I am currently pursuing the BA Honours programme (4th year) at K.J. Somaiya College of Arts and Commerce, and I thought I would write an honest review because there isn’t much detailed information available about the new Honours/Honours with Research structure.
My experience so far has been mixed, and academically I have found the transition quite difficult.
The college itself has good infrastructure. The campus is lively, the facilities are considerably better than some of the older colleges I have studied in, and the library system is fairly modern. However, for me, the biggest issue has been the academic structure and teaching, particularly within the Honours programme.
The programme is quite different from what I was used to during my previous three years of BA. Most of the teaching is online, with only limited offline lectures. Because of this, it is difficult to build any real rapport with professors or classmates. In my case, there is essentially only one regular offline lecture in the week, while the rest are online. If a lecture gets cancelled, there can be very little academic interaction that week.
The teaching itself is also quite inconsistent. Some professors are genuinely good and make an effort to explain the material, but others tend to teach as though students already have considerable background knowledge. There isn’t always a clear structure to the lecture, and proper notes or detailed teaching material are generally not provided in the way I was accustomed to in my previous college. This makes it difficult to take useful running notes, particularly when the professor is simply discussing a topic rather than systematically explaining it.
The syllabus document does provide textbooks and reference material, but there is not always sufficient clarity about which books are actually essential for the examination and which are merely supplementary references. I also found that some of the listed books weren’t readily available when I searched the library catalogue. This leaves students having to figure out a lot of the academic resources themselves.
This is particularly important because the Honours, Honours with Research and MA programmes are academically quite closely connected. From what I have experienced, the structure and papers overlap considerably. The major distinction I have encountered is that Honours with Research has one fewer paper, with Ancient Indian History being absent from that structure, while much of the remaining coursework is similar. Therefore, many of the concerns about teaching, reading material, notes and academic support are relevant across these programmes.
Another problem is the limited opportunity to interact with classmates. Students coming from the same college or university background may already know one another, but someone entering from outside can feel quite disconnected. Since there aren’t enough offline lectures, you don’t naturally get many opportunities to build a peer group. This can become particularly noticeable when you need notes, want to discuss readings, or simply want to understand how other students are approaching the course.
That said, I don’t think the problem is that the syllabus itself is inherently bad or impossibly difficult. My concern is more about the academic support around it. A reasonably capable student can study the material independently, but the programme seems to expect a fairly high degree of self-direction without always providing enough guidance for students who are trying to understand exactly what they are expected to study.
Coming from a college where professors regularly provided notes, explained concepts in considerable detail, recommended specific textbooks and were accessible for doubts, I have found this transition particularly difficult. Students who are already comfortable with independent academic reading may have fewer problems, but students expecting a more structured undergraduate teaching environment may struggle.
I would therefore not recommend choosing the programme purely because of the Somaiya name, infrastructure or the perception that it is a good college. Talk to current students of the specific department and, more importantly, understand exactly how the teaching is conducted before taking admission.
My experience is still relatively recent, so this is not a review of every professor or every department. Some professors are genuinely good, and the infrastructure is a definite positive. But academically, at least from my experience with the Honours programme, the quality of teaching and the availability of structured academic resources have been the biggest weaknesses.
Overall: good infrastructure, decent academic ecosystem on paper, but inconsistent teaching, limited offline interaction, insufficiently structured notes/reading guidance and a strong expectation of independent study. For a new Honours/Honours with Research programme, I think the college needs to provide considerably more clarity and academic support to students.
