This will be the most comprehensive review of BBA Digital Marketing at Pillai College Arts, Commerce & Science (New Panvel).
I’ve attached by student ID, student mail ID, plus LinkedIn has also verified that I belong to Pillai college which makes me eligible to review this program.
Visit my LinkedIn profile by clicking here
After reading all the points described below, if have any doubts you can contact me (shreyas@leadyourbusiness.in) or comment below.
Before reading my 3rd sem review, you can scroll below and read my FY & initial SY review
Continuing my review for the 3rd semester – SYBBA DM (writing on 25th December 2024 , merry Christmas to you)
a) Raise complaint wherever needed: I raised a complaint against the college on GoogleMyBusiness by posting a negative review. Lectures were being cancelled in the middle of the day or even before the day starts.
I understand it may happen few times (but happening more than twice a week – fluctuates the whole schedule of a student)
In cases when the student is involved in internships & projects – timelines are need to met.
After raising a complaint, Vice Principal addressed it and implement the solution by rearranging the lectures and ensured that there is minimum cancellation (thank you Deepika mam :))
b) Be very street smart & take part in various initiatives: Street smart means you don’t get fooled by anyone in the college. Stalls, & events happens regularly and you don’t have to attend each event (the committee may influence you through skill credits/certificates/attendance marking). Only attend the genuine ones – I had attended a 1 day workshop of Entrepreneurship (by Deshpande Startups)
College offers various competitions to take part in (Alegria – intercollege). Competitions will build you competitive spirit and when you be in the game – you understand the players that pushes you to perform your best.
Showing up is more important than winning.
c) Market yourself well: Take part in whichever initiatives offered in your domain. It can be pitching business plan competition, doing something extra for the college (making incampus map, starting a startup via incubation, organizing media agency visit, etc.)
You’ll understand its benefits later when you’re in the 3rd year.
d) IIDE’s placement assistance: IIDE will make sure you’re properly placed and working in a growing co./agency. They’ll do the maximum followup from their side and you as a student need to revert them for grabbing good opportunities.
e) Subjects will be less in 4th Semester: More stress towards application than learning. You’ll have 3 subjects papers (Video advertising, brand management, reputation management) and assignments for subjects like Financial planning, Emotional Intelligence, Influencer & Email marketing).
You’ll have more time for your personal projects & regular internships adn thats’ the best part of 2nd year.
f) Finding your intelligent life partner: Though there’s no one perfect life partner, we say because she is very close to being a kind & intelligent girl. Until 2nd year you’ll get to know who’ll be the right fit for your future.
I studied her from various angles and when I told my mother about this, my mother was happy to know that I was transparent & had clear conversation.
Parents will give you the right suggestion in marriage area.
I’ll reveal her name in 4-5 months :)
Here’s the initial second year review on 9th July 2024 of BBA in Digital Business/ Digital Marketing at Pillai College, New Panvel (with IIDE’s faculties)
If you’ve not read my FY review of BBA DM (fees, placements, etc. will get cleared) please read that first below then start reading the latest SY initial days.
A) How much supportive is Pillai College towards your ideas?
Here I’ve 2 instances to share based on my personal experience:
- We created a digital indoor campus map (accessible with a single QR) that’ll help students & parents to find any classroom /room easily. It took around 2 months for creating this. Principal & vice principal approved however, after a year still the map hasn’t been displayed on each floor (they told that we’ll display this innovation in our NAAC visit). They’ll support your idea on your face but won’t implement it sooner unless you’re super good at following up
- I & Adithya Iyer (from BBA DM) proposed the idea of revamping the website for a better look & operating with SEO improvements. VP supported our idea by assigning BSc IT, CS & I and Adithya from BBA DM to take up this project & complete in 1.5 months for ease in the admission process. I & Adithya were handling the content part & the IT & CS students were structuring, designing & adding new features and the SEO part was need to be done after the site has been built. All the things were done, even after followups VP & other coordinators didn’t respond once. CS & IT students left the motivation to carry this further, so there was no point in moving forward. This project should get us 2 skill credits delivery to each student (but this didn’t happen). Here are a few glimpses of the new homepage that was in progress to make it live:
B) Attendance issue?
In my FY I was particular about my attendance, but that was of no use. In my SY days now, I give more priority to my client projects & internships (as I learn more by doing than listening). Though there’s 75% mandatory, it is easily adjustable (I’ve gone from 60% to 73% in a week). There’s no professional exam made for BBA DM, how can a student give then? There’s no attendance concession for your internship (college like to make you sit in the class).
