Why Students Are Choosing Polaris School of Technology Over Ivy League Colleges

As AI changes what employers look for in engineering graduates, some students with strong academic scores and international university offers are choosing a different path: one that puts building real-world technology ahead of a college's name.

For years, the conventional route to a successful technology career was straightforward: secure a high rank, get into a prestigious institution and build your career from there. But as artificial intelligence reshapes the skills employers value, some students are beginning to question whether that formula is still relevant.

A 2025 University of Oxford study examining more than 10 million UK job postings between 2018 and 2024 found that demand for AI-specific skills had grown by 21%. Meanwhile, employers are increasingly interested in what candidates can actually build, from functioning AI agents to deployed software systems, rather than relying on CVs alone.

India's engineering education system is also facing pressure to adapt. In May 2026, a government-industry review of B.Tech computer science and allied curricula, led by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, with NASSCOM and industry experts, highlighted gaps in practical exposure, infrastructure and teaching methods, particularly in areas such as Generative AI, MLOps and foundational model development. The taskforce proposed increasing practical exposure from 25–30% to between 40% and 75%.

The implications for students are significant. A college's reputation may open doors, but what happens during the four years that follow can shape what a graduate is prepared to do once they walk through them.

That question is influencing how some students approach college admissions. At Polaris School of Technology (PST) in Bengaluru, three first-year students, Bhavesh Thadhani, Nihitha Rajesh and Aashu Raj, arrived through very different routes. One had international university offers, another had a strong JEE Main score, and the third had been teaching himself to code since school.

What they shared was a desire to learn technology by building it, rather than waiting until graduation to put their knowledge to work.

Three Students, Three Different Routes

For Nihitha, the decision began with possibilities that extended beyond India.

Growing up in a small town in Tamil Nadu, she had scored 1430 on the SAT and received offers from universities in Singapore, the US and the UK. She initially aspired to pursue environmental engineering, particularly carbon capture. Computer science was not part of her plan until her father introduced her to how AI could accelerate the discovery of materials for climate technology. This helped her recognise the potential of combining the two fields and inspired her to seek an education at their intersection. 

Aashu, meanwhile, had a strong academic record, scoring 98.3 percentile in JEE Main after a drop year. He could have opted for a non-computer science branch at an IIT or computer science at an NIT. However, having already experimented with AI tools and built a freelancer platform, he wanted to understand the technology behind them, not just use them. He was looking for an education that combined strong technical foundations with practical learning and industry exposure, something he felt the conventional engineering options did not offer. 

Bhavesh had started learning to code during the Class 7 lockdown. He taught himself HTML, CSS and JavaScript through YouTube and progressed to the MERN stack by Class 10. By the time he was considering college, the traditional entrance-exam route felt disconnected from the way he wanted to learn. He took the SAT instead, scored 1316 and secured a place at PST.

Their paths differed, but they had reached a similar conclusion: choosing a college required looking beyond the admission result itself.

The College Experience They Were Looking For

Once prestige was no longer the only consideration, students began evaluating colleges against a different set of questions: How current was the curriculum? How early could they start building? And how close would they be to the technology industry?

The first concern was relevance.

Aashu wanted a curriculum that reflected how quickly AI was evolving, rather than one that took years to catch up. Bhavesh was wary of theory-heavy lectures delivered without enough practical application. Nihitha had heard similar frustrations from a friend at a conventional college, where time spent writing laboratory records seemed to leave less room for meaningful work.

The second consideration was the hands-on opportunity.

For Aashu, that meant hackathons and opportunities to solve problems outside the classroom. Bhavesh wanted to spend more time building useful products than studying concepts in isolation. “That’s why I chose PST,” he says, “because of its entrepreneurship culture, hands-on and practical approach and the industry-driven curriculum.” 

Nihitha was looking for the freedom to explore unfamiliar areas, backed by enough opportunities to put what she learned into practice. “Among all the new-gen colleges I was looking at, PST was the one with massive results in terms of internships, OJT projects, and GSoC contributions,” she says. “That was like, wow.” 

The third factor was Bengaluru itself.

The city offered proximity to startups, founders, technology companies and events that students elsewhere might have to travel to attend. Bhavesh saw it as India's Silicon Valley, while Nihitha valued the sheer variety of opportunities, from quantum computing events to hackathons.

Taken together, these factors shaped what they were looking for: not simply a computer science degree, but an environment where learning, experimentation and industry exposure could happen alongside one another.

The Difference Was Visible From the First Semester

Choosing a college on the promise of practical learning is one thing. Seeing that promise reflected in the first semester is another.

For Nihitha, the difference became apparent within weeks. “I did not expect to go into a hackathon in the first month. That was definitely a surprise,” she says. Two months into classes, her cohort was already planning on-the-job training (OJT) projects.

Aashu had attended two hackathons on campus sooner than he had anticipated. He was also progressing through Python and data structures and algorithms (DSA). He compared this pace with that of a friend studying chemical engineering at IIT Delhi, who was beginning DSA in the second year. 

Bhavesh noticed a similar emphasis on starting early. “In our first semester, we are getting to learn about open source and the main stack. We’re already learning DSA,” he says. “This speed is really good compared to other colleges, which only introduce it in the fifth or sixth semester.” 

The learning extended beyond software.

Aashu was drawn to the campus innovation lab, where seniors introduced him to Arduino and projects involving drones and robotics. “I’m already learning Arduino in my first semester, which I wasn’t expecting until the second or third year,” Aashu says. Bhavesh, who already works with Arduino and ESP32, was developing an OJT project with a partner while running Omilayer, his web and software agency with a team of four.

Nihitha's experience highlighted a different benefit of the same environment: the influence of her peers. Watching classmates develop and scale their own projects encouraged her to push further on combining AI with climate technology. 

These experiences illustrate the kind of education PST is trying to offer. Students begin building from the first week and are expected to complete more than 5,000 hours of hands-on coding over four years. The curriculum progresses from programming fundamentals and open source to machine learning applications, AI agents and production-oriented systems. Internships begin in the second year, and Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services are among its industry partners.

The degree is offered through Medhavi Skills University, a UGC-recognised university, with PST as the industry skilling partner.

What Should Really Define an Engineering Education

When asked what they would tell students choosing between prestigious offers and a more unconventional, technology-focused education, the three students gave the same advice: decide based on what you want to learn and do, not on what others expect of you. They suggested checking how relevant a college’s curriculum is to the industry, whether it has a hands-on culture, and looking beyond the tags and labels attached to a college’s name. 

None of them claims reputation is irrelevant or that traditional institutions have nothing to offer. Each made a personal calculation about which environment best suits their goals. As AI changes the relationship between a degree and a career, choosing where to study engineering makes all the difference. The college name will still be part of the conversation, but for Bhavesh, Nihitha and Aashu, it isn’t the only thing that counts.