Recent posts in Interview Experience

1
Everyone always remember their first interview. No matter you are selected or rejected.

As this was my first interview and had no idea about what they ask so I have prepared some expected questions that can be asked from a Computer Science student. On the day of Interview, I was more nervous than I expected, but i kept my nerves under control and hid it with a smile.

One by one we were called for interview. When i was called, i entered the room with confidence. There were total 5 members in the panel. One by one they asked questions and that were:-

1. What is your name?
2. Where you are from?
3. Have you heard about Linked List Data structure?
4. Which Sorting Algorithm will you use to sort the elements of Linked List & what will be the Time Complexity?
5. What is Stack & Queue?
6. What is the difference between Stack & Queue?
7. Tell us about your final year project?
8. Which Programming Language did you use in your final year project?
9. Which Programming Language you are most comfortable with?
10. Give one example of Supervised Machine Learning?
11. You are not doing job, so what are doing right now?
12. Why did you started your preparation for GATE?
13. How many Layers are there in OSI layer?
14. SMTP protocol works on which layer?
15. Name one protocol which is used in Network Layer?
16. What is the need to develop IPv6, if we have IPv4?
17. Do you know about overflow condition?
18. What is a Heap?
19. Name all the layer in OSI model?
20. What is an Array List?

With that, interviewer told me that's all. You can go.

Thank you!!
Bhaskar_Saini posted in Interview Experience Sep 22, 2023
2,789 views
2

Hello everyone,

I’m Arunjyoti, one of the shortlisted candidates for BARC-OCES 2023.

I cleared the written test and appeared for interview at BARC, Mumbai.

Interview:

The interview panel consisted of 6 members.

Interview started with my introduction and after that they asked me to write down subjects that I am prepared of.

I wrote Data Structures, Algorithms, C++, OS, DBMS.

I have briefly listed down the topics that were asked during the interview. (I1 => Interviewer 1)

I1 (DSA) :

Representations of Graph, told to write code for the same on paper(No STL), Topological ordering, cycle finding in graph.

I2(OS)

Basics of Process and Thread, Process creation, Virtual memory, linking etc.

I3(DBMS)

Told to design one ER Model for given scenario, SQL query, Joins, Normalize  the db, Examples of one to one , many to one etc mappings, Isolation levels, how isolation is achieved etc.

I4(C++ & Software Engg.)

Asked about OOPS, access specifiers, Macros and their benefit, Types of software testing etc.

I5

Asked about fixed point representation and some discussion about the same.

I6

Asked about types of cache, then discussion went into cache coherence problem and solutions.

After that interview ended. It was around 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Overall it was a nice experience. The interviewers were very helpful and supporting.

A big thanks to GO community. 😊

Result : Selected

asanyal posted in Interview Experience Jul 23, 2023
by asanyal
1,885 views
3
what is BFS and dfs?

which language did you code  most recently?

what is diffrence bw java and c?

what is tower of hanoi? what is time complexity?

what is inserstion sort?

what is the time complexity of it

what is merge sort and its time complexity?

what is linear data structure and non linear data structre?

which ds we can use to store web  link to go upward and forward?

which ds we can use to store web history?

what is enque and deque  ?

i got confuse bew deque(operation) and deque(data structure)… told them deque DS double ended que..
jugnu1337 posted in Interview Experience Jun 25, 2023
1,469 views
4

Greetings to all, I am Jay Gorakhiya and this blog is about my MS Interview experience. Below is my GATE result details

Rank : 229

Score: 757

Category : GEN

In the previous blog I had shared my iit madras interview experience. In this blog I am going to share my MS selection process experience for IIT Bombay.

IIT Bombay had one online test followed by interview. students were shortlisted for online test based on the GATE score. For the online test students were supposed to select a stream of interest out of Computer Systems, Intelligent Systems and Theoretical Computer Science. Each stream had different panels.

