Prof. K. Umamaheshwar Rao
Director, MNNIT Allahabad
PhD in rock mechanics, IIT Kharagpur. Previously Director at NIT Surathkal and NIT Rourkela.
Director’s office
Since 2019Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad · Prayagraj
Student Mentorship Programme, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad
Every first-year here gets a senior who has already been through the same first semester. Ask them the things you would never ask in a hall of four hundred people.
JoSAA & CSABBranch changeHostel & messBacklogsInternshipsHomesicknessGATE & GREClubs & festsScholarshipsFirst-week nerves
JoSAA & CSABBranch changeHostel & messBacklogsInternshipsHomesicknessGATE & GREClubs & festsScholarshipsFirst-week nerves
01What SMP is
A senior you can text at eleven at night.
A wise person learns from his mistakes. A wiser one learns from others’ mistakes.
Prakhar Srivastava started this in 2019, in his final year of ECE, because first-years kept making mistakes that seniors had already made and nothing carried that knowledge downward. It now runs under the Dean (Students’ Welfare) office.
You are placed with a mentor in a group of seven to ten, small enough that someone notices when you go quiet. Most of what mentors get asked has nothing to do with grades.
- Runs under
- Dean, Students' Welfare
- Started
- 2019, by a final-year student
- Group size
- One mentor, seven to ten mentees
- Mentors from
- Second, third and final year
- Costs
- Nothing, to anyone
02Where we help
Four things nobody explains to you properly.
Written by students who got the answers the hard way, and kept notes so the next batch would not have to.
04
Find your mentor
118 seniors across ten branches. Search a name, a branch, or what you actually need.
Open the full directoryWhat we help with
- Academics and coursework
- Internships, placements and higher studies
- Hostel, health, money and homesickness
- Harassment and safety concerns
- Learning resources for every branch
- The practical hacks nobody writes down
What we do not do
- JoSAA and CSAB counselling
- Choice filling or closing-rank predictions
- Admission decisions
- Anything that costs you money
03How it runs
One mentor, a small group, a whole year.
- 01
You are matched
Before the session starts, first-years are grouped and assigned a mentor. Groups stay small — roughly seven to ten of you — and you get contacts in the batches above your mentor too.
- 02
You meet, properly
The first sitting is deliberately informal. No slides, no attendance. It exists so that asking a question later does not feel like an imposition on a stranger.
- 03
You ask through the year
Registration deadlines, which elective to take, whether to go home for a weekend, what to do about a subject you are failing. The programme is judged on whether you actually ask.
- 04
Someone checks in
Mentors are asked to follow up mid-semester, and the monitoring team watches for people who have gone quiet. If something is wrong, there is a route to the DSW counsellors that you do not have to walk alone.
What runs alongside
SMP Meet
An informal sitting where first-years talk to seniors and institute dignitaries without the format of a formal address.
Human Library
Final-year students make themselves available to be 'borrowed' for a conversation. Anonymity is kept for anyone raising something personal.
Alumni Connect
Sessions with graduates about what the years after MNNIT actually look like, including the paths that were not linear.
All three have run since the early years of the programme, including through the sessions that moved online.
05Under whose office
SMP runs under the Dean (Students' Welfare) office.
06Questions
The ones we get asked most.
Every first-year student. You are placed in a small group of roughly seven to ten mentees with one mentor, so the mentor actually has time for you. Seniors from second, third and final year all mentor, which means you end up with contacts across batches rather than one person.
