How to select a Major Project or Final Year Project

I've received a few mails asking for suggestions regarding major project (FYP) selection. So, in this article let me share my opinions on selecting your final year project.

Although most of the discussion in this article is relevant to all engineering students, it may focus more on Electronics and Communications engineering and other local preferences.

Most of you reading this article must have successfully completed your Industry oriented mini-project in third year in engineering and entered your final year.

Your project work plays a great role in and after your engineering life. Not only the marks that you get from your project work but also it will help you understand the essence of what all you have learned throughout your engineering. Also, many core companies emphasize more on your project work than our certificates or aggregate marks. This means that your project work not only fetches you marks but also knowledge, skills and may be a Job too.

If your mini-project has a very good scope of improvement in terms of features (not stability), then I suggest you to continue to take up the same project and make all those improvements in your major project. For example, if you chose a simple Water Level Controller as your mini-project, it is only a simple embedded system project as of now but there is scope to extend it to operate it wirelessly, and many more optimizations. Also now it combines wireless communications too. In this case it is recommended to take up the same project and improve it.

If your mini-project is already a perfect piece or else if it is not worthy to invest our time in improving it, then I recommend you to choose a new branch. For example, If you have taken an embedded systems project like Automatic Roomlight Controller which is almost a perfect implementation and does not need much improvement in terms of features, then it is a wise choice to choose your next project from other three branches mentioned above. I am not saying that you should not choose from the same branch twice but in present scenario, it is good to cover different branches especially to increase your chances of getting a job easily. If you have all the project works done on on a single area of study (ex Embedded) but if you get an opportunity in a very good core company which works on some other field (ex VLSI), then those people may not prefer you much in-spite of your talent and marks. There you cannot convince them that you have done wonderful projects in some other area as they are not bothered about it.

The above two paragraphs are for most of the people who treat all the branches of study almost equally and have no strong and specific interest towards any branch. In-fact, many students are like that. But if you are something special and if you have a dream to build something great, then do not contaminate your mind reading this article. Just focus on your work, try to collect all the resources you need to make it and have a firm belief that you can do. If you have good ideas but if you do not have necessary support or resources to build it, you may contact me. I will try to help you if I can.