 

Panels in Computing Systems (CS) Stream

  • Software Engineering, Compilers, Programming Languages (Section 1)
  • Systems Software (Section 2)
  • Hardware and Security (Section 3)

Panels in Intelligent Systems (IS) Stream

  • AI/ML (NLP, Speech, Text) (Section 4)
  • AI/ML (Representation, Learning, Agents) (Section 5)
  • Visual Computing (Section 6)

Panels in Theoretical Systems (TS) Stream

  • Algorithms, Complexity, Cryptography (Section 7)
  • Formal methods (Section 8)

A google form was circulated to select the stream of preference for the test and we also had to select one project for RAP(research assistant through project) position. project we had to select must be from the panel within the stream we had selected. The test consisted of 8 sections from different streams, as mentioned above, and a student had to attempt questions in any panel from their selected stream. Marks for questions attempted out of the selected stream were not considered.

The test was 3 hours long and consisted of MCQs, Fill in the Blanks, Numerical Answer Type, One Word Answer type questions with no negative marking. The level of questions was at par with GATE, not so much higher than that, atleast for computer systems stream as i had attempted it. Below are some topics from where questions where asked (some topics might be missing as the list is memory based):

  • C programming ; Pointers, Functions etc
  • Software Enginnering Principles
  • Operating Systems ; Synchronization, Threads and Processes etc
  • DBMS ; Functional Dependencies, SQL etc
  • Computer Networks ; Flow Control, IP, etc
  • Computer Organisation ; Memory Heirarchy, Cache Memory, Pipeline etc

The exact procedure, syllabus and resources to study were mentioned in the website and were conveyed to us via zoom meeting. For M.S. students, the mark (out of 100) was the sum of the GATE score (normalised to 70) and test score (normalised to 30) for the chosen stream. The qualifying mark (out of 100) for the general category was 55.

The test results were announced on that night only, and my name was there on the shortlist made for MS(TA) interview and MS (RAP) interview as well for the project i had selected. The exact time and date for the interview were shared to us via email.

================================= MS (RAP) Interview ==================================

I had selected Computer Architecture projects under Prof. Biswabandan Panda. I had selected this project because of 2 main reasons, one that i didn’t have much knowledge about other AI/ML projects, though a brief about every project was made during a zoom meeting but for RAP position the prof. always wants the student to have some prior knowledge and more importantly interest in the project field, and other reason was that my first priority was Mtech and not MS. There were 2 projects under Biswa sir; processor performance & security and generic & domain specific hardware prefetching. 

In the interview, sir didn’t ask much. The interview was about 10 minutes only.

Q1. What do you know about the project? Do you have any experience in it?

Q2. What is Bandwidth, throughput, Latency? Differences between them 

(This was the only technical question he asked)

Q3. Have you worked in any project before and How much lines of code have you written?

(I told about my ISRO internship project and its code was about 500 lines)

Q4. How much are you interested in this position? what is your priority MTech or MS?

My answer to last question was Mtech and i thought that question was asked to every student so that the position is given to student whose first priority was MS. Finally, I was not selected for MS (RAP).

================================== MS (TA) Interview ==================================

For MS(TA) interview there were 3 professors, all 3 of them asked questions of different subjects. Firstly they asked about my gate result details like rank and score then they started asking questions:

P1 : you have selected computer systems, what subjects are you interested in??

Me: mostly OS and somewhat COA.

Prof. P1 asked me questions from COA only:

1.What do you know about Cache Memories?

2.What are the types of conflicts?

3.Tell a code snippet which will result in more cold misses? and which type of cache causes more cold misses? etc

Prof. P2 asked me questions from OS only:

1.What is process synchronization?

2.What are different synchronization mechanisms?

3.What is dining philosophers problem and what are its different solution?

4.What is reader writers problem and how do you solve it? etc

Prof. P3 asked me questions from CN only:

1.What is CSMA/CD protocol?

2.How is collision detected in CSMA/CD?

