After a short trip to Kanpur, IIT Madras was the next in line. I applied for MS Research program at IIT Madras.
Selection Criterion
IIT Madras shortlisted the applicants based on GATE score and the shortlisted candidates were to appear for written test and interview at the institute. The cut off rank for IIT Madras goes upto around 1000. MS program at IIT Madras is a very good opportunity for those with ranks above 500 to get into an older IIT and work under some of the best faculties.The written test and interview were scheduled on 12th and 13th of May respectively.
About Course
The course I applied for was MS in Computer Science. The course duration varied for 2 to 3 years depending on when your thesis is complete.
Travel and Stay
I traveled to Madras by air with one of my college friend and stayed at the campus in the Jamuna hostel.
The Institute
IIT Madras has a very green and clean campus. The campus was very large and had a bus service running every 15 minutes. There were many deers in campus moving freely in the campus.
The day we reached, we were allotted hostel rooms. There were a number of hostels in the campus. We were allotted rooms in Jamuna Hostel. The institute mess was very nice and clean. Apart from South Indian dishes in every meal at least one North Indian dish was also served. There was also a shopping complex which had various places to eat, a general store, saloon, vegetable and fruit shop, juice shop and what not.
Written Round
The written round was the first round which consisted of 2 papers:
- Aptitude Test: This paper consisted of around 30 Objective questions that had to be done in 1 Hour. This round was easy but lengthy and I couldn't attempt all questions due to bad time management. There was no negative marking in this round. Questions consisted of questions like numerical puzzles, logical reasoning etc.
- Subjective Test: This was a theory paper in which we had to do any 10 questions out of 20 questions. This was a 2 hour paper and we had enough time. The questions were from a lot of subjects some of which were Algorithms, data structures, binary trees, digital logic, tree traversals, avl trees addition of elements.I attempted 10 questions and was pretty sure that I would clear this paper very easily.
The result of the written round was scheduled to be announced at 2 pm and it was announced on time and I was selected for the next round. The interview was scheduled for the same day and the next day.
The Interview Round
The next round was interview round. Before interview there was document verification. After document verification, students were called one by one for interview. Some of the students were interviewed on the first day and rest were called next day in 2 slots.
The interview was conducted in a round table hall with 6-7 people sitting. The interview started with questions about where I did B.Tech, my percentage and general stuff. Then they asked me my favorite subject. I responded with DBMS(Don't know why, even though I had chosen DAA in all previous interviews). I thought he would start with normalization, relational algebra or SQL but he started with file structure.
He asked me suppose we have a university students database with enrollment no as primary key, we want to access the table with enrollment no as well as student name, then what file structure would you use to store the table. I had no idea about what file structure he was expecting as we had not read the file structure under DBMS for GATE paper nor had I had it in semester syllabus. I started with something like store in xml file. He asked me to go to the white board and explain it on the board. So as I could not get it what he was asking, and I had to draw something, I started explaining indexing. I told him how to apply primary indexing on the enrollment number, secondary indexing on name and the benefits of it. Turned out he was satisfied .
Next he asked me where is index main memory or secondary memory. Then he came to normalization, difference between 3nf and BCNF, their definitions. He then moved on to my B.Tech projects. I explained him my projects, then he had questions like what was your role in this, how why did you apply a particular thing in the project and some other stuff from my projects.As one of my project topics was about big data, he asked me questions about data warehousing, how it is different from databases in terms of schema . He asked few more questions then he let me go.
The interview ran for about 25-30 minutes and I wasn't sure about whether I would be selected or not. The results were announced about a month later and I wasn't selected for admission but I enjoyed my trip and tests and interviews at the institute.
My Trip
I really enjoyed my trip to IIT Madras. The first day at Madras i.e. 11th May, as we were free and didn't have mood to study for the written test, we went to Marina beach. We took Chennai local from railway station which was walking distance from the institute gate. Marina beach was beautiful. It was the first time I had been to a beach. We enjoyed the water for about an hour or two and then saw the market at the beach.
The stay at the institute was also good. There was greenery all around. The only negative point there was the weather was very hot and humid at Chennai and in 3 days that I ate at the mess, I was frustrated by sambhar rice. There was sambhar and rice literally in every meal .
Interview call letter
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