6/13/2014 IIT Interview and Test Experience :...

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GATE Instructors
March 19, 2013
IIT Interview and Test Experience :
.........................................................................................................
BY Shivam Agarwal::
Hi Readers
I write this post primarily to provide information to GATE CSE/ECE aspirants about
the admission process at various IITs and NITIE. Let me assure you upfront that
the information I provide here is based solely on my experiences and apart from a
few memory slips here and there everything else would be fine.
OK, Let me provide a little relevant information about myself to set the context.
My name is Shivam Agarwal. I had completed my B.Tech in Electronics &
Communication from IMS Engineering College, Ghaziabad in 2010 following with a
semester-long teaching at Gyan Bharti Institute of Technology, Meerut and 1.5
years stint at Infosys. I appeared in GATE in the year 2012 in Computer Science
(yes, you have noticed it right, my B.Tech and GATE disciplines are different) and
scored 807 with rank 192. A lot of good articles and suggestions are available on
the internet about how to prepare for GATE and I don't want to digress from the
topic now. So to keep it short, I start with the topic now.
I had applied for the following institutes and courses:
1) Seven older IITs for M.Tech in Computer Science
2) IIT-M for MS
3) IISc for MSc(Engg)
4) NITIE
5) IIT-D for VDTT, Computer Technology(EET),Communication in Bharti School.
IIT-M MS Interview
The first call for interview came from IIT-M for the MS course which was slated
for 26th and 27th April. The written test consisted of following two parts which
were held in succession:
1) The first part consisted of about 10 questions, 5 of which were technical and
the rest were aptitude type. The time allotted was 45 minutes. The questions
were very simple and probably I will recall these and the other interview
questions in a separate post.
2) The second part was subjective in nature with 15 questions of which only 5
need to be attempted. The questions were tough and a few were able to solve
even three with conviction!!
The results were out after about 3 hrs and 59 candidates out of 250 who
attended were selected for interviews to be conducted on the same and the next
day.
The interview was not a stressed one and the panel comprised of about 7
professors ( don't worry, only 1-2 were active at a time based on the area of
interest of the candidate) . Upon entering they tried to ease the candidate and
asked to choose the favourite subject from a list of 7-8 subjects.I chose Computer
Architecture and was asked questions like ' working of TLB','If physical and virtual
addresses are same then will there still be a need for a TLB', 'Why do we need
cache memory', 'Give a scenario in C programming where relative addressing
mode is used' etc. . They started by asking the basics and then tended to shift
towards questions involving thinking on the spot as the discussion evolved and this
was confirmed when I discussed with other fellow interviewees.
Out of these 40 were selected in a result that was declared after a month.
However as compared to previous years this was an exceptional case and they
generally select less then 20 students for the MS program.
IIT-K CSE Interview
My second call came from IITK. They called about 500 candidates in general
category. There was a written test of 2.5 hrs ( I don't exactly remember this)
duration starting 9 AM. It consisted mainly of Probability, Puzzles, TOC. The
results were announced at 3 PM and they shortlisted 60 students for interviews
slated to start on the same day. I was not selected there so I will request a friend
to update this later.
NITIE Interview
The NITIE interviews were held on 9-11 May and mine was scheduled on 10 May.
They called 600 students, 200 on each day. The arrangements were very good
and the students managed everything there. In the morning the entire group was
given a presentation on NITIE/PGDIE and then students were divided into groups
of seven for GD. The GD was of 10 minutes duration and consisted of very general
topics and mine was " Technology creates a divide between urban and rural
India". The discussion went on very smooth, thanks to the counselling by seniors
there, and at last they asked group (not everyone) to give the summary.
The interviews were taken individually and everyone was allotted a panel and a
tentative time. My panel had 3 members including the dean academics. They
asked vanilla questions like 'intro', 'reason to move to management', 'final year
project', ' about my work in the company', 'about the client that I was working for'
etc.
The results came on 18 May. The wait list 1 was activated on 5 June and wait list
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2 was activated on 16 June. They generally fill seats till the commencement of
course.
IIT-D CSE Interview
I attended the IITD CSE (MCS) interview on 21st May. They called candidates
above gate score 765. There was no written test. The interview panel consisted
of 2-4 professors(it varied across panels) and they asked for 2 areas of interest.