3.(Asked me some probability related question in CSMA/CD, avg number of transmissions before no collision etc)

They were cross questioning me a lot, I think i became quite nervous. I have listed down most of the questions i remembered. Finally, I was selected for MS(TA) porgramme at IIT Bombay. This was my IIT B MS interview experience. Hope it helps you in your interviews. All the best, believe in yourself and keep calm, they will ask from gate syllabus only, not some new things. Just revise the subject of choice and all will be okay. ALL THE BEST.

jay03 posted in Interview Experience Jun 18, 2023
by jay03
1,384 views
5

Greetings to all, I am Jay Gorakhiya and this blog is about my MS Interview experience. Below is my GATE result details

Rank : 229

Score: 757

Category : GEN

First of all, with this score one can get admission in MTech in IIT G / KGP / R but still I had applied for MS (Research) in IIT Madras , Bombay and Delhi and had given interviews of Bombay and Madras.

This year (2023), IIT Madras had 2 rounds of Interviews, First round ( shortlisting criteria was GATE score ) was like a common round where interview was on one of the topics from Discrete Maths OR C programming ( or Programming )in general. Students were shortlisted for round2 on the basis of performance in round1. Second round was panel specific round (3 panels; A. Theoritical Computer Science, B. Computer Systems, C. Intelligent Systems ) and students shortlisted from round1 were given a google form to fill their preference of panels. Interview in first 2 panels of preference was to be conducted. Final selection was made on the basis of performance in round2. Both rounds were online through Google Meet.

 

=================================== ROUND 1 ===================================

There was only 1 professor who interviewed me in round 1. The prof. was very nice and kind to me. He asked my name and from where i was and how was i feeling etc. Overall, he was very polite and quiet and made me feel comfortable before starting the interview. Interview went like this :

Prof. : What is your choice of subject? between Discrete Maths & Programming.

Me : As such there’s no preference but I’ll go with Programming.

Prof. : Write a program that tells whether a number is perfect number or not? (He then shared a link of an editor to write the code, which he could also see without me sharing the screen.)

Me : what is the definition of a perfect number? (I asked for definition, even though i knew it)

Prof. : a number is a perfect number if sum of its divisors (less than the number) is equal to the number itself.

Me : Okay (then I started writing the code, which was fairly simple)

( always speak aloud what you are thinking and what code you are writing while writing the code to interviewer )

Prof. : What is the Time Complexity of the Code?

Me : O(N) ( as the code had linear time complexity)

Prof. : Can you reduce the Number of Comparisions? or Can you eliminate redundant Comparisions??

Me : ( I gave some ans which was not 100% correct, was just beating around the bush )

( Actual ans was, we can run for loop upto n/2 instead of running it upto n as no divisor of n is greater than n/2 , which i realized after the interview 🙂 )

He then asked me some Questions on basic data structuers like arrays.

Prof. : You know array data structuers, right?

Me : Yes sir.

Prof. : What is the time complexity to find an element from the array?

Me : there are 2 algos, if linear search if the array is not sorted O(n) and binary search if the array is sorted O(logn).

Prof. : We do not know, if it is sorted or not i.e not neccasarily sorted array then what will you use?

Me : Linear Search.

Prof. : Can you decrease number of comparisons done in linear search while TC remains same O(N)?

Me : (first i explained the normal code of linear search )…( thought for some seconds, then he reframed the question )

Prof. : There are  2 key comparisons; first is whether we have reached array end or not? and second whether the current element is the element we are looking for? Can you eliminate any one of the comparision??

Me : we cannot eliminate second comparison because if we removed it then we wont be able to ‘search’ for a particular element, so we can try to eliminate first one. ( then i was thinking and then prof gave me a hint)

Prof. : What if we can change the input a little? What if we add the element which we are looking for at the end of the array then can we eliminate end of array comparison?

