As the friendly neighbourhood redditor on this sub, let me share my views:

Last updated: 3rd June 2023.

Pros:

1. Great placements if you are in CSE - major MNCs visit every year and the packages are great and increase every year. Back in 2018 when I joined it had one of the best placements for CS, probably is the same now too. A good number of companies come for summer internships between 3rd and final year as well.
2. Updated syllabus - the syllabi for all courses is more or less pretty up-to-date with recent advancements, but there are 2 sides to this.
3. Great crowd - the crowd here has always been top-notch, you will find really great people here who are competitive and will push you to do better. PES has always been known for this. There are a lot of people who will inspire you with their achievements. The seniors are great as well, there is a discord server which contains over 3000+ members from all the recent PESU batches. This is probably PESU's saving grace.
4. Location - kind of self-explanatory, being in Bangalore has its advantages by bringing in more opportunities. Additionally, if you live near any metro line you have connectivity as well (EC campus apparently will get connected soon too).
5. A lot of clubs and a lot of hackathons - there is a hackathon happening every other week here, plus there is a large assortment of clubs to choose from: so you get enough opportunities to take part in events. While this might seem like a nice advantage, it comes with its own share of problems.
6. Scholarships - there are many scholarships every semester for multiple ranges of performers, giving you a lot of opportunities to get some financial returns, including top performers in the entire batch, top performers per branch etc. Although you will be eligible for only one scholarship at a time, it's nice to have these options.
7. Alternative choices to hostel - PES RR campus is surrounded by affordable PGs and apartments. If you don't like the hostel or were late to get a room, there are a lot of backup options at arm's length.

Cons:

1. PESU's only reputation comes from CS - the other branches are ignored and even the management does nothing to promote them. If you are in these other branches, you will miss out on a lot of the benefits PESU has.
2. Placement stats are skewed in favour of CS - building on the first point, the advertised placement stats are always for CS. This is a misrepresentation because people from other branches do not get packages even half of what CS kids get.
3. The updated syllabus is superficial - the syllabus although updated, is in name only. Most courses will dedicate only 5-10 slides of a PPT to the "recent developments", glancing over these topics. Some courses will just mention their names. It is nowhere close to covering the amount to justify the syllabus being "updated". For a majority of the courses, the syllabus is the same as what it was 7-8 years ago. Additionally, if you are in CS at least, most of what skills you need to get a job in the industry aren't covered. You will need to spend extensive time apart from the syllabus to make yourself qualified for a job.
4. Campus is tiny - If you are a fan of large open spaces, this place believes in the opposite (at least for RR). It is like a concrete jungle with buildings all around and construction happening most of the time. EC campus on the other hand is beautiful but I am not sure what is the state of it currently.
5. Crowded and packed - self-explanatory again, the sheer number of people makes it packed all the time, and competition for CS placements increases exponentially. Other things get affected as well such as chances for opportunities at clubs, etc.
6. Faculty is mediocre - Biggest issue here, professors have been leaving left, right and centre. Issues such as dissatisfaction with the management, too much work etc. All the good profs have left long ago, leaving the bad ones. Profs who made the Uni what it is today, ones who headed research clubs etc have all ditched. The bad ones are leaving now too. Additionally, there are rumours of profs of axed branches (such as the old Civil branch, etc) are still being tied down to PES by the management. They are being trained in introductory courses of different branches so they are still useful (and the acute shortage of faculty). Here, you will find a single faculty member teaching a wide array of courses across different fields, even if they do not specialise in them. A good number of research labs have even shut down.
7. Management is poor - Even a rock is more intelligent sometimes. They take illogical decisions that do not make sense, screw around and experiment on batches and then pin the responsibility on you. The management is a mockery of what it should be. From placements to examination stuff, a lot of it needs improvement.
8. Stressful environment - Mentioned multiple times here, the biweekly ISA system leaves you no room for working on your skills and interests. You have tests every 2 weeks, and between those tests multiple labs, assignments, project(s) etc. It is very hectic, and you are constantly jumping from one deliverable to the other. The only relief that kicks in is at the end of the semester. There are some floating rumours about them moving to a 3-ISA system, but no confirmation on that yet. In some cases, it might feel like a school, sometimes worse. It is academically it is so rigorous that I currently feel my job functionality at my office is barely anything that I went through here.
9. Facilities are okay at best - Infrastructure in the labs is okay at best. It is nothing world-class, it only gets the job done. You also need to jump through multiple hoops to gain permissions for things and is a cumbersome affair. Simple things such as the WiFi have multiple restrictions and you'll even ironically find unblocked porn sites but blocked educational videos on YouTube.
10. Fests are yet to return to their pre-COVID capacity - they are around 80-90% back, but not all fests have returned yet. But this is pretty much a transient issue and should be resolved in a year or two. Fests apart from that aren't too many, however, so do not expect ground-breaking fests to happen every other month. They're great, but nothing extraordinary. This is subjective, so I am not going to comment more on this.
11. Club and Hackathon quality are severely diluted - Having 15 clubs with quality events is way better than having 45 clubs in which most of them do not do anything. In fact, there are so many at this point that you would not recognise a few anymore. Clubs in CSE are also being run under some weird "vertical" concept, with less student management and more teacher involvement. This has been explained in detail before but the summary is that the old clubs that used to exist have mostly died because of the CSE management and been replaced by shoddy replacements (which have also died kekw). Hackathons happening every week do not make sense: the quality of projects being displayed has gone down drastically. People at these hackathons now build anything that was planned over a few days, instead of spending weeks/months like before to plan a good product (back when hackathons were at most twice a semester).
12. Insanely high fees - this keeps increasing every year. It isn't really worth it if you are joining through management (which is 11 LPA now). KCET/PESSAT fee is a little high but is expected knowing them. Since this is again subjective, not commenting more.
13. Stringent attendance policy - pretty strict at 80% (it used to be 85% before), combined with the constant workload it doesn't give you much room to do things beyond prepare for the tests and attend classes. If your attendance is low, they'll make you attend extra classes to cover up. If it's too low for even extra classes to help, you won't be allowed to write the semester exam for that course.
14. Weird hostel rules - I cannot comment in detail about this since I didn't personally stay in the hostel, but there are some stringent rules regarding the dress code (no shorts allowed) and curfew timings. Back when I was there, the curfew time for boys was 8 pm and for girls was 7 pm. There are also regular checks every week. Additionally, the girl's hostel isn't on campus and is about 2km away. There is more to this point, preferably ask someone in the hostel right now.
    