C) 12 Skill Credits Mandatory?
Till you graduate from BBA DM, you should have 12 skill credits to get the graduation certificate. Try to collect it most of them during FY & SY. College will take you to social activity, introduce courses, take part in competitions, etc. to collect it soon. Get all your certificates in a drive to show at the end of TY to calculate everything.
D) Railway Concession?
This facility is crucial to me as I live in Badlapur, Maharashtra (in Thane district) so it takes almost 2 hours to reach college. In my FY I utilised this well with 1st class pass for 50% concession.
In SY the concession won’t help you anyway, they assign Tuesday (for BBA DM) to collect passes, there are so many excuses the person gives. At the end, college don’t want to take effort for you to coordinate with the Railway office and get it processed fast.
So for SY students atleast for the 1st month, you can get your pass on UTS. From 2nd month you can continue for the quarterly pass from the concession form you had taken.
E) New Faculty or Old Faculty?
Mostly the faculty will be the same as you had in FY. Just a few change in 1-2 subjects who has some experience, but don’t rely on them. Internship & client projects on ground working will give you massive learnings than daily lecture.
As I’m writing on 9th July 2024, a few days we’ve online lectures due to rain issues. If you’re living far from college (atleast 80-90 KM away), in monsoon choose safety over lecture attendance. Though you may have other options to travel, you can’t tell the changing weather. College sometimes get the notification in the morning until then long distance students are already left for their daily lectures. So be close to your coordinator for the rain related updates.
If your internship is distance from Pillai College, it should have the faciility of work from home in extreme monsoon. My internship is in Andheri Chakala, so I’ve the fortunate employer to give me all the required adjustments.
Single message for SY students, this is the year where you see the magic of your career, avoid the romantic relationship, unnecessary habits, hanging with friends, etc. World is changing very fast, be highly dynamic & massive action taker on your skills.
From here starts my FY in BBA DM review:
Let’s start with the internship & placement offers…
Internship opportunities available with Pillai College:
a) Beginner students in DM need to learn initially and master 1 skill to gain desired internship (on or off campus] Don’t work in the NGOs internship offerd by colleges that’d take a lot of your time and least learning. Instead find a better internship through Linkedin /internshala (try to work at less stipend) IIDE offers an internship of a few weeks for doing a few tasks with training that’d help beginners.
b) For intermediate students in DM, they can get side projects or clients on LinkedIn
More internships will be offered by college in 2nd year.
This was the Digital Indoor Campus Map created by me, Aditya Iyer, Vineet Singh & Rafiq Shaikh (Leon Mendes was our supporting staff)
This was the last lecture of Commercial Designing subject of Priyanka Jadhav mam. On this day we were playing blocks w.r.t. matching colors & creating different structures:
Overall experience with campus life, focusing on social aspects, club involvement, and the infrastructure provided?
a) I travel from Badlapur to New Panvel (total of 4 hours/day) so I wasn’t involved in any clubs or events. Technical events like Kavach Hackathon & Alegria tech fest happened. In food fest if you’re setting up your food stall, you can execute your marketing skills to attract audience and make enough profit.
b) No need to read any book (course is highly practical and online resources are many). Projector with a camera to record the entire lecture that gets uploaded on IIDE bookmarks (this is of no use). Even though the offline lecture gets recorded by IIDE it doesn’t have any sound clarity and visiblity so better attend offline lectures & interact lively.
c) Students can charge their laptops on their desk but need to use thier own hotspots as college wifi doesn’t work.
IIDE gives you a personal domain & hosting with IIDE’s extension to practice WordPress
More details on the fee structure and the availability of scholarships, financial assistance, or campus employment opportunities?
a) The complete fee BBA DM course didn’t have any scholarships (neither at MahaDBT nor at National Scholarship Portal) even if I had got good marks in SC category.
b) Me & my parents visited Mantralaya (CSMT) in the Social Justice department many times (through references) but those executives told that Pillai College hasn’t mapped this course. As it is an autonomous college, University of Mumbai doesn’t want private colleges to charge so much fees for BBADM as a result they’re not granting any scholarship for this course, still Pillai College is trying to avail scholarship and will be informed students soon.
c) Students can apply in MahaDBT selecting plain BBA course and also try for regional NGOs (Eklavya India, Guruji Foundation, Mudita Alliance, Deepstambh Foundation, Vidyadan Sahayak Mandal, etc.) in Maharashtra who helps in securing scholarships with required evidence
Rating the course curriculum in terms of relevance and comprehensiveness?
