Top 5 Engineering branches in India

Last Updated on August 3, 2023 by Vishnu Nambiar

The Board examinations and entrance tests will come to an end soon. The admission season is around the corner. Students and parents have a lot to be concerned about! And in this age of cut throat competition, they must be a bit concerned about career and studies. Here, we’ll check out some Engineering branches and courses, which are good for job opportunities in the year 2014 and for years to come.

Engineering studies is one such field that is excessively saturated. This has happened not only in Gujarat, but throughout India! A part of this phenomena can be blamed on the rapid rising of private Engineering institutes.

With the Government providing many private trusts and firms permission to start up their own, private Degree Engineering colleges and institutions, things have taken a bad turn. They’ve largely turned higher education into a business opportunity. An opportunity, which they seized by the neck!

With the rapid rise of such Engineering Colleges, the number of seats have gone up. With the number of seats going up, the number of Engineering graduates also went up! But the quality of the education wasn’t rising, unlike the above mentioned stats!

In fact, quality of education has been going on a downward spiral! With the exponential rise in the number of graduates, low quality education and recession, unemployment among Engineers has increased like never before.

Some branches like IT (Information Technology) and EC (Electronics and Communications Engineering) got hit so badly that many graduates, who graduated with those branches, were forced to take up totally unrelated and low paying white collar jobs! Such was the pathetic situation some years ago!

I’m not saying that the above mentioned Engineering branches are utterly useless or devoid of any opportunities. If you graduate in the above mentioned branches from a reputed institute, and you are skillful enough, you may land a good job in leading companies.

I was talking about those folks, who pass out from average ranked colleges. In such cases, the above scenario is proved to be true often!

In short, my point is that, while choosing to get admission in an Engineering college, you must be really careful when choosing the branch. The branch should be chosen keeping a few things in mind. Thankfully, I’ll be explaining those ‘things’ will be described here by me. And these things have been written keeping the academic year 2014 in mind! Thus, this article will come handy to those students, who are looking to get admission this year!

How to Choose the best Engineering branch

The ‘thing’ that I referred to is the job prospects that a particular Engineering branch offers. It is all about analyzing that branch. For example, take the example of Mechanical Engineering.

Let’s analyze it. First of all, do bit research on the internet about how well this branch has been faring in the past few years. Next, if you can get in contact with any ‘industry’ related man, take his help.

You may go to a senior Engineer or Manager working at a decent sized industry near your house. Call this a field test! Ask him about the branch that you are interested in and its present scenario- job wise. This will help you get a good idea about the job prospects that the branch/course offers!

After that set of inquiries, it is time to catch up with some fresh graduates who passed out recently in that particular branch. Inquire about their employment status. Know whether they managed to find jobs easily, whether campus placement stats regarding that branch had been impressive or not etc.

All this will give you an idea about it and will help you know about that course inside out! Next comes the most important part. Ask yourself whether you are ready to do that course. Ultimately, it is your passion and area of interest that matters the most! So, ask yourself that question and do a self analysis.

Doing the above processes will help you a great deal in simplifying the process of finding the most rewarding and suitable branch! Further, I’m going to mention some relatively unsaturated courses. These branches of Engineering are relatively less crowded and exploited. So, you may find the list real handy, you know!

#1 Petroleum Engineering

This branch is awesome, when it comes to job prospects after graduation. Petroleum is one such resource that is very valuable. Further, it is getting depleted very fast. Thus, research and development work in this field is very rewarding and promising!

#2 Mechatronics Engineering

Combination of Mechanical and Electronics Engineering, this branch is like a hybrid product! Not as saturated as the other branches and offers good job opportunities in the field of robotics, automation etc.

#3 Food Processing Technology

Many might underestimate the value of this branch. Believe me, it has got some real value! When it comes to food manufacturing and processing, innovation is the new mantra. Thus, graduates of this branch won’t find it difficult to land a high paying job in the future!

#4 Environmental Engineering

Again, a very underestimated branch of Engineering! Environmental degradation is occurring at a rampant pace right now! Governments around the World are looking for and thinking about new strategies to undo the damage that we’ve been doing to the environment. So, a well paying job should not be a concern for graduates of this stream!

#5 Instrumentation and Control Engineering

This branch is all about automation and controlling related stuff. But this field is full of potential and opportunities! The demand for IC Engineers is much, but the supply of graduates is less, when compared to the number of graduates of other streams.

One more good one- Biomedical Engineering. It is all about the combination of Biology and Engineering. This field is thought to bring in huge revolution in the field of health care and medicine. But I’m not much sure about the institutes that offers this course. That’s why I didn’t mention it up there with the other branches.