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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 S chool.

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

eventhree 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' e tc. . 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 seniorsthere, 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 l inked 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 Iwould 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, s imilarity 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 admiss ion.

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 atthe 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!". Theother 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
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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.

.....................................................................................................................

.............................................................................................

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 (Idid 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 w ith 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 wr itten 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, Tr ignometry,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 admiss ion. 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.htmlMy 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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Top CommentsSatwik Mishra, Bhaswat Mandal, Tushan Ja in and 48 others like this.

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Rashmi Rathi Upadhyay

2 March 9 at 10:46am
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Abhishek Sharmawe have to apply for iits aftr the gate results are out.. right..??

1 March 3 at 2:15am

Chipu ChonkiI am in wait list in IITM in MS so what to do now??

1 June 13, 2013 at 10:53am

2 Replies

Prasad Chaugulehsfbu jogp

!ts encrypted

try to decrypt

1 June 5, 2013 at 3:32am

Anurag Singh

April 28 at 12:09pm
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