It was a bit stress type and they were particularly interested in Data Structures
and algos. I mentioned Operating Systems and Computer Architecture as my
areas of interest. They asked me about op-amp(as I have an electronics
background) , drew a circuit and asked me to find it's output, four conditions of
deadlock, drew the diagram of four cars in deadlock on a crossing and asked me
to explain the four conditions with reference to the diagram. They also asked me
how to find a loop in a linked list and the number of registers present day
microprocessors have.
IIT-D C.Tech Interview
I also attended the C.Tech interview (EET) on 16 May. For this course the cut off
was a score of 760. There was only an interview component and the panels were
constituted of single faculty member. I was asked about the memory hierarchy,
message passing, rank of a matrix and a few other questions involving hit and
miss rates of caches. The result came a week later.
IIT-D VDTT Interview
The VDTT interviews were held on two days viz. 15th and 16th of May.108
students were shortlisted for interview and the cutoff was 710 for CS and 780 for
EC.
On the first day the candidates were interviewed in their respective areas by the
IIT faculty. I was interviewed by Prof. Anshul Kumar, the course coordinator and
every panel was constituted of a single Prof. . He asked me the topic on which I
would like to be interviewed upon. I mentioned Computer Architecture as my
favourite topic. He then asked about memory hierarchy, need for two level cache,
miss and hit rate, similarity between the mathematical relation and the database
relation.
After the interview on the first day 33 people were selected for the second round
of interview. The second round was sponsor's interview where in the morning the
representatives from four companies viz.. TI, Cadence, ST, Cypress and a few
professors introduced us to their projects and the competencies required for
them. Then we were asked to fill our preferences for the companies/projects in
which we were interested. Then everyone was interviewed based on their first
four choices. The selected candidates were intimated about a week later.
Apart from these I had also attended Bharti School's interview for the
communication programme. However I was not able to recall much from
communication so the professor there advised me not to join the programme as it
was a pure communication one:).
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BY Avval
My Journey from GATE 2012 to IITD
My Info
Name Avval
AIR - 205
Gate Score - 802
Currently Studying - M.Tech(CS) at IITD
My Experience
I passed out my B.Tech in 2010 and joined a mass recruiter company. Soon
realized that it was not meant for me and started looking for a way out. Found
the answer in masters. So, I prepared for the exam on weekends, called in sick
for a month before GATE and wrote it. The day the result came out, I put down
my papers. It was one of the most memorable days of my life.
Next came the phase of applying to the various courses. I applied to the following
colleges/courses:
IISc - M.Tech (Computational Science) and MSc.(Engg.)(CSA)
IITB - MTech (RA 3 yr)
IITD - MCS and JCA
IITK - MTech (CS)
IITM - MTech (CS)
IITKGP - MTech (CS) and MTech (IT)
IITR
IITG
At that point, I thought that the hard part was over and that things should work
out smoothly from then. But I was wrong. Although the rank was good enough for
me, it wasn't good enough to get me a direct admission.
You see I'm not that great in Mathematics, and I made a mistake of ignoring
Maths during GATE prep as well. Luck was in my favor at the GATE exam since
they didn't ask many questions from Maths, but the luck had started to run out at
the next phase of selection. It turned out that all the colleges were only interested
in testing my knowledge of MATHS!!!
IISc -M.Tech(Computational Sc)
The very first test was that of IISc. I don't completely remember everything but
AFAIK, it had about 30 questions. Most of them were of 11/12th std Maths
questions. Though they had mentioned testing programming skills etc as well, I
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remember at least 25/30 questions to be from maths and the rest covered
everything else.
You can refer to this link for
syllabus:http://www.serc.iisc.ernet.in/admissions/MTech_Admissions_Brochure_2
012.pdf
As expected, I screwed up that test and didn't get shortlisted for the interview.
IITK
The next thing was IITK. Well, after asking many people I was of the impression
that IITK written test and interviews were supposed to be the toughest, and all I'd
heard from everyone was that you ought to be excellent in Maths esp. in depth
knowledge of Probability related topics was mandatory; that majority of their
questions would be from probability etc. I was not confident. Plus, I wanted a
good shot at IIT Delhi. I always preferred Delhi for several reasons. I didn't
wanna risk my chances of screwing up Delhi, so decided to chuck Kanpur and
focus on preparing for Delhi.