    

Let me start from the beginning:

To obtain your degree, you need to gain a certain number of credits across the 4 years of study here. This number for my batch was 160 and ideally should remain the same for you as well. If you don't get 160 by the time graduation arrives, you simply won't be given your degree.These 160 credits are then distributed among courses. You would have noticed that some courses will have 5, 4 or 2 credits.

Each course will have a certain credits required, which will be awarded once you pass the course. Which means as long as you get above an F grade, you will pass the course and get those credits at the end of that semester. You either pass and get the full number of credits in that course, or you fail and you get 0, there is no partial credit. Since there is no concept of "failing a year", you can essentially fail all your courses in a year and still move on to the next year, but you would not have earned any credits. Credits are essentially weights for a course that determine how important they are. For example, a 4 credit course will have 4 hours of classes in a week, a 2 credit course will have 2 hours of classes in a week and so on.

Some courses are mandatory, meaning you will have to pass them and get those credits while some of them (electives and special topics) aren't. If you withdraw from a course you'll need to make up for credits. You cannot skip out on mandatory courses.

Credits are also obtained via internships pursued at the end of 3rd year and in 8th semester. The details of how this conversion is made aren't relevant to your question so skipping it for now. Additionally, you can also take up some extra courses beyond the official curriculum to add credits. Note that there is no concept of early graduation at PES, so even if you finish BTech a year early they'll make you stay so there is no advantage from a time or financial point or view.

Your final marks for a course is a combination of ISA + ESA + assignments + project + etc combined in some weighted fashion. Now marks are mapped to Grades with 90+ being S, 80-89 being A, 70-79 being B and so on. Grades are then assigned numbers with S grade = 10, A = 9 and so on.

No, PESU does not follow any relative grading. There is a fixed formula used to calculate your GPAs. However, sometimes, when a batch performs poorly in a course they will shift the marks-to-grade mappings (so maybe instead of 90+ being an S they shift it to 85+). This isn't the accurate definition of relative, and additionally we do not know how they determine the magnitude of the shift so it's not a transparent process.