Me : (I gave some ans here and there but they were not correct) 

Finally, professor told me to think on the question afterwards and my round1 interview was over. Interview was around 10-15 mins. Round 1 results were out by the night and i was shortlisted for round 2. I had selected panel B (Computer Systems) and panel C (Intelligent Systems) but gave interview only for panel B as i was more confident in that.

 

=================================== ROUND 2 ===================================

In round2, there were 2 professors but only one of them asked questions. My choice of subject in computer systems panel was Operating Systems. Again, the professor was very nice to me, made me feel comfortable. I don’t remember all the questions exactly, so i am listing down questions which i remember.

  1. What different types of OS do you know and have used?
    (from there he jumped to uniprocessor multiprogramming OS ; as in GATE syllabus)
  2. What is scheduling? What are the CPU scheduling algorithms you know?
  3. What is context switch? How does it happen? (asked me to explain step by step what happens during a context switch)
    He went to ask in much detail like:
    1. who loads and save PCBs of the processes?
    2. before the context switch a user process is runnning on processor, so how does OS takes control of the processor during context switch? ans : through interrupt.
    3. who / which component interrupts the processor? etc
      (from there he jumped to Interrupts and System Calls)
  4. What is ISR, vectored interrupt? How does the Computer know which routine is for which interrupt?
  5. What is System call? Difference between an interrupt and a system call?
  6. Do we need an interrupt for executing a system call? etc

From there on the prof. began I got a bit confused and afterwards he ended my interview. Interview went for around 15-20 minutes. At last the prof. gave me a remark that first part of my answers were good (scheduling and context switch ones), that made me feel good that IIT professor thinks my ans is good 😄.  After few days, results were out and I was selected for MS (Research) in computer systems at IIT Madras. I eventually rejected the offer as I finally accepted MTech RA IITB.

So, this was my interview experience. Hope you find it helpful. Kudos to you if you’ve reached this far reading as the blog was a bit long. 

ALL THE BEST.

 

jay03 posted in Interview Experience Jun 13, 2023 retagged Jun 13, 2023 by jay03
by jay03
2,097 views
6

There were 6 professors in the panel.  The total duration was around 20 minutes. Interview held on 1st June 2023.

My gate rank is 983 and my score is 626 general.

P1 – Introduce yourself.

Me- Gave my introduction

P3 – Tell us about your Project.

Me – Answered

P2- Tell us more about it

Me- Explained the features and type of problem(It was a classification problem)

P4- What are the algorithms you used

Me- Discussed Naive Bayes,  KNN, Logistic Regression, Random Forest, SVM for classification

P4-How you select the best algorithm?

Me- Explained Log loss correctly. I told them, logistic regression is performing better in terms of log loss

P4 – Write Logistic Regression Equation on board

Me- Wrote the Cost function equation and sigmoid equation.

P4- Explain how Logistic Regression works.

Me- Trying to explain taking Gradient Descent into consideration

P5- We are landing on different islands(He meant that they were not able to connect the dots)

Me- Drew a graph of gradient descent(convex function) and tried to explain but they were not satisfied

P6- Okay now tell me what you want to do in Research work

Me- Something related to NLP

P1- What is NLP

Me- Natural Language Processing

P5- Are you interested in Climate Study?

Me- said no but not directly

P6-Do you know Python

Me-Yes but I haven't practiced much since I was preparing for GATE

P4- So in what area do you want to work?

Me- In the health sector, genetics variation, predicting diseases, and automation of testing processes.

P6- Do you know Statistics

Me- Yes(with confidence)

P6- Tell us about Normal Distribution, and why it is useful

Me- Gave an answer but they were not satisfied

P6- Do you know about kurtosis, skewness, deviation

Me- I don't know about Kurtosis, but I know about skewness and deviation. explained Deviation

P4- Asked many questions related to the normal distribution and Random variable

Me- Answered a few of them. (In between I said “I don't know” more than 4 times)

P6- Are you interested in Statistics

Me – Absolutely

P1- Okay you can go now.

