Some FAQs and common doubts

Non-credit and additional learning courses

There are three types of non-credit courses:

1) NCC/NSO/NSS
2) Practical Training
3) Work Visits

Audit courses are the courses that are opted just for the purpose of an exposure in the course. There is grade AU associated with the course if you fulfill the minimum requirements for AU as decided by the instructor.You can opt for a maximum of two Audit courses during your degree. ( for more details go to rule book at http://gymkhana.iitb.ac.in/~academics/rules.php)

Note that a non-credit course does not contribute towards completion of pre-requisite for some other course.

Regarding additional learning courses, they may be included in the Overall CPI calculated by taking into account all the credit courses done by the student including additional learning courses. However Core CPI is unaffected by the additional learning courses.

The various CPIs

Core CPI-The CPI calculated using only your core courses which include the institute electives and department electives done by a person as per the curriculum.

Overall CPI-The CPI calculated using all the credit courses taken by a student, including minor and honor courses.

Honor CPI-CPI calculated using only Honor courses

Minor CPI-CPI calculated using only minor courses

Non credit courses do not come in any CPI. Additional learning courses count in overall CPI.

Why these different CPIs?

We need to have all sorts of measures to quantify effort put by students. It is upto the different authorities to take the decision, which measure of effort(which kind of CPI), they want to use to judge a person. eg placement cell might decide to  choose overall CPI or perhaps they might find it unfit, so may continue with core CPI and minor, honor CPI.

Sequencing of institute electives/department electives

The institute and department electives need not be always done in the semesters they are shown in the curriculum of the department. A person can do these electives beforehand and then not take these courses in the concerned semester.

e.g. A third/fourth/fifth semester chemical engineering student need not take any insti/dep elective, but if he/she takes any

elective in any of these then he/she need not take elective in 6th sem, in which they are officially supposed to the elective.

Additional procedures for people who have done elective beforehand and now registering for semester in which elective is to be done

1.If registration status of previous semester it was tagged as department/institute elective only. Then if the elective is dropped, this semester it will not be considered as backlog. however due to software issues asc will show it a backlog which needs to be manually removed by the academic office on writing an application.

2.In case your Extra Dept. elective is tagged as an additional learning course, then if you drop a dept. elective and then it will be considered a backlog. If you are a Btech then tagging will open for you in Mid Aug 2011. If you tag that course as Dept. elective then you will have to manually apply for removal of backlog.

3.An institute elective and a department elective are by definition not interchangeable, since institute elective is outside department and department elective is inside department. However for very rare case usually with very high CPI and on approval from Department HOD+Dean AP, a person may go for taking institute elective as a department elective. This is very highly discouraged though, and this is not a procedure/rule but an exception to rule.

Which courses are being offered as minor and which as electives?

The respective DUGC of each department decides and has full authority on whether to run a course as a minor or an elective or as both with limitations on seats for both tags. NO department has made public, if it is running any course as an elective, or has given any count of the no. of seats for the same to the academic office.

Hence all courses which are offered as minor are primarily minor courses and as an exception people may approach professors of these courses after taking them as minor, during the adjustment time itself to tag them as institute elective.

This procedure of tagging them as institute elective is an EXCEPTION and that's why needs manual permission from the instructor. The instructor has full authority on this.

eg. the following post from the forum:

Question-I wish to take MG 405 running in Slot 5 as an institute elective.But on registering for it,ASC says "There is no entry for this course in the current semester".No such problem is occurring with the other MG 403 course for those who want it as an institute elective.Only asks to take approval from the faculty.What is the issue with this particular course?

Answer-The MG department has offered this course (MG 405) only as minor and NOT as institute elective. Therefore you cannot take it as institute elective. Whereas MG 403 is offered as both Insti elective and minor. if the professor of MG 405 agrees to float it as elective then people can take it accordingly by a manual process however that has been declined by the professor of the course.

ASC has been informed of the wrong error message and is being corrected.

Taking PG electives

A PG elective is alloted in the following decreasing order of preference-PhD, Mtech,DD,Btech.

