How much does it cost to study & become a software engineer in India?

In this article let’s take a look at how much it costs to become a software engineer in India.

This is the most comprehensive article you can find online on this topic so I would recommend you to bookmark and share the article

So without further ado let’s dive right in.

How much does it cost to become a software engineer in India?

There are three ways you can become a software engineer in India, We will take a look at how much does it cost in all the ways in detail here,

Become a software engineer with college degree

Let’s take a look at how much does it cost to become software engineer from getting a college degree in a tabular form.

It should cost you average of 1250000 rupees, if you want to become a software engineer from a regular four years of college degree.

Here is a detailed explanation of all factors & it’s expenses.

1. College Degree

If you want to become software engineer you must take computer science or information technology in your engineering course and the average fees of one semester exam in computer science branch is around 80000-150000 rs &

because engineering is 4 years long and there are 8 semesters in total, lets assume it cost you around 1.2 lakh rupees for each semester fee and

obviously the fees will vary in each university, in total, It would cost you 9.5 lakh rupees to get your college degree in computer science and information technology branch to become a software engineer and the cost is excluding other fees like hostel and food, etc.

But You can apply for scholarship in both Central and State Government, get scholarship based on your caste and financial income of your family, many colleges and

universities also offer scholarship to the students based upon their academic grades and percentage for example if you score good grades in the first year then they can get scholarship for the second year without paying a single penny, This depends upon the universities.

But for many people on average it can take you around 9.5 lakh rupees to get your engineering degree from college for 4 years.

2. Hostel, mess fees

The next is hostel fees & mess fees and if you are wondering if it is included in the college tuition fee but is not, hostel and mess fees are separate.

This may not apply to you if you have education from your home only but many students move from there villages and get into hostels because of large distance between college and home and for those, hostel fees is on average 60000 rupees including the mess, library and other accommodation per year, You also get Wi-Fi and internet facilities including other expenses in the hostel fee which is also very important to practise coding in the free time.

The average fee is 60000 RS, It varies upon whether you choose AC or non AC hostel room, private room or hostel & location, etc factors.

3. Laptop

Now third important factor is having a laptop.

You might not need a laptop much if you get into other engineering branches like mechanical or electrical engineering but because you want to become a software engineer and get computer science engineering so you must have a laptop and a computer access so that you can learn coding and do projects take part In internships and make some money in the side while you are getting your education.

This is a reason why laptop is very much necessity if you want to become a software engineer, and instead of purchasing a second hand version, I would recommend you to buy a first hand version of a laptop of good brand and quality so that it can help you for at least five years to come in future without any problems in laptop while coding,

on average it can cost you around 35000 – 45000 rupees to get a good windows laptop of any company, Let’s assume it is 40000 rupees to get a first hand version of a good company laptop with good amount of RAM like 8 GB and storage like 512 SSD, a good processor like i5 which are important for coding.

And because you are a student of engineering you can get student discounts of at least 10% from many popular laptop brands like HP Dell, Lenovo, Apple and Microsoft, etc so you can save money in the process and I would recommend you to purchase any laptop during the great India festival sale on Amazon or in the Diwali or Dussehra season where there are highest discounts present on the laptops and electronic goods in offline stores.

You can check out best laptops for programming and coding here.

1250000 is the average cost to become a software engineer from 4 years of college degree in India.

I understand it is quite expensive option for majority of the students in India, but the main benefit is you get the certificate of computer science from a reputable & accredited college, placement in tech companies, high salary package and,

You can also grow your network by participating in many clubs, festivals and learn new skills such as leadership communication negotiation and many more which can help you grow as a person and individual.

Now comes the question, is 4 years college degree the only option you have to become software engineer, if there are alternatives then what are the options, cost and benefits & drawbacks of it, let’s see!

can you become a software engineer without a degree? If yes, then how & cost of it?