SGPA is a weighted average of grades in a semester where the weights are the credits for that course. So,

SGPA = sum(credits for course * grade obtained in course)/total credits in semester

CGPA is again a weighted average of your SGPA, where the weights are the credits in that semester. So,

CGPA = sum(credits in semester * SGPA in semester)/total credits across all semesters

To get an SGPA of 8, you need at least a 70 in all courses. So a little lower than that in every course will fetch you a 7.75. FYI an easy way to figure out how much you need to score is to know the average minimum marks needed for a particular GPA. Obviously, if you perform extremely well in one course, it will allow you to get slightly lower on another course.

and so on...

You can also use this spreadsheet to calculate your GPA. Instructions are in the sheet. You will need to create a copy on your Google Drive from settings and then edit it.

If you absolutely want PES, then CSE is best here. But you shouldn't go for this route. Branch matters a lot, especially if you intend to pursue higher education. I have a couple of points regarding the campus:

• Trust me, the campuses are the same. I graduated last year and I've seen the two campuses being almost the same. RR has more fancy buildings, EC has a spacious and open campus. RR feels very crowded, dense and packed, and the campus is essentially roads between buildings. But yes, the buildings at RR are newer and are very fancy.

• Facilities wise, tech clubs (assuming you'll be interested in these) are currently much better at EC campus - so if you're focusing on CS/ECE, you'd want to be part of the club culture at EC. RR has probably 10x the number of clubs compared to EC, but over 80% of them are dead and almost all of them are mediocre. EC has fewer clubs overall, but the tech clubs at EC are currently unmatched. A few people will say that RR has weekly Hackathons - this is actually a bad thing. The quality of these hacks are severely diluted and most of them are poor. On the other hand, Hackathons at EC might be sporadic, but they always promise quality.

• Research clubs at both campuses have gone to shit so it isn't a discriminator anymore. As a student you can take part in clubs at both campuses and internships at these research clubs are open to both. So again, not a discriminator.

• The only major difference are the fests. RR fests are significantly better than EC, no denying. But as a student, you're open to take part in either. So you may not get to organise the bigshot fests, but you'll definitely get to take part in them.

• Placements are pooled, so again not a discriminator. Placements take place together for both RR and EC campuses, EC campus kids need to come to RR campus and give interviews during placements. Companies don't know which campus a particular student is from so they can't really distinguish between candidates.

  • Now, some people online will claim that companies prefer RR campus more and that these companies "somehow" know which campus a candidate is from. These claims are false and the reason for more RR campus kids getting selected is simple statistics. RR campus has double (if not more) the number of students than EC campus. My batch (2022) had 600 CS in RR and 300 CS in EC campus. Which meant, that the probability of an RR campus student getting selected is ~67%, which is double the probability of an EC campus student getting selected at ~33%. Because of the large difference in number of candidates at both campuses, it will obviously look like favouritism and partiality to the naked eye. Each campus' student has an equal shot at placements, it just appears to be one sided because of the skewed distribution.

• Faculty is equally unqualified at both, profs leaving both campuses and the remaining ones are mediocre. So again, can't really compare. I'd say profs at RR might be marginally better, but it's barely enough to call it a difference.

• Finally, your campus at the end of the day will mean nothing. It will matter only to you for exactly 3 years (Final year nobody comes to college). Neither your degree, nor any official documentation from PES at the end of your 4 years will contain the campus name. When you apply for jobs, or go for higher education, your campus won't mean anything. It's a choice that will only support your education for 3 years - after that it's irrelevant.

IMO, the main comparisons that you should make are very subjective parameters such as travel costs, distance from your place, etc. Apart from that, if fests are a dealbreaker for you and you're someone who has a wide range of interests beyond tech clubs, then RR. If you're okay with not organising (because you can always take part) the largest fests, and would like to only take part in tech related clubs, then EC. But as I said - these differences will only exist for 3 years: after that the campus you graduate from is irrelevant.

If you have more questions, I'd be happy to answer. As I said, I graduated in 2022 so I'd say I know quite a bit about both campuses. Feel free to DM.