But one thing I came to learn was that Kanpur was worth a shot. The paper (as I
heard from everyone else) was quite similar to the actual GATE paper and NOT
full of maths like I expected it to be. So, the lesson to be learnt is that don't give
up all that easily. Do give it a try at least.
IITKGP
The plus point at KGP was that they gave 70% weightage to the GATE score and
30% to the interview. So, I was quite hopeful to get it. They didn't have any
separate written exam. Just an interview. I was the first one to be interviewed on
my day. It was a panel of three profs. They started by asking why I wanted to
pursue MTech. They were interested in knowing whether I was there just to get a
better job or if I would go into a more academic oriented research work/PhD etc.
They asked me my favorite subject. They didn't seem to be happy to hear DBMS.
One sarcastically even mocked me saying "Oh! research work in DBMS!". The
other panelists asked me some basic definitions from concurrency and
transaction, which I answered properly. The mocking prof started asking me
questions from maths. They were basic definitions from Calculus. Stuff like
functions, continuity, differentiability etc. All I could think was "Why can't Maths
leave me alone"! Anyway, I answered whatever I could remember. Then another
panelist, a lady prof asked me to mention my next favorite subject. I promptly
said, "Algorithms". She mentioned the problem statement of the Travelling
Salesman Problem and asked me how would you go about solving such a
problem. Trying hard to recollect, all I could recall was that it was an NP complete
problem and I didn't know what could be a good solution. So I started telling her
about Dijkstra's algo although the two problems were unrelated. She switched
tracks asking me questions about Dijkstra's. She mentioned about negative edges
and negative cycles in directed graphs. She became happy to hear the term
Bellman Ford algo and let me go.
AS it turned out, I cleared that interview and got selected in MTech(CS).
IITD (JCA)
The results of KGP weren't announced by this time. I went for the interview.
Though I was scheduled to be interviewed by noon, I had to wait till 7 pm for my
turn to come. This was a horrible experience. JCA is offered basically by the
Maths department jointly with the CS dept. They wanted candidates who had
good knowledge of Maths. When I entered, they asked me, "Kya padha hai?" I
mentioned DBMS and Algo. They asked me to solve some puzzle related to
sorting in linear time with a certain constraint. I was unable to work out the
solution at that time and found my confidence dying exponentially. They started
asking questions from Maths. Mostly topics from linear algebra, definitions from
vectors and matrices, their applications etc. It was so not my day! I got very
nervous and screwed the interview. The interviewers were clearly disappointed
and let me go. I knew I didn't stand a chance. Taught me a lesson about the
importance of Maths!
IITB
The interview date clashed with that of IITD MCS interview dates, so I didn't
appear for that because I preferred a two year program at IITD over the 3 year
program at IITB.
IITD (MCS)
This interview was scheduled about a week after the JCA interview. I was
completely shattered after the JCA interview. I REALLY wanted to get this one
(esp. after having sacrificed my shot at IITK and IITB)!! To boost my confidence,
the result of the KGP interview had been declared before that and I was in.
In the preceding week before the MCS interview, I had prepared several sorts of
Algorithm questions ready to mention it as my favorite subject. (I was told that
IITD interviewers ask our favorite subjects and ask questions only from those
areas and so I was advised to prepare a couple of subjects thoroughly). However,
the scene was somewhat different from my expectation.
I was never asked my favorite subject. I had two panelists. They started by asking
why I wanted to pursue higher education after two years of work-ex. To that, I
answered, "Sir, I realized that I was not learning anything any more". They
seemed to like that answer.
Next, started the technical part. One of them started asking me questions about
hamming distance and started framing a tricky problem involving hamming
distance and probability. I told him that probability wasn't my strong suit. The
other panelist then started asking me questions from discrete maths. Luckily, I
was good in those questions. She asked me questions like difference between
6/13/2014 IIT Interview and Test Experience :... - GATE Instructors
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functions and relations; what are the possible maximum functions/relations from
one set to another; to derive those expressions; mathematically prove why the
max. no. of functions would be more/less than the max no. of relations etc. I
correctly proved and derived all the results. They seemed happy and let me go. I
had a feeling I would get this one and I did.
The day I got in was one of the happiest days of my life! I hope this experience is
of some help to all you people striving to get into a good course.
One piece of advice I would give is to NOT stop studying after GATE results.
