Greetings to all, I am Jay Gorakhiya and this blog is about my MTech (RA) selection process experience. Below is my GATE result details
Rank : 229
Score: 757
Category : GEN
I gave GATE CS 2023 and currently pursuing MTech (RA) at IIT Bombay. I had written 2 blogs on my interview experience for MS at IIT Bombay & IIT Madras last year itself but somehow i forgot to write my experience about MTech (RA). Since I finally selected MTech (RA), I felt that I should share that experience as well.
First of all, I want to make it clear that MTech (RA) at IIT Bombay is NOT a Research oriented programme. It is normal MTech programme only but instead of TA work you will be doing some other work. Exact details are mentioned further in the blog.
Overview of selection process
- In MTech RA selection is not direct based on the GATE score, Unlike MTech TA.
- Firstly, based on the GATE score, students are shortlisted for a programming test.
- Based on the GATE score and programming test result, students are further shortlisted for interview. Final selection is based on the interview. (So, if a student with a bit low gate score can get admission by performing well in programming test and interview)
- There are different positions for MTech RA which I've shown in the below image. (I am a system administrator). Students will have to fill a form giving their preferences for the RA position and interview will be conducted based on the student preference
The main difference between Institute RA and project RA is that in Institute RA you can select guide for seminar & MTP (Masters Thesis project) later on based on your choice but project RA has a fixed guide from start under whom the student will do seminar & MTP as their selection is based on the interview where they would have selected one of the available project RA positions.
In system administrator position, following are the reponsibilities of a student; manage all the labs of CSE department, manage DNS and mail server of CSE department and assist the professors in conducting labs and lab quiz of a particular subject. Webteam RA has to maintain the cse department website or maintain the asc platform and its websites and related work. CS101 RA is new position opened this year (2024) so i don't have much idea about it.
Programming Test
- programming test is generally of 2.5 to 3 hours with mostly easy and a few medium level questions.
- Test is mostly in C++ and questions are asked from topics from DSA (which you learned in GATE) like searching and sorting algorithms, arrays, linked lists, recursion, maths etc.
- When I gave the programming test, it was of 100 marks and there were 5 MCQs and 6 Progamming questions. previous year question paper can be downloaded from IIT B cse department website.
Interview for System Administrator position
I had selected System Administrator as my first preference for interview. There was 1 professor, System Administrator head of CSE department and one System Administrator senior in my panel. The interview was about 15 minutes long. In System Administrator interview generally they ask basic linux related questions & some linux commands. Following are some questions which were asked to me:
- Introduce yourself. (Introduced myself)
- what is ls command? what are options of ls command? (I answered it well as i had learnt basic linux commands)
- what is grep command? what are its usecases? (answered it as well)
- how will you check open TCP connections in a PC? (we can use netstat command)
- how will you check which DNS is used by your PC? (we can do that by nslookup command)
- then i was asked some questions on commands for memory utilization and linux file systems. (i was not able to answer all of these questions)
Preparation for system administrator interview can be done by learning about linux commands, reading their man pages and seeing cheat sheets which contain usage of many commands, basic shell scripting can also be asked. I have listed down most of the questions i remembered. For webteam interview, they generally ask students about their experience (if any) in web development and test their knowledge about web development frameworks like django/react etc.
In conclusion, i can say that RA i.e research associate is a misnomer, especially in the case of institute RA. In my personal view, if a student has rank in range 200 - 500 then Mtech RA at IIT B is the best choice as it is same as MTech TA in terms of coursework and MTP, the only difference is in the work you do for which you get stipend and number of years are 3 instead of 2. I was selected for MTech RA porgramme at IIT Bombay and my final decision was to accept this programme. I hope this blog helps to students in their interview. ALL THE BEST.