So although it is possible, branch change to CSE is extremely difficult because it depends on a lot of factors

• Seats are limited - CSE seats only free up when people leave seats and every year there are only a handful (my batch had 3-4 changes only)
• You need to be at the top of your batch to even be considered for branch change. Even if seats are available, CGPA plays a role in the priority order. Someone currently in mechanical with a better CGPA than someone in let's say someone in ECE will have more priority of changing branches.
• If I remember correctly, changes from EC CSE to RR CSE are given more priority than complete branch changes. This will again put you at a disadvantage
• You are competing with an insane number of people to shift branches since both campuses are considered (number of people across all branches and campuses with 9.5+ will be atleast 30 and available seats are handful), it does not really work out for almost everyone

If you join EEE with the intention of getting CSE in the second year I would suggest don't. I will not comment on whether you are capable of doing it, but chances are thinner than a hair.

To get an SGPA of 8, you need at least a 70 in all courses. So a little lower than that in every course will fetch you a 7.75.

FYI an easy way to figure out how much you need to score is to know the average minimum marks needed for a particular GPA. Obviously, if you perform extremely well in one course, it will allow you to get slightly lower on another course.

and so on...

I'll just explain from the beginning to make things clear for everyone.

If you fail (or withdraw) a course, you will need to pass it to get your degree. If you do not clear it, you won't be given your degree, your transcript will always show that you have a pending backlog (only if you fail, not withdraw), and you will not be allowed to sit for placements. Now, you can clear backlogs during two specific moments in the year:

1. Summer backlog exam: If you choose to do this, then in the next summer break between the even and the odd semesters, you'll have to give the backlog exam again.
2. Normal course exam: If you choose to do this, then you'll have to take up the exam for this the next time the course is again held. In most cases this is the next year with the next batch (so if you fail a course in 3rd semester, you'll have to take the course again the next 3rd semester kids take it, so you'll be in 5th semester).

Once you pass via any of the methods, you've passed the course. One thing to note is, regardless of the option you choose, if you need to give a backlog you will only be evaluated on the exam: all 100 marks for the course will be taken from your ESA paper, you will not have any ISA, assignment or project components. Additionally, you can take backlog exams as many times as you need to pass a course, but do remember that each backlog exam costs money.

Also if I'm not wrong, you will always have an indication that you had a backlog but it was cleared on your transcript.

PS - Backlog exams apparently tend to be easier in the summer. No concrete proof to support this though - just PESU lore

PPS - Funnily, I've heard of some people who know they are going to screw up their ESA withdraw from their exam and instead choose to give a backlog exam in the summer to pass it. This has 2 advantages: you haven't failed the course so it doesn't count as a "backlog" so you don't end up with a mark on your transcript, and it doesn't consider your ISAs or other deliverables, so if you've screwed up in those it doesn't affect your overall score anymore. Now whether people actually went ahead with this, I'm not sure. Do this at your own peril - I don't hold any responsibility for exploiting this loophole.

Since the academic session has been kind of screwed up because of COVID related delays the past 3 years, the usual session calendars aren't followed for first years.

Usually, the odd semester lasts from 2nd week of August to last week December, followed by roughly a 1.5-2 weeks break. Then again from January till May last week for even semester, followed by roughly a 2.5 month break until mid August again.

If the usual session calendars are followed you get roughly 2.5 months in the summer and about 10-14 days in December, apart from the other ones thrown around here and there during the year. If you're in first year, it's possible after this year ends you'll finally get a proper academic session as it used to be.

Capstone Project is essentially your final year college project that spans over 6th, 7th and 8th semester. Most projects are research based ones where you pursue some novelty in a field, but there are also a few non research based projects. Capstone totally adds up to 10 credits so it greatly affects your CGPA and cannot be taken lightly and requires genuine work from your end to actually do well in.

1. 6-8th semesters
2. Not really, but ideally by the time you reach 6th semester, most people develop interest in a field and people usually end up pursuing a project in this field (example, Computer Vision) and also find other batchmates interested in the same field. So while it isn't required as such, people do tend to find teammates with common interests and some background experience with a field to make things easier
3. Usually you are free to pick your own and the professor will make suggestions, but in case you have no clue on what to do, the professor will always have a few backup project ideas of their own
4. Internship is a completely independent component on its own. You can pursue an internship during the summer between 6th and 7th sem, or throughout 8th sem. There are various guidelines and policies which determine how many credits you'll get, not going into the details here since that's not relevant right now
5. No, because in >98% cases, your work during your internship cannot be shared publicly beyond your organisation. Besides as mentioned earlier they are separate components and college will end up making you work on a complete project separately.
   
