PRE-INTERVIEW:

  • Gate Score Cut-off was around 625-630 (that' what I have heard)
  • MTECH CSE Intake: 40 Vacancies
  • Around ~400 students were shortlisted for the process, out of which only 170-180 students attended.
  • The process was meant for two days, but they finished it on the first day itself (Interviews were taken till 2200).
  • Reporting Time: 0830, Everyone was seated in Auditoriums and Dean of Academics presented their college. At around 0900 tea-coffee-biscuits were offered, and around 0930 Written Test commenced.
     

WRITTEN-TEST/ PROGRAMMING TEST:

  • Written Test, 60 Mins, 30 Ques. Marking Scheme: +2, -1
    I found Written Test to be quite challenging, Approximately 1/3rd questions were from Discrete Mathematics. I attempted 23 questions, out of which I think at most 15 would've been correct.
     
  • Programming Test: 60 Mins, 5 Questions.
    Platform: Hackerrank
    This part of the test was very easy. 5 Questions in 60 Minutes, might seem very challenging at first, but 2-3 questions consumed just 15-20mins in total. I did 4 questions completely and passed 7/14 TestCases for the last one.

    All this process got over by 1230 and the shortlisted candidates for Interviews were to be announced at 1400-1430, with Interviews starting from 1445

INTERVIEW:

  • Students were shortlisted marked on the combined performance of Written/Programming Test, and I don't think GATE Score played any role in shortlisting procedure.
  • 75 Students were selected for Interviews, divided into 3 Interview Panels. Each panel had 3 professors.
  • Interview Experience ( There were 3 Professors, I'll address all three as P)

    (Resume wasn't needed for Interview, so they didn't knew much about background of work that I've been doing)

    P: Tell us about Yourself.
    Me: Did.
    P: How many questions did you do in Programming Test?
    Me: I did 4.5
    They seemed quite impressed by it (all three panelists started looking at each other)

    P: What are your favorite subjects?
    Me: DS, Algo, CN.
    P: So should we start with DS?
    Me: Yes.
    P: Ok, can you tell us, what is a Hamiltonian path?
    Me: (I was shocked at first, that they targeted the theoretical part of Data-Structures, I was a bit fumbled)
           I  don't know the exact definition, but I know it's like         Spanning Tree.
    P: No no, they both are entirely different.
    After fumbling a bit,
    P: If you don't know it, you can tell us, we can move on to other question.
    Me: Yes

    P: Suppose you're given a polynomial expression, what data-structure would you use for storing it?
    Me: (Me moving over to whiteboard) I'd definitely not use an array. I'd go with vecor...as I'
    P: (Interrupts me) I don't know vectors.
    Me: (This got me nervous) Ok, I'd switch to using a Hashmap, as I
    P: (Interrupts again) I don't know hashmap either
    Me: (They were looking for specific answers only), I'd use a linked list.
    P: Yes, that's what I know.

    P: Now suppose there' another polynomial expression, and you have to add both, how would you do it?
    Me: I'd keep Linked List in sorted order for this and explained further on the whiteboard. (they seemed ok with my solution)
    Me: But this structure would face issues if I'd have to lots of issues in insertions, and if possible, I'd have used Hashmap (No reaction from their side)

    P: I see that you've selected Machine Learning as your field of study.
    Me: Yes, during filling my form, this was the most viable option that I understood, the other two fields I wasn't much sure about.
    P: What do you know about clustering?
    Me: (Shocked at first, as I wasn't ready for ML questions, but since I knew about clustering, I took a go at it), clustering, how it's an unsupervised form of learning
    P: Ok, so you know. Suppose that you have a straight line and two cluster centers, C1 and C2, how would you minimize it. (These were the exact words, I didn't understood the question at all)
    Me: Sir, I don't undertsand what you're trying to ask.
    P: He repeated the same line again.
    Me: (I drew a slanted x = y line on board)
    P: No no, a straight line
    Me: Like an X-Axis
    P: Yes
    Me: (Drew x-axis, and two cluster centers)
    P: Yes, now minimise it.
    Me: By minimise, do you mean optimizing it?
    P: Yes, yes that's optimising (as if he was trying to say this word all along)
    Me: Sir, I don't know much about this.
    P: You'd take Difference between points
    Me: Yes, I'd take dataset points and take difference between points and centers, and take a square again, to keep values positive, ahhh
    P: But how do you know that you've minimised the cluster centers? How do you verify it?
    Me: I don't know, Sir.

    That's it. I don't have any chance in it. But learnt a thing or two about IIT Interviews, and shared it.
     

posted May 16, 2018
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