The Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (or PIEAS), formerly known as the Center for Nuclear Studies (CNS), is a public and co-educational research university located in the Islamabad Capital Territory, near the remote town of Nilore. It was established by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission under the advise of Abdus Salam. It began as a postgraduate institution in 1967 with the University of Islamabad and achieved independence and its current name in 1997.
I am student of Electrical Engineering pursuing my Bachelors degree, currently in 3rd year. I know its too late to give a review about PIEAS but its never too late and it takes sometime to get to know about a place completely especially if the place occupies more than 150 acres of land.
PIEAS offers bachelor program in two disciplines which are electrical and mechanical. Since I am student of department of electrical engineering so my review will only be helpful for those who are thinking of pursuing bachelors in electrical engineering. Starting off with the university overall, the university timings are fix from 8:30AM to 4:00PM. There are more than 30 buses so there is no problem of transport, you'll get to the university no matter where you live. The university has its own mess for staff and students are also given membership there. Proper meals are served so there is no need to buy junk food from campus canteen, well its really unfair to call it a canteen actually. Anyway, the university campus is divided into blocks from A to I and there is a dedicated block for electrical and mechanical engineering called the DTD block. Campus has a separate Auditorium with a seating capacity of over 400 people.
PIEAS Auditorium DTD Block
Labs are okay as they are enough to fulfil the needs of a batch of 60. Electronics lab is very well maintained with enough equipment to fulfil the requirements of the whole class. There are separate workstations and a group of two students is assigned a single workstations (You can make group with a girl ^_^). The lab of Electric Machines is almost new and it considered to be the best Electric Machine lab in whole country. All the equipment in the lab is new and imported from Germany. Other labs are field specific and you can use them after taking permission from the teachers who is in charge of the lab, these labs include Robotics lab, Digital electronics lab, Instrumentation lab, Signal and Image processing lab and CAD designing lab. Computer lab is also new with over 100 systems and all of them powered by second generation core i5 vPro processors. There is also a small computer centre where you can go in free time to download things (you got that? right? ^_^) and have chit chat with your friends while you surf on the internet.
Classes are all air conditioned and centrally heated except the classes of I-Block since its newly constructed. Projectors are available in every class and the seats are also very comfortable (I always fall asleep ^_^).
Teaching wise its a great place to be, very peaceful environment. Like all other places, there are good and bad teachers but almost all the teachers are really helping, even if someone is not able to help then at least he refers to someone who can ( one or two teachers do such sort of things ^_^). The only problem is that teachers pay a lot of attention to the THEORETICAL part, the teachers do not have an exposure to the outside universities/market so they cannot/do not guide about the future. Let me put it this way that if you're coming to PIEAS then teachers will polish you but then you'll have to figure out all by yourself what you've to do in the future.
Extra Curricular and Recreational activities are almost non existent. There are few societies but since there is monopoly of the old teachers so such activities have to be kept under a controlled environment. The dating thing, intermingling with girls is allowed but to a very little extent, to be honest you have to first find any female in PIEAS as they are considered to be extinct species of humans here( :-P ). If you're are a dat-u type of girl/guy then you'll probably hate PIEAS.
Security is really tight out here as its under Atomic Energy's jurisdiction and we have PINSTECH labs near our university, there is absolutely no entry without university card and you can't bring your car in Nilore Complex until unless it is officially registered at PINSTECH. There is absolutely no concept of strikes in PIEAS and legal action leading to expulsion from university is taken. Also there are no active student federations are PIEAS so its very peaceful out here.
Hostels at PIEAS are considered to be the best in the whole country. Each room is allotted to maximum two students and there is no concept of cubical room so there are no fights for the rooms like in UET or other universities. All the rooms are centrally heated and provided with first class furniture ( Above mentioned things are only available in new H and I hostels ). All the hostels have at least one common room where you can go and watch TV ( sadly PTV only ) and snooker, table tennis, chess and carom board are also available.
Finally students at PIEAS come around from all over Pakistan so there is great diversity found in this respect. Every year 120 students are selected on pure merit basis based on PIEAS entry test. The entry test is conducted all over Pakistan. Since only the top notch is selected so most of the guys are book worms.
For the first day at PIEAS, there is absolutely no concept of ragging at all, the ragging cases are taken very seriously so nobody has ever tried to abide the rules especially in university. Well minor ragging is carried out at hostels like in every other university but it is also very controlled.
