Taking note of the herd mentality among school students while choosing careers, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras along with the Federation of Science Clubs of Tamil Nadu (FSCT) and the Madras Christian College Higher Secondary School is organising a workshop to help promising students make the right choice.

The two-day workshop, with Science and Engineering A Journey' as the theme, aims to introduce recent developments and applications of science and engineering to help students identify and shape their careers. FSCT president J Daniel Chellappa said: "We expect the workshop to work like a counselling programme, to show students the way. We have noticed that a lot of students sign up for a particular course because of parental or peer pressure without getting proper guidance or understanding what the course entails. We would like to show them the options available before they start working in the respective fields."

Senior professors from various science and engineering departments in IIT-M will speak about a particular subject and the career options in that field. They will also give the students a tour of the laboratories and research facilities attached to the respective departments.

The workshop also aims to encourage students to pursue a career in basic sciences and motivate them to take up research in various fields. "The effort is also to promote the idea of research as a career option for bright students," Daniel Chellappa said.

MCC Higher Secondary School zoology teacher and co-ordinator for the programme B Balasingh Devadoss said the workshop would give many students aiming to get into the IITs an opportunity to visit one of them and have a look at the facilities and the type of education provided. He said many schools were eager to get their students to participate in the programme.

The workshop is designed for students in Classes X, XI and XII in schools affiliated to the various boards, including state, matriculation and CBSE, in and around Chennai. Principals can nominate a maximum of five motivated students form their school. There is no participation or registration fee. Schools can download the brochure and registration forms for the workshop from www.iitm.ac.in/schoolsprog . A soft copy of the application should be mailed to headmaster of MCC Higher Secondary School at mcchshm@yahoo.co.in before or on February 5. Around 250 select students will get an e-mail intimation from the school by February 11.