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Finish the 1-day timeline things, Attend Induction, Meet guides, sophs (2nd years) & batchies (freshers), Explore Campus, Get Ready for classes. All is written assuming you came on the 21st.
Just completing the First-day timeline requirements
Also ensure you exercise your EAA choices in the ERP Portal (See EAA page)
The First day optionals of course.
Please do attend the induction programme (22-26, 3-4 hrs in Main Building Auditoriums), as they are extremely informative (See below Induction Section).
You & 3-4 of your batchies should be assigned a guide (3rd year from your dept) by the college itself, and you will receive an email about this. Do connect with them and meet them in-person if possible.
Some of your sophs (either those you have befriended, or those in your dept) would love to meet you. Just ensure that the sophs aren't strangers, and if they are, you aren't going alone; but given that these meets will be extremely informative.
And of course, meet your batchies. This includes roomies, wingmates, your community & your dept-mates, among others. A couple ideas I'd suggest:
1. Create a freshers-only WP group of your dept ASAP. Just tell dept-mates to add anyone they know for sure are freshies in your dept. Police it regularly to ensure no one else joins, and no "publi" (promotion of college/society events) occurs. Pretty much every other group will be filled to the brim with ads for societies & other stuff, so this'll be really helpful.
2. Have dept-meets and such, especially for smaller depts. The people you get to know here will be invaluable for your acads.
3. Try and push yourself to meet as many wingmates as you can, same reason as above, but for non-acad reasons.
4. A personal suggestion: have a late night talk with some freshie from completely opposite places in India, at some balcony in LBS or any other place with a view. I did it, and it still remains a core memory for me.
Explore the campus. This means knowing the main routes between important locations (mentioned in the important locations - freshers guide page) but also just exploring all the different paths & locations. A couple suggestions though:
1. If exploring at night, always stay with a large group (5+). It's easy to get lost, and you don't need the stress this early on. Recommended with a soph, but doing with freshers, as long as you stick to the roads, is fine. Don't explore on foot at night, just use cycles.
2. Be careful of greenery & foliage, and definitely don't go into them at night. The campus prolly has insect species not yet discovered, and the snakes won't help you either.
3. Do make sure you have a full battery, there's wifi literally everywhere (including the middle of goddamn fields), so you can always use gmaps to find your way.
Get ready for classes! Basically this involves having the studying mindset I mentioned in What to do before coming here? page, but also buying the required stuff for classes : Notebooks, Pens, Calculators, Textbooks (Phy/Chem lab), etc. Going to the library isn't a bad idea either.
Oh and, classes come to about 25 hrs a week only, but even then your schedule will be hectic soon enough.
Visit your fam for sure, and if you're not sure you should, def do so.
IITKGP knows that it is a culture shock (Somehow), and most students haven't ever been so independent, so "adult" in their lives before. This programme is their attempt at making this transition easier. While it's not perfect, there is genuinely no better way to get you up-to-date on all most of the facilities of the campus. Other than this guide, of course.
Last years (as of 17th July 2025) induction website : Induction programme 2024
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[EVERYTHING BELOW WAS MY EXPERIENCE LAST YEAR, IT MIGHT BE DIFFERENT THIS TIME]
It will most likely occur in the Main Building Auditoriums (See important locations - freshers guide page), and will start from like 8:30 - 9 AM. It will go till anywhere between 11 AM & 3PM depending on the day. The seating is first come first serve on each day: and once netaji audi is filled, you'll be sent to one of the other two audis, and the event will be telecasted live. Come before 8:30 to ensure seats in Netaji.
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The first day is mostly celebrations and welcoming events, though a rough overview of campus & acads is also given. I am not sure whether this will happen for you guys, but one hour of "motivation/pep talk" was also given in the first day by an invited guest. While I didn't care much about it back then, in retrospect it was both hilarious but also really helpful. Hopefully they do it this year too.
The second day goes more in-depth into the campus rules, acads structure, facilities, and everything else.
The third day is a social construct. Maybe.
The 4th & 5th day will mainly showcase the non-academic aspects of the campus, including & especially societies (clubs). I had the misfortune of having two infections then, and thus missed it, but please do your absolute best to attend this. The events will be directly organized by the society itself, so it's an amazing opportunity to know what they involve, directly from the source.
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There are also some cultural events organized by the college at the end of certain days, and from what I have heard, they were great, so feel free to go and see them too.
Lastly, there's a "campus tour" organised by the induction committee (basically the college itself), and you will be given a slot to attend it. Missing the slot is fine, but do try and stick to around that time to avoid crowds & queues.
The tour basically consists of dragging you & other freshies around the entire campus in a bus, naming/showing all the major places (as far as I remember, mostly the ones I mentioned in important places) and returning back in 10 minutes.
All I remember now is them saying the campus is really big a lot of times (which is both good & bad in my opinion). That's why I'd recommend also exploring the campus on your own (i.e. with friends/batchies).
Oh there's also an EAA tour (predominantly NSO), but I'll elaborate on this later. Basically a tour of sports options for mandatory extracurriculars.