Post Graduation After B.Pharm from Manipal College of Pharmacy: Confusing times ahead!

Hi everyone. This is my first post on Manipalblog so I wish to start formally with an introduction. I am Arun Verma, MCOPS, B. Pharm Batch-2010, completing my Post Graduation from National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Kolkata, have a Govt. job in hand at ICAR, hopefully going for PhD.

The title describes the most confusing question when a student is in his B. Pharm final year. Where to GO NEXT ? Which exams to write for Post Graduation ? Which institute is better, Manipal or any other Govt. institution ?
Let us start with Post Graduation.

The first question arises, Which exam to write for Fellowship in PG, GATE or GPAT ?   The answer is quite simple. You can write both.

GATE in Life Science or Biotechnology and GPAT. There is 4 month gap between both exams so you can prepare for both. For the institutions which conduct their own entrance exams for PG, you just need to qualify the exams, top ranks are not needed. Qualifying is easier. I had done it. GPAT-2010 (Validity 1 year), GATE-2011 in Biotech (Validity 2 years).

Now we come to “Which institution is better ?” . I will list out few institutions in priority order and mind it , it is only my opinion and experience, you can modify it as you need.
1- NIPER,Mohali
2- NIPER Hyderabad
3- BHU-IT
4- Manipal
5- Jamia Hamdard
6- JSS
7- All IITs,NITs for M.Tech
8- Abroad

I know that NIPER is dream of  every pharmacy graduate, but the grass only looks greener on the other side. Apart from Mohali and Hyderabad no other NIPER has adequate infrastructure or permanent faculty, placement about Zero percent. You will be taught by the scientists who have no idea about pharmacy, according to some pharmacy is a branch of Chemistry (Most hilarious joke I have ever heard). If you want placement, stay away from any other NIPER. For that matter Manipal is far better than any of them. If you want PhD after PG and you are good at butt-licking, then you can go to any NIPER except Rai Barelli and Kolkata. Any branch you choose in NIPER but stay away from Pharmacoinformatics except in Mohali. It is completely useless branch. Sometimes I think what was the guy smoking when he designed the course. They expect us to have full command on C,java,Perl, Database Design and Handling in 3 semesters, from a student whose knowledge of computer is limited to Google,Gmail and Facebook. You pay double fee opposed to other branches (~75000/Sem) with guarantee of ZERO Placement.
Most of Pharmacy students will not be knowing this, you can go for PG in most of East Asian Universities(ie NUS, Singapore) with a good GATE percentile, GRE not essential but an added benefit. Do not underestimate these universities. They are miles and miles ahead of any Indian Institute and many US/UK/Europe/Australian universities in terms of Research and Productivity.
If you want to go for Govt. jobs, then stop pretending that you are destined to be Drug Inspectors. Start trying just after your Graduation. Just have a look at SSC website. Combined Graduate Level Entrance Exam, where you have to compete with,BA or BSc candidates,mostly. And if you can qualify GATE or GPAT then you can surely beat them. I think this much is enough for my first article here. I will write about some straight ways and shortcuts for PhD in next one. Bye.