Do IOE engineering campuses provide a hostel, and what does it cost?
IOE publishes no hostel rate. Its 2083 fee schedule carries two hostel lines and leaves both blank, marked "as per the campus decision", so a place is neither priced centrally nor guaranteed. Food does not appear in the schedule at all.
There is no published IOE hostel fee, and the absence is deliberate. The 2083 fee schedule for the five constituent campuses prices thirteen charges per semester, four one-time charges and three deposits, in columns for Regular, Full Fee and foreign students. It also carries two hostel lines, one per semester and one one-time, each marked "for those staying in the hostel only". Both are blank in all three columns, and both carry the same remark: it will be as per the campus decision. The notes to that section repeat it: the hostel fee is as per the rules of the campus concerned. So a hostel place is neither centrally priced nor centrally guaranteed, and what it costs is a question only your campus can answer.
What the blank actually means
It means the central committee that fixed every other figure declined to fix this one. Every priced line in that table comes from one IOE Implementation Committee decision and applies at all five campuses identically. The hostel lines are the only charges the same table hands back to the individual campus.
Which is why two students at two constituent campuses can pay the same fee for the same degree and pay different amounts to sleep. Neither figure is wrong and neither is published.
Is food included?
It is not in the schedule at all. There is no mess, canteen or food line among the thirteen per-semester charges, the four one-time charges or the three deposits, so eating is outside the published cost of the degree everywhere in the system.
That is the single most common gap between a quoted four-year figure and what a family actually spends. A hostel rate quoted to you may or may not include meals, and the booklet gives you no default to fall back on, so ask which it is.
What about private colleges?
The booklet imposes no hostel obligation on them either. Affiliated colleges set their own fees within the rules TU applies to them, and the only hostel-related rule anywhere in the document is the one leaving the charge to the campus.
So a hostel is a real point of difference between two colleges rather than a standard facility, in the same way the booklet makes daily transport the student’s own responsibility. Whatever a college provides sits above the baseline, not inside it.
Four questions to ask before you commit
Is a place actually available to me this year, or is there a waiting list? Availability is not implied by the hostel existing.
What does it cost across four years, not per month, and does that figure move between years?
Is food billed separately from the bed, and if so at what rate?
Can I have those answers in writing? Nothing in the published documents will confirm them for you afterwards.
Section 9 and its notes, printed pages 20 and 21 of the booklet, read off rendered page images rather than extracted text. The charge counts are stated so they can be re-checked against the same page. Fees are set for one academic year and may be revised.
At Imperial College of Engineering
Our own position sits above that baseline and is published rather than quoted on request: the hostel is free for enrolled students for all four years, and the daily college bus from Koteshwor to the Tathali campus is free. Food in the mess is paid separately, which is the one thing the booklet would have told you to ask about.
Sources
- IOE B.E./B.Arch Booklet 2083 · published 7 August 2026 · read 18 August 2026
Last reviewed by Ram Raj Thapa, Admissions Officer, Imperial College of Engineering. Every figure on this page is cited to the document it came from.