Daily/Weekly Structure

This is for a general, non-exam week. During exams, your free time effectively becomes like 12 hours as most Socs stop their activities, and classes will be over. Spend those for studying.

Official Requirements

• With the rough equivalence of 1 academic hr = 1 credit, you will roughly have 25 hours of classes per week (coming to on average of 5 hours per day). I know, so less, but this itself will become hectic.

• Class hours will be 8AM - 6PM weekdays (Mon-Fri), with a one hour lunch break in between (1PM - 2PM). This doesn't mean all of these hours will be classes, just that your 25 hours of classes will be assigned in these 45 hours (5 days x 9 hours). If you're unlucky, you might have 8-9 hours of classes on some days.

• EAA will bring in an additional 2-4 hours a week, usually at weekends or the evening hours.

• Class tests usually happen during class hours, or during weekends. You will be informed about this before hand, usually by a mail.

• Exams will be 3 hours for EndSems, and 2 hours for Midsems. Only for Theory subjects. During Exam week, no classes will be held.

Free Time

• Usually weekends are completely free from any official or academic requirements. There might be some soc work, or you might wanna study, but that depends on you.

• Everyday 6PM + is supposed to be free, but you might have EAA or soc activities then.

• Typically, with no other activities and assuming a 12-7 Sleep schedule, you get about 8 hours of free time in weekday (5 hours after 6PM, 3 hours in between 8AM & 6PM). USE THEM WELL. 

• With 1-2 socs, that drops to about 3-4 hours during weekdays, and about half the weekend.

• How much time of that you should spend studying depends on subject, and, well, you. My only recommendation is to study EVERYDAY (even just 30 mins going over what was taught). Regularity matters more than amount.

Society & Extracurriculars

• This is highly dependent on what soc you are in, so I'll just give rough overviews. What soc is which kind changes every year, so please ask your seniors to know more.

  1. More formal socs (like Cells & Business) usually have 5-10 hours of fixed timing work (with seniors) a week. Depending on comps and other stuff, you might also have to spend more free time on building your ideas (Anywhere from 5-20 hours a week). It can be extremely fun & fulfilling, but also hectic, so check with your seniors.

  2. Informal but Hectic socs (usually Cultural & Social) usually have 3-5 hours of fixed timing work (with seniors) a week. But you'll also spend time with your batchmates & informally with your seniors, in stuff like practice, and this can range anywhere from 3 hours a week to 20 hours a week.

  3. Relaxed socs (Depends, no specific type) usually have 2-3 hours of fixed timing work (with seniors) every other week. Other than that, about 2-3 hours is usually spent with batchmates every other week. This can change before competitions & events though.

  4. Research Socs (Usually Tech) usually have 2-3 hours of fixed timing work (with seniors) every other week. But the work you might have to do on your own (no fixed timings, just deadlines) can be highly variable and go from 3 to 20 hours a week, depending on subject & your interest.

• EAAs take 2-4 hours a week, as mentioned before.

• Other college extracurriculars (like sports & Inter-IIT) are highly variable b/w each sport, and when it happens. Typically, you'd spend a few hours in a week during off-season, but practice everyday before comps.

My Unsolicited Advice

• You have 168 hours in a week.

• Let's take 68 hours for sleep (9+ hours a day), so you now have 100 hours remaining.

• 30 hours for official acads, so you have 70 hours left now. 

• 20 hours at 3hrs/day for general stuff (eating, bathing n stuff), which means you have 50 hours left.

• Now, what you do with these 50 hours is upto you. Here's what seems like a good idea to me.

• 20 hours for socs/any other activity (even learning something else). I would recommend using the hours you get in between classes for this, unless you're spending them to study.

• 15 hours for studying. Yes, that's enough usually. Spend an hour each day during weekdays (after classes, in the evenings), and spend 4-5 hours on Saturday & Sunday each (This will likely be spent solving tutorials). On particularly hard weeks, spend another 5 hours for tutorials.

• Do whatever you want for the rest of the 15 hours. Study more if you want, learn something else, just finish some shows & movies (Hehe), Socialize (my recommendation), etc.

All of this is to show to you that college life gives you a lot of options, but you NEED to manage them well. Bad time management does mean all of this will become hectic, and you won't know what to do.

Your Timetable

How do you find it?

Your specific timetable will usually spread through your dept group, but you can also find them in ERP. Specifically, the pathway : Academic Section -> Time Table Menu -> Choose as needed (My timetable, usually). 

The timetables within a department were usually the same, but this is only a recent occurrence. It's always a good idea to check your actual timetable in ERP. Do note, your labs might vary within your department, so make sure you know when is yours.

[Technically, each of your subject classes will be divided by sections, instead of depts, with each section often having multiple departments within them. Ensure you know what's your section, since it's needed for correcting your exams (They can do without it, but it will take longer). A section is basically a collection of students, and their specific Instructor(s) and TAs.]

The first code in a cell refers to the subject code, and the second code to the classroom number (See Nalanda Classroom Complex for where each room number is)