   

Talking from a CSE grad standpoint here.

So taking up a CS minor actually helps, since CS placement tests (and interviews) often require and test you on basic knowlege of concepts taught through the CSE syllabus namely OS, CN, DBMS which are (as far as I know) covered in the minor syllabus as well. If you do the minor courses and actually pay attention and learn them, you don't really need to go out of your way to do them from scratch on your own (something which a lot of ECE kids struggle to do right before placements). So yes, from the placement test and interview angle it does help quite a bit since it helps you almost meet the theoretical knowledge requirement.

However, another thing I'd also like to point out that although you might have done a Minor in CS, a lot of companies will still be biased and pick CS grads only, since at the end of the day you are majoring in ECE. Companies will tend to pick the CSE grad over the ECE grad although both might clear the same placement test, because they feel the CSE grad might have the required skills/can learn those skills a lot faster.

Point being, doing a Minor is advisable and will help boost your chances in CS placements, but don't take it as a guarantee or as a scenario where you are equivalent to the CS kids because it'll unfortunately still not put you in the same boat as them from the company's point of view.

Short answer: Yes you can but don't have too much hope.

Long answer:

Most companies allow CS and ECE kids to sit for their tests. A few allow EEE as well. Very rarely you'll find the other branches included too. But usually these other branches tend to face difficulties when it comes to tests, because our placement tests contain a good amount of CS theory namely OS, CN, DBMS and sometimes even beyond these courses. These courses are mandatory courses part of the syllabus, so if you're from another branch you'll need to cover up somehow. Some people take up a CS Minor and that does seem to help, but it won't completely put you on par with the CSE kids.

I graduated this year (2022 batch) and from my experience I noticed it was mostly CSE kids getting CS based placements. Very rarely a kid or two from ECE would show up in the list. Most of them would fail to make it past the coding test itself. And even if they did qualify for the interviews, they would face difficulties there. CS interviews are heavily focused on DSA concepts along with CS theory. Very rarely do companies interview based on skills you have or the job requirement (since they all come looking for SWE roles and assign you to teams later) and to the best of my knowledge, DSA isn't covered as part of syllabus of other branches. And finally even if you've done it all, companies do tend to show bias towards CS grads because there is a higher chance these kids already know or will be able to pick up tools/frameworks/languages used in the industry/job or have atleast some degree of familiarity with them.

I'd say the best shot you've got through college is to take up a Minors. It won't completely make you prepared but it's better than nothing

Edit: I wrote this answer sometime back. Attaching for more reference.

My answer is based on the observations I made during my batch's placements (2022 outgoing batch).

CS companies let CS, ECE and very rarely EEE kids also sit for their placements, but unless you're in CSE, there are very few chances of you clearing the test (without prep that is). Even if you do have prep, the number of CSE kids getting shortlisted for interviews is much higher. When they'd list out all the students who would get selected for the interview rounds, there would be only atmost a handful of other branch students compared to CS, so in all likelihood you won't clear the test itself. If you do manage to clear the test, you need to sit for interviews which are heavily based on CSE theory and practical concepts, which you wouldn't have covered. Even if you try to make efforts on your own, it is highly implausible to cover everything to the level that you can answer those questions and gain that level of understanding you need to clear the rounds. Even if you do clear all the interviews, companies still can show a little bias and select a CS kid with the same profile as yours based on the assumption that they might have the skills the job needs or they can pick it up faster (a bad assumption, but it does exist).

We'd see maybe one or two students a most here and there getting selected for CS placements. In over 90% cases they're all CS kids. If you get selected by a company, you'll earn the same package as the CS kids. But it's going to be a miraculous task to study on the side and get selected. It's even more competitive trying to find a job off campus.

