Welcome to the second phase of your life. This may prove to be slightly different from the college you came from, probably because it is IIT after all. This section will give you the first booster dose to make you immune to the IIT system.

You might feel that you are sort of sandwiched between the B.Techs and the PhDs, but chill, you can have the best of both worlds…which means both coursework and research work! In IITB, you can surely do all the things that you always wanted to do. Try your hand at all possible extra-curricular activities from sports to debating to fine arts to drama (and many more), all of which will make you feel like a school boy/girl once again.

This place has the charm of never letting you feel bored. You will always find yourself in the midst of assignments, TA work, course work and several other activities. And suddenly if you feel that there‟s nothing of this sort going on, then be sure it‟s midsem or endsem season. So, just sit back and relax, you will be grilled in every possible way that will make you a perfect workaholic.

Oh yes, the funda of TA work and the money which follows will always be a “reason to live” in IIT . The TA money will keep pouring into your Canara Bank account and you can afford to be a spendthrift within the confines of the scholarship. Probably for the first time in life (if you have not worked elsewhere) you will feel monetary independence.

Choosing a guide is of course a Herculean task (which you may have to accomplish very soon depending on your department) before which you should consult your wise seniors. Yet, after taking such a calculated risk you will realize at the end of the day that there’s only one true guide and that is you yourself. Yet, people who have a knack for academics and are serious about publishing a paper or two can surely do it. You will also get allowances for attending conferences from the institute, the process might be slightly tricky but many people have succeeded.

Last but of course not the least, you fill find that your first home is your lab – not your hostel room. So you are free to keep mattresses and sleep there. (Don’t forget your tooth brush, unlike soap and toothpaste it cannot be shared). You will soon find that your biological clock has altered. After doing all this you might be under the assumption that you are studying very hard but actually you will hardly be studying.

Still, your two years here will just fly by and in retrospect you will miss the place, feel the void and enjoy the memories. IITB is one of a kind, so do enjoy your stay here !

A wide variety of intra hostel (amongst your hostel inmates) and inter hostel (with other hostels) events and competitions take place all year round. Also, national festivals like Lohri, Holi, Ganesh Chaturthi, Jansmashtami, Dusshera, Diwali etc are celebrated in the hostels along with flag hoisting on Republic Day and Independence Day, keeping the atmosphere in the hostels vibrant and full of life all year round. Do participate in whatever interests you, of course after having devoted enough time to academics. It helps in breaking the ice and socializing with your batchmates and seniors.

Apart from shopping for the essentials, you will sometimes feel like hanging out, relaxing and having fun. On this page you will find information about just that. Of course, it is not exhaustive, but it does give you a head start. Mumbai is a huge city and it's yours to explore.

For the most basic of amenities such as toothpaste, toothbrush, pens, soaps and other such items (which one should use daily), one can go to one's canteen or Xerox shop itself . Another alternative would be the Hostel 12 shop which stocks almost everything one would need and more. One can also go to Haiko or D-Mart in the Hiranandani Complex for these. Alternatively, the shopping complex at the Y-Point Gate can also take care of most of your needs.

For notebooks, bags and most stationery items including journal sheets and rulers/set squares/protractors, there is the co-operative store located on the MB ground floor near the library. For buying books, we have a shop called Book World on campus on the ground floor of the Gulmohar Building where you can get discounts on course-related books. Most of your hostels would have printing and xerox shops of their own.

For recharging your cell phone credit account, H3, H8 and H12 in particular have shops where you can get almost all kinds of top-ups or recharge cards. In case you're hungry and low on cash and in the academic area, you can think of heading over to the Staff Canteen located next to the library or the KReSIT Canteen located at KReSIT. Gulmohar Cafe and Gulmohar restaurant located at the Gulmohar Building are places to catch a bite whenever you get bored of mess food. In Hiranandani, we recommend all those eating joints in Galleria's food court.

You must have seen a few green or blue buses plying on the streets when you entered the hallowed portals of IITB. These, as you probably already know, are called TumTums. These are the unsung heroes of transportation in the institute. The public transport system is highly developed and is used by millions of people every day. The chief modes of transport available in the city are the BEST Buses (AC and non-AC), trains, autos and taxis. The Local Trains in Mumbai are by far the cheapest, fastest and most convenient way to get around the city. The Mumbai suburban railways are primarily broken up into 3 lines—the Central, Western and Harbour lines. Refer to Google Maps to see how these lines cover the entire megacity. An important thing you need to know is that there are 2 types of trains—slow and fast. The slow trains stop at all stations, whereas the fast ones don’t. The “fast” train stations are marked with a larger font on all railway maps. The nearest station from the campus is ‘Kanjurmarg’.

Right from the first lecture, you will hear professors say that Lecture notes or other stuff have been uploaded on their websites or on Moodle. What remains to be tackled is, how exactly are you supposed to access the internet? Here, we provide you some basic information. All hostel rooms have a LAN Port which you can use to connect to the IIT Bombay network and to the Internet, provided you have a computer. The institute provides us proxy-less access to the internet. You need to open any browser and go to this URL- www.internet.iitb.ac.in, type in your LDAP id and password and you are good to go.

The Library and all the rooms in the LH (Lecture Hall Complex) are wifi enabled. You can stay back after a class to browse the Internet or download lecture material on your phone/tablet/laptop.

The first and foremost thing - you all will get a medical booklet that asks you to fill a few details about yourself and get yourself vaccinated against certain diseases. It's all for the record and your own benefit- so it is highly recommended that you get a dose of all the vaccines mentioned (in case you have not already). At IIT Bombay there is a hospital to take care of any medical trouble you may manage to land yourself up into. There is a 24 hour ambulance facility for all students. For calling an ambulance you can call 1110 from any internal phone placed at security guard’s desk in every hostel.

All of these facilities including prescription medicines are free for IIT students, covered by the annual insurance that you pay with the fees in the odd (Autumn) semester. This insurance also covers the medical expenses in case you need to be referred to an outside hospital. Even the cost of medicines purchased from a chemist and/or charges for lab tests/other radiology work can be reimbursed when prescribed by a doctor from the IIT hospital. There is an OPD in the hospital that runs on all days (only till 1pm on weekends) from 8am to 6pm on weekdays. Also, the emergency ward handles medical cases outside these hours. The hospital also has Pathology and X-Ray facilities. There is also a facility for physiotherapy to deal with fractures and other such ailments.