A Btech or a DD who is not in 5th year needs to have at least CPI of 6.5, in order to take PG electives. An instructor may however keep his/her own criterion over these conditions.

eg in HS623 the instructor has lifted the cut-off of CPI for Btech and non 5th yr DD to 8, instead from 6.5 

PG courses for DD students

DD students are supposed to complete some no. of PG courses as electives by the end of 5 years. eg in chemical engineering DD students need to do 4 PG courses by the end of 5 years.

The DD students take PG electives in any year, and are eligible to take courses floated as PG core courses in their 5th year only.  It does not mean that 5th yr DD students cannot take any UG elective or PG elective. So if someone has done a PG elective in 2nd/3rd/4th yr, then it does not mean that he will out of PG  courses by the end of 5th year to complete PG electives. Tagging PG elective as an institute elective does not mean they cannot count towards PG elective. A chemical engineering student eg needs to do 4 PG electives and 2 institute electives.

So a possible distribution could be 2 UG electives, 4 PG electives or 1 UG and 5 PG electives ,all 6 PG electives, or 2UG elective, 2 PG elective, 2PG core courses tagged as elective and done in 5th year, or 4 PG electives done till 4th year and doing remaining electives from the basket of UG electives or PG core courses.

For branch change students

In case of a branch change you can also do your DIC of the new dept. as a SELF STUDY course which has no slot. Contact your Faculty Adviser for this ASAP !! You can do other courses like PH 103/105 in the coming sem as well. 

Does a successful registration means I have definitely got the course

NO!!!!!, succesful registration does not mean you have definitely got the course. there might be seat restrictions or other criterion like CPI set by the instructors or pre-requisites which you might not have done. Make sure you talk to the instructor  to confirm your eligibility. 

People should not complain if they are told to drop some course , by the instructor even after successful registration. eg in HS 623 the instructor had a special criterion of CPI 8, hence people lost out. Last year IDC 601 instructor permitted 220 seats, even when originally seats were 120, which benefited students. This year IDC has other guidelines etc, eg it is not offering elective but only as minor.

Registration rule exceptions (overriding rule)

 students are allowed to register even though there may be errors in their registration. Some of these errors are overridable while others aren't. A student may proceed with registration if all his errors are overridable or there are no errors at all. The complete registration process is outlined herewith.

On login, once you go to registration -> Registration/Adjustment. You will be presented with a screen as shown below.



The courses in the bulletin are the prescribed courses for you this semester.


If dual degree students wish to register for one of the minor courses as institute elective, they may do so using the additional courses/extra courses section below. You will get an error for that but more on that later

The next section is that of Audit course wherein you can put in courses you wish to audit. However, it should be noted that for UGs the limit is 2 audit courses in their entire stay so do choose them wisely

Following that is a section for Non credit coursess, where in you may register for PP/NP courses.
However 1st year UG students should note that registration for NC/NS/NO 102 should be done from the drop down in department elective

For the 2007 batch onwards UG, there will be a section for registering for honors courses as well

The last section is for registration for additional courses/extra courses where in you can register for additional courses apart from Minors or backlog courses. DDs as I said earlier can register for Minor courses as institute elective here. Please choose the tag correctly and if you are registering for a backlog course do not forget to put in the equivalent course.

Now your choice of courses may lead to one of the three situations
1. No errors on registering
If you select a set of courses which do not lead to any error, you will shown a confirmation screen as shown


Please click on "confirm" on this screen to confirm your registration. Only when you click on confirm is your registration complete and logged on the system. On clicking confirm you will get a screen as shown below



You will also receive a mail as follows from pgadm@iitb.ac.in. Only when you a receive a mail from these students does it mean that you have completed the registration process


2. Only overridable registration rule exceptions
In this case you have selected a set of courses which violate some of the rules laid down either by individual course instructors or the academic rule book. However for all of these errors you can seek approval from an approving authority and confirm your registration for the semester.
The process to be followed in this case is outlined below

On selecting a set of courses which lead to a set of overridable errors and clicking on verify, you will be presented with a screen as shown below


You need to agree to the terms and conditions given on the page and proceed with registration. This only means that the system is aware that you are trying to register for a set of courses which are not in the academic framework but can be overruled with permissions from appropriate authority. It is keeping a log of your request. The terms and conditions only state that you are responsible for choosing the set of courses with a set of rule exceptions.

