‘On-campus placements are cut-throat’: IIT students, faculty explain why PPOs are gaining popularity

The internships that students secure can be attained on-campus or off-campus, depending on students’ exploration and the institute’s partnerships. Pre-Placement Offer (PPO) is increasingly gaining popularity among IIT students. For example, IIT Madras (in the 2022-23 placement season) stated that the institute received a record-breaking 350 PPOs after the 2022 summer internships.

Even in IIT Delhi, the PPOs received increased from around 150 in 2020-21 to around 230 in 2021-22. In IIT Bombay’s latest placement season, 300 PPOs were received and 258 were accepted, out of a total of 1267 internship offers.

Similarly, total number of PPOs offered in the latest placement season was 227, of which 189 were accepted.

“Taking a PPO is recommended for students so that they feel less pressure during their final year. This is more relevant at present as the job market is undergoing a major transformation owing to the redundancy of low-level IT jobs. Moreover, since the academic load, in the form of courses and credits, is lower in the final year, a PPO facilitates enough mental freedom to ponder over other career trajectories, such as higher education or entrepreneurship,” Lakshmi Narayan Ramasubramanian, an assistant professor at IIT Delhi told indianexpress.com.

Why are students preferring PPO over on-campus placement

There was a time when students were hesitant about accepting a PPO as they believed that an offer made during the on-campus placement drive would offer better remuneration and opportunities. “Imagine an on-campus placement drive as an open and free, but limited time period, buffet where we had a choice of several dishes but we had to ensure that we cease the chance before the dish runs out. I earlier had a PPO which I kept as a backup option, and still sat for on-campus placement drive. It was stressful for sure but I managed to score a better offer in the first phase itself,” says a former IIT student.

The trend seems to be changing now as IITians are now preferring to settle down with the PPOs as it helps them relax in their final year, instead of living under the constant pressure of securing a job offer. Umar Sayed, a 23-year-old from IIT Goa, accepted a PPO from Google after interning at the MNC’s Indian headquarters in Bengaluru between May and July. “A few months after I finished my internship at Google, the company reached out to me with a full-time offer. I was happy to accept it and my joining date is in July 2025. I preferred accepting the PPO as the on-campus placement drive would have way more grinding, but now I got to enjoy my final year of college without the tension of bagging a job offer,” Umar said.

Another reason why students are preferring a PPO over on-campus placement drive is the market’s current vulnerability, fearing that ongoing instability and layoffs might jeopardize their chances of securing a job through the on-campus placements. “…it could have happened. There was a possibility of me not securing a good job offer as this year’s placement forecast was bad due to the vulnerable market conditions — which nobody can control. So, I accepted a PPO as it acts as a safety net and provides me the freedom to focus on my other passion, interests and the final year of my college life. Also, on-campus placements are not easy, they have cut-throat competition,” said an IIT Bombay student who interned at a Hyderabad-based software company between May and July 2024 and has already started working as an entry-level software engineer, as per the terms of his PPO.

Why should you choose PPO?

While the PPOs are now starting to match the CTC offered during the on-campus placements, experts are cautioning students to only accept a PPO based on the acceptability of the work profile in the company they interned in.

“While the magnitude of the CTC package remains a typical yardstick for measuring the esteem of a PPO, this is a short-sighted point of view. The nature of work varies in companies and the general thumb rule is that higher pay packages come with a risk of long working hours and intense performance pressure. Although every person thinks they can manage better than the ones suffering from these occupational hazards, they are absolutely mistaken. Work pressure related stress silently accumulates over time and delivers a critical blow to mental and physical health.

“The best metric to assess a PPO is the job engagement, general morale of the employees in the company, company incentives and behaviour with employees. Of the above-mentioned factors, job engagement is most difficult to gauge and can be done only at a qualitative level. For instance, the student must think of how much they want to learn in a particular field and assess the degree to which they enjoy working. If they only like 50% of the work they are doing, they must not choose the PPO. This is why students must focus on actually exploring the complete scope of the job, the kind of work done at higher levels and the long term viability of their employment in a field during their internship, instead of posting LinkedIn essays about how they got a chance to work in a ‘prestigious’ company,” Lakshmi Narayan Ramasubramanian explained.

(This is a part of 5-part series on IIT placements by indianexpress.com. The first part explained why pre-placement offers (PPO) are gaining popularity, and the second part explained the IIT placement process. Third part talks about the forecast of the 2024-25 placement process. The fourth part is from the students’ perspective on how to prepare for placements, and the last part is about start-ups making their way back to IITs. You can find all IIT Placement related stories here)