Answer is yes, if you just want to learn coding and programming or specialised in any one of the departments of software engineering like web dev, app dev, cybersecurity, data science and algorithms, AI, ML, game dev, etc then there are two alternatives to CS degree which are,

1. Short term coding course like boot camp from online or offline medium
2. Or learn coding yourself with all free, paid resources like books, articles, courses, videos, websites, forums, etc

Let’s first take a look at coding bootcamp option,

What about a coding bootcamp

Coding boot camps are basically short-term, intensive training programs designed to provide technical skills for the students who want to get a job in tech sector and to start careers in software engineering. Most boot camps teach you necessary coding and programming skills in less than 6 months period, and some boot camps are self-paced like online boot camps.

There are many types of coding bootcamps like part time boot camps, online boot camps and full time boot camps, etc, and the average cost of a coding boot camp in India is around 1.5 lakh rupees and these inexpensive boot camps also guarantee jobs and teach you important skills of programming,

the price will vary depending upon the institution, the mode of boot camp you choose, the package and specialisation you want, time period, etc.

Coding boot camps are better than computer science degree in two ways like they are not only cheaper but you can learn coding and programming in less than 6 months period rather than spending 4 years in the college with CS degree.

You also get a guidance and environment in offline institute, You can solve all of your doubts, but the main disadvantage is these coding boot camps aren’t accredited and recognised

so you might face issues while applying for a job in a company, You also do not get much knowledge of software development as compared to a student graduated from CS degree because he has more time to learn concepts and get better foundation than you.

Basically accreditation Helps understand if an institution meets or exceeds minimum quality standards, values and most coding boot camps are not accredited.

You should choose coding bootcamp only if you want to learn coding, programming skills, or if you don’t want to get into engineering or you don’t have the money or time to do it, You are old and you can’t do engineering at this age but you want to learn programming, etc reasons

Although there are many, some popular coding bootcamps in India are, ace hacker academy, CCBP 4.0, scalar academy, upgrad, byte academy, etc and before you select any coding bootcamp make sure to check things like reviews and user ratings of the boot camp on Quora and trust pilot, check whether they have the refund policy and money back guarantee, check if they offer guarantee of placements, check all the course details and curriculum, etc things before you purchase any boot camp.

You can read my article about the pros & cons of coding boot camp in detail here.

What about learning coding yourself

The next option is to learn coding yourself, as a matter of fact there are many websites, free and cheap coding courses, books, forums, articles and videos where you can start learning coding for free of cost.

As a matter of fact more than 60% of developers learn coding from online resources through reading articles on Google and watching videos on YouTube.

the benefit of this method is It is extremely cheap to learn coding and you can also learn coding for free in some cases, and there are some paid courses on Udemy and Coursera which are extremely cheap and you can take certifications after completing the course yourself, You can also gain all the coding and

programming knowledge on yourself in less time, and drawback is there is no step by step structure and curriculum you can follow as all the resources are scattered and you need to gather the articles websites videos and resources which takes a lot of time in researching, the content, and

you don’t get any guidance and support of any developer to clarify your doubts when you will learn coding but you will have to engage with other developers on forums like stack overflow to clarify your doubts, and

it is very hard for you to get a job in take companies right after you learn coding so you will have to work in any start up to gain some experience and work on some projects so that you can showcase them to the employer and get placed in top companies.

And even though companies like Google and Apple are hiring graduates based upon the skills and experience irrespective if they have the degree or not but still many employers especially in India look for college degree as a requirement along with

experience and skill in hiring the graduates and software engineers so you might face issues with that also, You can check this by searching software engineering jobs on naukri.com. and most jobs want you to have some experience and some want college degree to get a job.

But still if you want to learn coding to become a freelancer or start your own website and startup then Some websites and resources you can use for free are,

• Free code camp
• Code academy
• The Odin Project
• Udemy
• Edx
• Coursera
• W3schools
• Khan academy
• Harvard coding course
• Stack overflow
• Udacity

I would either recommend you to take a coding boot camp or any online course as alternative to taking a computer science degree, instead of learning coding yourself using free resources because you don’t get any certificate or any guidance in the process.

By the way you can read my article on whether you need a degree or not to become a software engineer, how long does it take to become a software engineer in detail here and how to become a software engineer after 12th here.

With that said let’s end the article.

Conclusion

These are all the costs to become a software engineer in india

Do comment down what are your thoughts about software engineering as a career option below.

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