Grand Trunk (GT) road at Kalyanpur about 17 km away from Kanpur Central Railway Station. The nearest well connected Airport is the Amausi Airport at Lucknow (95 km from the campus). There will be Institute buses from the Railway Station and LIC building at stipulated time. Also, there will be special buses running on 15th and 16th July, 2014. Student volunteers will be present at the railway station on Platform No.1 on 15th and 16th July in order to guide you to the campus. If you happen to reach at a time when there is no Institute bus at the Railway Station, you could reach Bada Chauraha or LIC by a cycle rickshaw after coming out at the city side of the Railway Station i.e. towards Platform No. 9 (the rickshaw will cost you about Rs. 20.00 per rickshaw). Shared three wheeler taxis (known as tempo) ply between Bada Chauraha and IIT Gate. The fare is about Rs. 10.00 per head. From the IIT Gate you may take a cycle rickshaw to the hostel (it is at a distance of about 2 km and the fare is Rs. 20.00 per rickshaw). You may also hire a full tempo or a taxi from the Railway Station to IIT Campus. The fare is around Rs. 200 for the tempo and around Rs. 300 for a taxi, depending on the time of the day. Night charges are usually on a higher side.
You will need a lock with three keys for your room and another for the wardrobe. You would also require a mattress, pillow, linen, alarm clock, umbrella/raincoat. These commodities of general use including SIM cards are easily available in the Shopping Centre (ShopC). Warm clothing and a blanket/quilt shall be required by November. You can get them during the mid-semester recess. The Institute does not ask for a uniform. However, since it will be pretty warm and humid during July, it would be comfortable for you if you wear cotton clothes during this period. Moreover you will also require sports shoes and a pair of shorts/track pants for your CPA (Compulsory Physical Activity). The Institute does not allow motorized vehicles for students in the campus. The means of conveyance here are bicycles, which can be purchased from ShopC or from the city. Please note that a computer/laptop is NOT required in your first year. In fact we strongly discourage first year students from purchasing a computer, as it doesn't serve any academic purpose, and we believe that it has more cons attached to it than pros.
When I first arrived at IIT Kanpur, I was the typical confused soul who had just cleared JEE and taken a decision which seemed frighteningly important in his life. Advice was bombarded at me from all directions, assuring, comforting, warning, coaxing and of course, advising. However, the most important 'advice' I got was rather inconspicuous - it was the silent yet towering legacy of the institute's alumni and professors.
Well, the same reason we ask for a person's credentials when offering him/her a position - it bears testimony to the prowess of the institute! It gives you a sense of history and a perspective on the shining legacy you have the capability to carry forward!
Let me move on - one of the first people you would get to read of probably (for you're sure to visit the 'PK Kelkar Library' ) is our first director Purushottam Kashinath (PK) Kelkar. It is his dream and vision, his
'Project IIT Kanpur' that we are living right now. Instrumental in giving the curriculum here a modern touch, handpicking talent and setting up the 'KIAP' (Kanpur Indo-American Program) that made us a cut a notch above the rest
- PK Kelkar was certainly the first hero of the institute!
Speaking of heroes, you might glance at the newly constructed Rajeev Motwani building housing the CSE department. To all who knew him, Rajeev was a hero if there ever was one. An early graduate of the first CSE department
of India, there was not a startup he didn't love! And a 'startup' he had an important hand in? Google. A Gödel prize awardee for his theoretical work, Rajeev Motwani was also a fantastic teacher, certified by his numerous students
at Stanford.
How can the Gödel prize be mentioned and the AKS-primality-test be forgotten? An algorithm created and published by Manindra Agarwal, professor of CSE, with his two undergraduate students, Neeraj Kayal and Nitin Saxena,
took the world of computer science by storm in 2002 by being the first of its kind, a primality-proving algorithm to be simultaneously general, polynomial, deterministic, and unconditional. Some recent additions to the legacy,
eh?
Before I am accused of being too CS-centric, let me get to India's topmost researchers in string theory - Ashoke Sen and Rajesh Gopakumar, both IITK alumni. Rajesh Gopakumar, the 1987 IITJEE topper and currently
at HRI, Allahabad is famed for his work on topological string theory. Ashoke Sen's name might ring familiar - yep, he received one of the most 'lucrative' prizes in science - the Fundamental Physics Prize, in 2012.
The FPP leads to another name - Shiraz Minwalla, another theoretical physicist and the winner of the 2014 New Horizons in Physics Prize. Of course, all of the mentioned people won the SS Bhatnagar Prize, India's highest science
and technology award.
Coming to a contemporary of Rajesh Gopakumar, Mahan Maharaj (Mitra) - a mathematician and monk who fell in love with pure mathematics. He had joined the institute to study electrical engineering but even then, IITK's
liberal policies had allowed him to shift to mathematics in his third semester. His work on hyperbolic geometry is well renowned.
A further enunciation of the legacy of our alumni would take days. Why not rather come over and feel the history? Of the departments graced by Bharat Ratna and chemist extraordinaire CNR Rao, who was also a member of
the governing body of IIT Kanpur; the hostels shared by the likes of NR Narayan Murthy and current IAS topper Gaurav Agarwal; the labs worked in by Prof. Arvind of MIT CSAIL fame or Abhay Bhushan of TCP/IP and FTP
fame or Mriganka Sur, a leading neuroscientist... And become a part of the history yourself.