This institute admits 1200 students across six engineering streams: CE, EEE, ME, ECE, CSE and IT. The admission process comes to an end typically by the first week of August each year. A 4- day orientation program is organized to familiarize parents, students and stake holders with the processes at GRIET and how to maximize career opportunities. The faculty are introduced and the heads of departments have an interactive session with freshers to educate them about the strengths of the department, the running projects and how the student gets an opportunity to be a part of some critical projects. As mandated by AICTE, a 3-week long induction program precedes the curricular work.

The curriculum is a good blend of basic sciences like Physics, Chemistry and mathematics, humanities which includes courses on English and basic engineering like programming, basic electrical engineering and engineering graphics. Experienced faculty are drafted to handle these courses.

The first year administration is controlled by HOD, Dr.B.Srinivasa Rao, who is the current incumbent. He is supported by committees that is responsible for drafting time tables, CRT schedules, maintaining disciple, managing assets of the first year, selection of student groups for class management and selection of students with special talents to represent the institute at various competitions. A hallmark of the first-year administration is the Advanced Academic Center (AAC) that selects students with special talents and out of the box thinking. About 25% of students are currently undergoing training in contemporary domains like IOT, 3-D printing, modeling using Fusion-360, Machine learning, to mention a few. This center trains students to program in Matlab and Python. Senior faculty as well as senior students mentor the young first year AAC students.