The institute has been ranked amongst 3rd Top 25 Engineering Colleges in India by India Today. The entrance test BITSAT, is now considered the most competitive of all national engineering entrance exams in the country. An average of 68 students compete for a single seat. Around 1.36 lakh students take the BITSAT entrance test for admission to a total of 2,000 seats at the institute's campuses in Pilani, Hyderabad and Goa.
Pilani Campus is located in the VIdya Vihar cmapus adjacent to Pilani town in Jhunjhunu District, Rajasthan. Pilani is the home town of the Birla family and has a population of about 50,000. It is about 200 km west of Delhi and about 220 km north of Jaipur. The Institute buildings, hostels and residentail quarters for staff with neatly laid out roads, lawns and gardens constiture the BITS Campus of about 328 acres.
The campus is spread across 328 acres and is covered with wooded paths. It is self contained and houses all the amenities and buildings that befit an institute of international standards. The programmes are fully residential, with 11 hostels for boys and one hostel complex for girls. Around 4500 students live on campus along with 350 faculty members, their family and a vast pool of support staff. The campus also has a huge library complex with a floor area of 65,000 sq. ft and a rich collection of about 2,30,000 volumes of books and manuscripts. The campus has successfully attracted healthy amounts of research funding from government grants and private bodies. The research facilities are wide ranging, with a number of laboratories focused on all aspects of science and technology. The campus has a state-of-the art network that provides connectivity to the entire institute.
BITS Pilani offers a host of facilities for its students. It is fully residential, and hostel accommodation is provided to all students. There are eleven hostels for boys and one hostel complex for girls. The hostel rooms are fully furnished. Common room facilities with cable TV and telephone are available in each hostel. Internet connectivity and solar water heating systems have been provided in all hostel rooms.
There is a common kitchen cum mess unit for the boy’s hostels. The girl’s hostel, however, has a separate mess of its own situated within the boundary of the hostel. It is mandatory for the students staying in the hostel to have their food in the hostel messes. The messes are managed by the students. Each hostel also provides facilities for volleyball, table tennis, badminton, chess, carrom, etc.
Games and sports are organised through the Sports Club. The institute has on its rolls a physical director, senior coach, life saver (both male & female), martial art instructor and other supporting staff. Facilities for the following games and sports are also available football, hockey, cricket, basketball, volleyball, tennis, badminton, table tennis, athletics, gymnastics, health club, swimming, water polo, weight lifting, etc. Besides organising routine activities in the above-mentioned sports, the Sports Club also conducts the BITS Open Sports Meet (BOSM) in the first semester every year, in which several outstation teams participate.
The health club is equipped with advanced exercising machines for weight training and aerobic exercise. A 25 x 12.5 m swimming pool provides facilities to learn swimming, play water polo and race. Students can become members of the swimming club/health club upon payment of the prescribed fees.
Various clubs, including music, dance, Hindi drama, English drama, Hindi press, English press, creative activities, mime, photography, and poetry clubs, English language activities, and Hindi activities society operate on the campus.