If you're giving the entrance tests you are strictly looking for CS placements, you have a higher chance of being in CSE and getting a CS job at PES than in other branches. And if you're interested in CS in general, choose the branch over the college (my personal opinion, people can have theirs).

https://discord.gg/KUSydtjaAh

http://better-pes.vercel.app

I'd say depends on your branch, but I can answer for CSE

• 1st year is usually a great way to lay the foundation of a good GPA. The subjects are mostly easy and people tend to do well. There are lesser course deliverables as well as other responsibilities/activities/factors do not exist at this point. Whatever you get as your CGPA at this stage will roughly be the benchmark around with your GPAs will fluctuate in the future.
• 2nd year is when things slowly ramp up. Courses get a little harder, the number of course deliverables can almost double, but overall I would say the difficulty does not exponentially increase. A lot more time however is taken away by the newly added deliverables per course, so lesser free time for yourself. This is the last shot you have at making drastic improvements to your CGPA, since you are halfway through your degree and there are lesser chances of improving in your control
• 3rd year is by far the worst year for almost everyone. Way too many course deliverables, courses are much, much harder compared to the last 2 years. Additionally, you also have other things on your plate such as the Capstone project (which is worth a good portion of your credits), regular placement tests and prep (unless you prep, you really cannot expect yourself to get an internship over the summer with just college syllabus), and any other work for your future higher education which will start this year (Masters applications, getting LoRs, research into Unis etc). Overall, a lot of people do not improve their GPA here (and a lot of them get way lesser than their previous years). This year is all about maintaining your CGPA as much as possible. If you ask anyone in CSE, this is by far the most stressful, painful, energy draining year in your degree.
• 4th year is relaxed, but depends a lot on how you handle things. You barely have courses, and they end before 8th semester. You have capstone project to work on and regular placement tests. If you don't get placed quickly, the stress and tension tends to build for obvious reasons and can ruin your mental health. If you are planning higher education, the stress related to that also will be at its peak. However the issue is that you cannot expect significant improvements to your GPA anymore at this stage. The courses barely affect your GPA, since their credits are just 2 each. Capstone project can be a hit or a miss, depending on the effort you put in and the panels you get (but most people tend to do well). Your internship grade is largely out of your control since your manager's feedback is used to assign you a grade, so you can't say for sure that you are going to do well. Mostly people increase their GPA by 0.1-0.3, not more in this year.

If you are looking at an 8 at the end of first year, you will probably end up between a 7.6-8.6 at the end of all years based on usual trends. It will require something astronomically different levels of effort and consistency to push that 8.5 to a 9+ if that is what you are aiming at at the end of your degree

Firstly, you're barely in 2nd sem - now's not the time to be worrying about placements. Time doesn't fly that quickly either.

Secondly, this is a long answer, but the summary is that it is different for different people. It's nice to read that you've started web dev and Android, but you shouldn't be doing these with the intention of getting placed. If you're doing that then you're really not going to make much progress. Instead, you should find the field(s) that interest you the most and dive deeper into those. This finding takes a lot of time - some people know it before they enter college (like me), while some take all the way up till 7th semester. There is no shame in either and you should know that it takes a lot of experimentation and getting your hands dirty to figure out ones interests.

Additionally, these fields won't help you directly get placed. CS placements use competitive programming and problem solving as a filter test. Hundreds give the placement test which comprises of a couple of these problem solving questions (you can find such ones on platforms like Leetcode, Codechef etc) and each company shortlists about 30 at most. Sometimes placement tests also test core CS theoretical concepts of networks, OS, DBMS. Rarely you'll find anything beyond this. Once you make it to the interview round, it's a different ball game.

So companies usually don't expect graduates to be specialised in a particular field, but they do know that some of them will be. By default, they will test you on generic DSA and problem solving, and you'll later get assigned to any random team. However, if your resume and past experiences show alignment towards a field (for example, Android dev), then your interview may go along this direction provided they are looking for such roles. But in most cases if they don't see any direction in your profile, you'll get assigned to whichever team they think you'll fit best into. In >90% cases, you will be tested on different levels of DSA alone, your actual development skills won't play too much of a part unless you get lucky, or your skills stand out among the rest. I was the most extreme exception for my batch, I didn't get interviewed on any kind of DSA and problem solving, but that's because my profile was heavily built for machine learning and analytics (and that's what I do on a daily basis at work too) and had the most research publications in my batch before I graduated as well, so these worked in my favour.