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BY Vinkal Vishnoi
Post Gate Experience 2012
Today I am going to share my Post Gate Experience 2012. It will be very helpful to
students who cleared Gate 2013 and also for others. Please feel free to ask any
question. I would also say, please add your experience too.
Following are my details:
Name: Vinkal Vishnoi
Gate Rank & Score: 215 , 797
Branch & Year: CSE-2012
I applied for IISc Bangalore M.Tech,IISc Bangalore MSc (Super Computer), IIT
Madras MS(3 year Programme), IIT Mumbai RA(3 years), IIT Kanpur, IIT Delhi
(RA and TA) , IIT Delhi Interdisciplinary, IIT Kharagpur(CS/IT), IIT Roorkee.
Call From: IISc Bangalore MSc(Super Computer) for written test and Interview,
IIT Madras MS(3 year Programme), IIT Mumbai RA(3 years), IIT Kanpur
M.Tech,IIT Delhi (RA and TA) , IIT Delhi Interdisciplinary, IIT Kharagpur, IIT
Roorkee.
Colleges Which got converted: IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur(IT), IIT Madras MS (I
did not give exams for IIT Delhi and IIT Mumbai)
My Experience:
First Exam was in April for IISc Bangalore : For this exam they roughly call upto
900 Gate Rank. General seats for this program-me are around 15.It is very good
opportunity for those who got more than 400 rank. Super computers is a very
good field and it also deals with parallel computing.I did not know the format of
the exam, so was not able to clear written test. Written test consisted of 30
Objective question and time alloted was around 45 min. The written test has no
question related to gate, and consisted of 28 Math problems and 1-2 C program.
The Math problem were from 12th syllabus. Topics were 3D-Co-ordinate
Geometry, 2-D Co-ordinate Geometry, Complex numbers, Trignometry,etc. My
suggestion is to those who have greater than 400 rank, can give their full effort
for this exam. My written test was not clear, so I don't have knowledge about
interview. Some one having experience of Interview can share his experience.
Note: IISc M.Tech takes direct admission. If you are under 60 rank, you can apply
for that. Last year OBC rank 280 and SC 1800 got direct admission for this
program-me in the last list( This data is as per my knowledge)
My second exam was for IIT Madras MS 3 year programme. I guess they also call
upto 1000 gate rank, again a good opportunity for high rankers. There were 2
written tests, one being 1 hour test and other 1.30 hr test. First written had
objective and "Fill in blank" type questions. It was easy test. Questions were of
type aptitude, Gate pattern etc. Around 15 questions were there. Second test was
1.30 hr subjective. The questions were mainly from Maths and some choice was
given(like you have to attempt 5 out of 7 questions). It was bit difficult. I
attempted around 3.5 problems out of 5. I will let you know if I remember the
questions.I cleared this exam and got selected for Interview. I will share Interview
experience in next blog. Note that for IIT madras takes directly for M.Tech
programme. If you are under 200 rank, you can grab seat in it(90% chances). To
see the IIT Madras MS paper, see this post.. http://useful-info-
collection.blogspot.in/2013/03/post-gate-experience-journey-to-iit.html
My third Exam was for IIT Kanpur M.Tech programme. IIT kanpur also had
written and Interview. They call upto 540 General rank, 1100 OBC rank and 3500
SC/ST rank. The witten test was 2.5 hrs exam with all objective questions, but it
was a bit tougher than GATE exam. Written test is followed by Interview. I will
share full experience of this in another blog.
Last Interview was for IIT Kharagpur. They generally call upto 600 General rank
and 1100 OBC rank, but the interview weightage is 30%. It was an easy
Interview. Please do apply for both CSE and IT for this college.
Here is my blog for general suggestions. Please have a look at this page. It may
help you to decide further..
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Like Comment
Top Comments Satwik Mishra, Bhaswat Mandal, Tushan Jain and 48 others like this.
2 shares
Rashmi Rathi Upadhyay
2 March 9 at 10:46am
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Abhishek Sharma we have to apply for iits aftr the gate results are out.. right..??
1 March 3 at 2:15am
Chipu Chonki I am in wait list in IITM in MS so what to do now??
1 June 13, 2013 at 10:53am
2 Replies
Prasad Chaugule hsfbu jogp
!ts encrypted
try to decrypt
1 June 5, 2013 at 3:32am
Anurag Singh
April 28 at 12:09pm