I am Manas Patil, CSE Undergrad from DJSCE, Mumbai. This is my experience of Written Tests and Interviews for different branches at IIT Bombay.
My GATE 2025 stats: CS 539/1000, AIR 5266.
Given my stats, I had no chances of getting any Direct Offer from IITs on COAP. M. Tech. RA and MSR were my best chances at securing IITs. I had enrolled at IITB, IITM, IITKGP, IITR, IITI and IITGn. Of these, I received calls for:
1. Electrical, Bio Medical, Systems and Control, Industrial and OR at IITB
2. Cyber Physical Systems at IITKGP
CPS interview at IITKGP, scheduled at 13/05/2025 interfered with my Viva and Practicals for Final Semester; thus, I couldn't attend. But I attended every interview at IITB.
A. Biosciences and Biomedical Engineering, M. Tech. TA at IITB
The written test comprised of six sections - Physics, Chemistry, Math, Biology, Physiology and Engineering (A - Electronics based, B - Mechanical based). Two of these were to be attempted, I chose Physics and Math in an attempt to be unbiased in interview. Questions were quite interesting, especially in Physics. One question, for example, went like this, in paraphrase:
You are a prof looking to calculate prime numbers upto a number. You ask one of your students to write a C program for the same. You ask another one of your students, to describe that process of calculation in English. Which of these two bodies of text have greater entropy?
I don't know if people in the hall expected a question like this, or weren't surprised, but I was. (Answer is English btw). I was shortlisted among 141 students from about 300 and was to attend interview next day. The interview as we were told, was to be "complementary" to our domain, so if you're an Engineering person, they'll ask you Biology and vice versa. My applicant ID was the first in that shortlist, so I was expecting to get done with my interview quick. Instead, the interviews were arranged alphabetically on the day of, and mine took place at 5:00 pm, after waiting from 8:30 am. The exhaustion from waiting, however, was no excuse for the horrible interview I gave
I was asked questions about proteins, types of proteins, AlphaFold3, then, time-functions, their graphs. The interview pivoted to Physics, about optics, Young's double slit experiment, The interviewers were kind enough to give me hints, but I couldn't get them in my delirium. The interviewers also seemed frustrated, and I was too, at myself. Needless to say, I didn't get the offer, declared in COAP Round 1.
B. Systems and Control, M. Tech. RA at IITB
I received a mail from the Center for Sys Con, letting me know the process was only for three positions. I was asked to fill a form with my details, and I was shortlisted for the interview. The interview was scheduled for 11/05/2025, at 3:15 pm.
It was a really short, underwhelming online interview, that lasted for two minutes. I was asked about myself in short, what hardware projects I have done and given information about the posiition.
I was not expecting an offer from this, and I didn't get one either.
C. Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, M. Tech. RA at IITB
I received a mail from the Center for IEOR. I was asked to fill a form with my details.
Thereafter, there was a written test with 7 questions, of which prose answers were expected. The questions were about optimization, random variables, probability and statistics.
I was not shortlisted for the interview.
D. Electrical Engineering, M. Tech. RA at IITB
The department asked for 7 preferences among 3 labs and many projects for about 40 positions. I gave 5 preferences, with SysAdmin Lab (PC Lab) as first.
The form asked for projects, publication details and top 10 courses with their GPAs as well. Interviews were conducted in two halves, on 27th and 28th May 2025.
PC Lab process was on 27th and project interviews were on 28th. For the PC Lab Institute RA position, a written test with around 30 questions (MCQs and one-liner answers) for 20 minutes was conducted first.
With that, a coding test for 2 hours was conducted next on HackerRank. The coding test had Vigenere decryption, a basic data processing question, SQL question with 10 queries, two Bash questions for parsing text (a system log and mail server log) and a HTML webpage to be coded.
50 students were shortlisted for interview. The interview was quite pleasant and the panel was encouraging. Two questions were asked on the solutions I wrote for the coding test. Three on networks, two on SSH, two on HTML and CSS. I managed to squeeze in my Final Year Project as well.
The next day, 28/05, was quite crazy as I had my final paper of End Semesters from 9-12 am. I finished the paper by 11 am and left for IITB. I reached there by 12 noon.
Upon reaching there, I was told I could not sit for Prof. Rao's project as i had put it 3rd in preferences. I gave interviews for projects of Prof. Debasattam Pal and Prof. Virendra Singh. I wasn't shortlisted for Prof. Madhav Desai's project.
Prof. Pal's project was intensely electrical heavy, about matrix precorders for MIMO channels. So, we just had a brief chat with the understanding I was not getting the position anyway.
My interview with Prof. Singh lasted about 45 minutes with questions ranging from
- introduction,
- to cryptography - philosophical differences between AES and DES,
- operating systems - virtual memory, need for paging,
- probability - PDFs, CDFs, expectations,
and then if I can handle the program given my CSE background.
I did not receive any offers in the first four rounds of COAP and CCMT Round 1 as well (10/06/2025). I was quite distressed and had made up my mind on taking a drop for GATE 2026 if necessary.
However, all worries vanished when the very next day, I received an offer for IITB M. Tech. RA for Communication Engg (EE1) in Round 5 on COAP. I am overjoyed at the prospect of joining IITB.
I hope my experience helps you. If I can land an offer with this score, you are way smarter than I am! I wish you all the best in your GATE journey!