a) Already I was aware of all the subjects in DM, the curriculum is highly practical (students need to bring laptops daily means whenever DM lectures are there) IIDE is the mediator between students & Pillai college.
b) IIDE takes care of the assignments, case studies, activities submission on IIDE bookmark and feedback is provided to each student. Sometimes IIDE doesn’t provide the faculties that have the required skills/experience (especially for subjects like Google ads & SEO) In such cases student’s overall feedback help them to bring a better one.
c) In my first year (started from June 2023) I had Sem 1 & 2 with two cumulative assessments (very easy to score) and compulsory 2 skill credit courses (based on your choice) here you need to pay additional amount to college. I prefer to choose soft skills & public speaking. For a beginner in Digital Marketing, one can learn a lot with faculty’s feedback on his/her work. For an expert in DM, one can do thier side projects easily.
Admission process? Cut-off , student’s ranking, etc.
a) The course is eligible for anyone securing minimum 60% in any stream in your 12th class. Students need to visit the college, take the brochure of BBA Digital Marketing and follow the online admission process as told by Pillai College admission team. As BBA Digital Marketing course was newly introduced in 2023 at Pillai College so there wasn’t any tough competition in selection of students.
b) If you’re little late in taking the admission for BBA DM, you might fall into the donation trap (so have little connections build before). Reservation & scholarship is only for Malyanam students, don’t know why they’re not providing to Maharashtrian of other states students.
c) BBA DM is so new course that is is not available on MahaDBT/National Scholarship Portal as it is a autonomous college so University of Mumbai isn’t providing the fee structure that is necessary for further scholarship process.
Parents can request a 1 month extra period (till July or August) to pay the total fees.
Talking About IIDE In More Detail:
IIDE has partnered with different colleges in India to provide Digital Marketing (DM) or Digital Business (DB) education. IIDE has its own professors and the college has some extra subjects (maths, professional communication, yoga, HRM, Economics) with DM subjects.
IIDE Professors: Most of the IIDE professors have industry experience in ecom, agency operations, coding, etc. IIDE is flexible to receive feedback and change prof.
However, few of the professors aren’t so professional in their field. For e.g. subject like Google ads & Google sheets could be taught very indepth. Those who’re learning DM for the first time will find these professors helpful but the intermediate students will need a highly PRO person in his/her subject which IIDE didn’t provided.
Curriculum: It matches current industry requirements. In 1st Sem we had Google sheets, marketing fundaments, HTML & CSS and analytics. In 2nd Sem we had commercial designing, wordpress development, SEO & blogging, and Google ads.
Other campus subjects like professional communication, statistics, and economics compliment the DM subjects. It was must for us to bring laptops daily, IIDE also conducts in-person masterclasses on DM subjects those are free to attend by college students.
During the skill credit course period during Diwali Vacation, IIDE conducted short-term course (₹3500) – Social Media Marketing at Pillai College of 15 days which had too basic knowledge and nothing in-depth of any social media platform. Instead you could buy a specific social media course like LinkedIn Growth Hacking or Twitter Growth from GrowthSchool at less price and indepth practical explanation.
IIDE has different bookmark portal for assignments & case studies uploading. Grad students can find the case studies done by their senior on IIDE web page to take insights from.
IIDE had arranged a small IIDE campus tour to attend ORM masterclass, meet other professors & placement orientation lecture.
Regular presentations & class activities are conducted to make you speak and jel with your peers on any given topic.
Placements: As we’re in FY a few internships from college was offered but that was not directly related to DM. IIDE has a mandatory internship scheduled in the Feb 2024 of 20 days (2 hours/day) with some assignments & feeedback. You get a LOE after completion of all tasks from IIDE.
I had done these tasks before, so it was easy for me. But for a beginner, he/she might need to practice more & experiment to get good results.
You could start pursuing internship in the FY (apart from what college offers) if your skills & internship requirements matches. Don’t worry much about the stipend initially, especially in DM where things change fast. When you show what you can do in your specialised area and become the only person on this planet to do a task that’s when you become super valuable.
Overall a good choice for beginner in Digital Marketing to choose Pillai College or any other college with BBA in Digital Marketing or Digital Business degree.
This review will be updated in my 2nd year of BBA DM at Pillai’s campus so you get clarity which degree or sujbects to pursue
Very thoughtful and true review which every student and parents need for a bright future and succeed in there future .Thank you so much shreyas for being so true and helpful.
Thank you Heeral for reading in so much detail!