I'd be happy to talk more about this over DM, but IMO this isn't the time to be discussing these, you have a lot of time to start preparing. For now, stick to maintaining a good CGPA (8.5+), figure out your interests and work towards it and at the same time enjoy your college life. The time for worrying about placements will come later but this time to work on yourself won't come again.

If you would like more information about how CS placements work, you can read this other answer

I can answer for CS, but I think the process will be nearly the same for all branches.

1. Firstly, you can only be TA for a course that you've taken up in the past. You obviously can't TA for a course you are currently taking up or you will take up in a later semester.
2. You can reach out to the faculty you want to work with for the course, tell them why you want to be the TA, what you learned from the course etc etc. It's more like a personal statement about how you can contribute as TA and why you should be given that role. The teacher you reach out to might also ask for other details like your CGPA, the project you did in that course and so on.
3. Alternatively, the CS department in the past has also sent out a Google Form to the entire batch to collect the same info as above from interested students. As far as I know they send it out only at the beginning of your 7th semester (although TAs can also be from earlier semesters). IMO it's better and honestly far more effective to directly approach the teacher you want to work with.
4. Based on the details you give the prof (or the responses from the Google form), they'll evaluate their options and reach out to the students they think are suitable.

Good luck!

There are multiple reasons to not choose the AIML branch at PES, or any other college for that matter. I'm going to list down the reasons for AIML but this applies for most if not all specialisation branches.

1. It's an untested branch - most of these branches have been introduced only to increase the number of CS seats in a college because colleges know that these sell well. At the end of the day they're running a business and need to look out for themselves. The first AIML branch is in 3rd semester.
2. AIML branch replaces a few core fundamental CS courses with AIML related courses. This is an extremely bad and poor decision because a lot of the coursework being replaced is fundamental for a CS grad to know. You might think these are unimportant but without these courses your CS undergraduate degree does not make sense.
3. If you're looking at higher education, then you should know that admission boards abroad do not like specialisation branches because they know that they tend to skip fundamental coursework. Specialisations are treated as baseless because a specialisation in undergrad doesn't make sense. Even for Masters degrees, you will rarely find an AIML degree, most of them are specialisations of CS. Secondly, and by far the most important aspect, admission boards always list down a set of prerequisite courses that are required to be considered for admission. PES is skipping these topics and replacing with AIML courses. It will definitely come to affect you later in some way or another.
4. A lot of people don't know what AIML is and are picking it purely for the hype. AIML is first and foremost, a mathematical field. All the development you see out there today with ChatGPT etc are not engineering marvels, but rather breakthroughs in mathematical techniques, optimisation algorithms. AIML as a field comprises of calculus, linear algebra, statistics and probability. Almost all courses that are part of the AIML curriculum are entirely math based, in which the papers essentially require you to either derive equations or solve out problems. You will not be "coding" the next AI. If you're into math, you're going to enjoy it, but most people who enter this field with the misconception that there will be programming involved drop their interest right after a week because you're going to doing math from day 1.
5. Building on the previous point, this field is a heavy research field. People who get into field are interested in research (me being one of them). This field is entirely for academia and those who pursue a research based MS and PhD in this field. If you look at all the jobs that are out there for AIML, you'll realise that they all require an MS degree at the very least because this field requires a lot of fundamental domain knowledge in your every day to day job. The only companies that recruit AIML engineers right out of undergrad are startups. You are 99% going to end up with a job a CS branch graduate will get, but they would have gotten the opportunity to study what they wanted to (explained in below point).
6. You should not restrict yourself in undergrad. This is the time and place to explore the world of CS and see what's out there. Spend time looking at different things from systems to cybersec and figure out your interests. You may realise that you were never into AIML at all. If you pick core CS, you'll still get to explore and see what's out there and get to make your choice of electives. If you pick AIML, you're restricted and the college decides what you will study and which field you will enter. Don't let college take away the beauty of exploring the world of CS. There is honestly so so much more than AIML.

Probably the only reason I would recommend AIML to someone is if they care about getting any kind of IT job, did not get core CS and don't really care what they study during the 4 year degree. A very bad decision if you're one from this category, but it is what it is.