You have two options here. You can either choose to agree to the terms and conditions and proceed OR go back to registration screen and register for a set of screens without error.

IF you choose to proceed, it is your liability to submit the duly signed registration rule exception form to the academic office who then will integrate your registration.

To proceed, click on "I agree to all the above terms and conditions". On clicking confirm, you will be presented with the following screen


After that you need to click on the link to get a printable format of the registration rule exception form. On clicking on the link you will be presented with a screen as shown below


You will receive a mail from pgadm@iitb.ac.in


Your registration for the courses not having an error is recorded and you do not need to worry about them

You are then expected to take a printout of this form and get the signature of the approving authority (column 3 in table 2 on that page) as mentioned in the table on the form. In this case it is the "Course Instructors" approval that needs to be sought. After seeking the approval from the respective approval authorities, you need to sign the form yourself and submit it to the academic office staff who then will do the needful.

This procedure needs to be completed before the last date of registration.
Please understand that the registration is tentative for the courses having an error and on submitting the duly signed form to the academic office only will your registration for those courses be validated

3. Some non-Overridable errors exist
If you select a set of courses which lead to a set of non overridable errors then your screen will show as follows


In this case you registration is NOT recorded and you are expected to go back to the registration screen and select a set of courses which either fall in option 1 or option 2.

A list of all registration rule exceptions are available here

If you feel that some of the exceptions are incorrect then please put your query on the forumhttp://gymkhana.iitb.ac.in/~ugacademics/index.php. or mail it to the responsible authority. Get the contacts from the earlier post on this blog.

Contact details for registration issues

For any registration related queries please contact the following SAB (Students Advisory Body) of your department. However, before contacting please take a look at the forum on http://gymkhana.iitb.ac.in/~ugacademics/ . We advice you to post your queries there first, since others with the same queries will also benefit from it. Also, In most cases you may find your queries already in the forum.

Aero	Kanwalpreet Kaur	kanwal.1811@gmail.com	9867105156
CS	Prashant sachdeva	sachdevaprash@gmail.com
Chemical	Dhruv Gupta	iitdhruv@gmail.com	9920950327
Chemistry	Srinath Ranya	srihari.r.jee@gmail.com	9920244836
Civil	vashu dev	vasuiitb@gmail.com	9930472292
Elec	Tuhin Sarkar	tuhin91@gmail.com	9819193091
Energy	Puneet Batra	puneetakaiitian@gmail.com	9920935066
EP	NA
Mech	Ashish Sharma	ash.ofey@gmail.com	9769213032
Meta	Siddharth Bhandari	siddharth.bhandari02@gmail.com	9930700382

you may also contact DGsecs of your department:

Department Name Email ID Ph no. Aero anand pratap singh anand.deshwali@gmail.com 9769253212 CS Ravindra Singh singhravi18031991@gmail.com 9930490534 Chemical Anant Prakash anantprakash11@gmail.com 9969688968 Chemistry Savita kumari savita004@gmail.com 9323075309 Civil Vaibhav Kalra vaibhaviplfan1621@gmail.com 9769454738 Elec Akshat Jain akshatjain.iitb@gmail.ac.in 9167470108 Energy Rachit Shrivastava rachit.iitb2008@gmail.com 9323553390 EP Mukund Madhav mmv1301@gmail.com 9930735131 Mechanical Mayank Gupta mayank491.iitb@gmail.com 9967501421 Meta Arpit Beri beri.arpit@gmail.com 9321036339

For general queries which are not department specific, you can contact: (but once again we advice you to first post your queries on http://gymkhana.iitb.ac.in/~ugacademics/ unless they are too specific)

ISAA - Naman Lahoty (lahoty.naman@gmail.com) - 9769253205
ISAA - Manish Chalana (manish.iitbombay@gmail.com) - 9768478416

GSAA - Ramanjit Singh Anand (anand.ramanjit@gmail.com)