My Experience With PU: Outdated Academics, Inconsistent Evaluation & Poor Administration
My honest experience with PU: outdated academics, unpredictable grading, and very little room to build your profile
I have been thinking about writing this for a while because I genuinely feel that Panjab University has a serious problem that doesn't get discussed enough — especially when it comes to academics and the way students are evaluated.
The biggest issue for me is the grading system.
scoring a 9 CGPA at PU is impossible , and even getting an 8 can be a difficult depending on your department and teachers. And I'm not talking about students who don't study. I'm talking about situations where you genuinely put in a lot of effort, prepare properly, write your exams seriously, and still receive marks that seem completely disproportionate to the effort or quality of your answers.
Then there are the opposite situations.
You come out of an exam thinking you have probably failed, and somehow you receive marks that make you wonder whether the evaluator even deducted anything.
That kind of inconsistency is frustrating because you never really know what to expect.
And when your CGPA is going to stay on your profile for years, that's not a small issue.
A student from a private university might score a 9 CGPA with a similar level of effort, while a PU student might struggle to cross 7.5 or 8 because of the evaluation system. On paper, those two profiles look very different even if the actual difference in ability or effort isn't nearly as large.
This becomes particularly important if you're planning for **CAT and MBA admissions**, where your academic profile can matter alongside your CAT score, work experience and other factors.
But honestly, CAT is only one part of the problem.
The university environment itself doesn't always make it easy to build a strong profile.
Results can be delayed for a very long time. Reappear fees keep increasing. Many colleges have strict attendance requirements, often around 75%. If you're trying to prepare for competitive exams, get internships, learn additional skills, participate in competitions or simply explore something outside your syllabus, the system doesn't give you much flexibility.
And then there is the issue of internships and opportunities.
Chandigarh is a good city in many ways, but as an undergraduate looking for genuinely internships and industry exposure, the opportunities is limited and mostly lala companies with shit work culture. There are companies and internships, but finding something that actually adds value to your profile can be difficult.
The teaching experience in PU colleges is another major issue.
There are definitely some good faculty members at PU, and I don't want to pretend otherwise. But there are also teachers who seem completely disconnected from modern teaching methods.
Some classes are simply: come in, open the material, teach in the same way it has probably been taught for years, take attendance and leave.
they don't even care to think that does students are even understanding or attentive during session, they just read the book loudly and yup its over, i mean we are not illiterate, we can read too but any practical experience, no use of digital device for explanation and being lazy to even think something out of window.
I have personally experienced this with a teacher named Savreet Bhatt. During our first year, a lot of students found her classes extremely slow and boring. We had also heard similar criticism from seniors before we even experienced the classes ourselves.
The problem wasn't that the subject was difficult or that she was taking time to explain things in depth. The issue was that the teaching often felt slow without being particularly engaging or even interested to teach.
Eventually, attendance during her periods became noticeably low.
There was also an incident involving seniors where students left the class together after being told that those who weren't interested could leave. Whatever the exact circumstances were, I found the whole situation disappointing because when an entire class is disengaged, I think the responsibility shouldn't automatically be placed entirely on the students.
A teacher should be able to look at that situation and ask: Why aren't my students interested? Is there something I can change about the way I'm teaching?
Maybe the classes could be more interactive. Maybe the teaching method could be changed. Maybe students could be encouraged to participate more.
Instead, sometimes it feels like there is simply no incentive to improve.
And this brings me to the larger problem with PU.
The university feels outdated.
Not academically irrelevant. Not without talented people. Not without a good reputation.
Outdated in the way the system operates.
There is still a very traditional approach to education — attendance, written examinations, marks, rigid academic procedures — while the expectations from students have completely changed.
Today's student isn't only trying to pass university examinations.
They're trying to build a career.
They're preparing for CAT, GMAT, government exams or other competitive exams. They're trying to get internships. They're learning Excel, coding, finance, marketing, data analysis, communication, whatever their career requires. They're doing projects and trying to build networks.
A university should help students do these things.
Instead, sometimes PU feels like something students have to work around.
And the most frustrating part is that PU has the reputation and resources to be much better than this.
It's a university with a huge legacy and a strong name. That's exactly why the gap between what PU could be and what students sometimes experience is so disappointing.
I don't think PU needs to become a private university.
I don't think everything needs to be changed.
But there needs to be more accountability in teaching, more consistency in evaluation, faster administration, better industry exposure, and a much more modern approach to how students are taught and assessed.
Because at the end of the day, students are the ones who carry the consequences.
If the evaluation system gives you a lower CGPA than your actual academic ability might suggest, you carry that number into internships, jobs and MBA applications.
The university moves on.
The student carries the profile.
That's what I think needs to change.