Me- Thank you, everyone

Result: Selected (result came via mail on 23rd June)  

PS: P4 helped me a few times when I was about to say “I don't know”.


Resources you can follow:

-Machine Learning(Andrew Ng) : For detailed learning

-Machine Learning(Krish Naik): https://rb.gy/ovemb (For summary and brushing up)

-Linear Algebra(Gilbert Strang): https://rb.gy/ay1b0

-Probability(John Tsitsiklis): https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-041-probabilistic-systems-analysis-and-applied-probability-fall-2010/

Also, go through basic statistics topics like Mean, Median, Mode, Standard Deviation, etc.


Tips: They ask plenty of questions about your project, so prepare it thoroughly. If using some particular algorithms, then make sure you know the maths behind it. Do some research about the professor's work prior to the Interview. Professors are quite helpful when you are stuck, so try to take the hints. Have a positive attitude when you are not able to answer and accept your mistakes when you are wrong.

All the best!

Arjit Gupta posted in Interview Experience Jun 2, 2023 edited Jun 26, 2023 by Arjit Gupta
1,484 views
7

Gate score:690 (GATE CSE), Marks:62.67
Date: 19 May 2023
B.tech: Major in Mechanical and Minor in CSE

  • 149 students were shortlisted for about 11-15 seats after a JEE Mains level exam (round 1), there was no coding, the exam went pretty bad for almost everyone 
  • There were two professors who asked me questions (P1,P2)

P1: Introduce yourself

M: Hi sir, I am … from … did my btech major in mechanical engineering and I realized I am more oriented towards CS, so I took CS gate and since AI is blooming I have applied to AI and what place could be better than IIT Bombay to pursue the discipline.

 

P1: ok, tell me what do you understand about rank of a rectangular matrix, I am not asking about calculation of rank

M: It is the no of linearly ind rows and cols in the matrix

P1: Same asked about area

M: It is area for 2*2

P1: why do area/det become negative then.

M: Oh! sorry it’s the scale of the area, not area, and negative means squishing

P1: Ok, if squished why not less than one, like 0.7, why negative?

M: I don’t know this

P1: You’ll learn, it has to do with the vectors, their orientation. 

P1: what do you understand about prob density fxn of a random variable ‘X’

M: the probabilities of a experiment is plotted as pdf, a continous one if X is continous, and discrete otherwise.

P1: is it discrete?

M: No sir, for density it’s continous, and mass it’s discrete

P1: ok say about cdf.

M: I explained how cdf is cumulating the area under the pdf divided by the entire pdf

P1: what is it’s mathematical equation?

M: I was a little lost, don’t know why, I literally explained the same thing, but could not formulate at the heat of the movement.

P1: It’s integral of the pdf

P1: tell me the worst case time complexity of Quick sort

M: It happens when the pivot always comes and settles at the front or the end, and makes a recursive function of 1 and n-1, the TC is O(n2) 

Then he asked about avg tc and I said best is same as average which is rare and only happens here at QS, it is O(n.logn)

P2 starts asking


P2: Do you have any idea on ML

M: yes sir I have taken a course from openAI on supervised ML (https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning)

P2: what is unsupervised ML and supervised ML

M: I explained what I knew and with examples, but he was not happy, I said it like “in supervised we have an answer and in unsupervised we do not, wrt. the training set)

P2: What are labels

M: I don’t know (labels are actually the thing I was calling as answers, I said examples, like in supervised we have like cost estimation of a house and cancer detection which have a proper answer, but in unsupervised we don’t, like customised youtube adds, google adds, google news preference” This certainty of answers is the label we have in supervised and do not have in unsupervised)

So the interview concluded, and I was asked to leave

 

Some resources: (I am making a list, as I have wasted a huge amount of time collecting resources)

  1. A must see blog
  2. Probability MIT || Also prefer solving Maths NCERT probability problems
  3. Linear Algebra-1 (Gill Strang)
  4. Linear Algebra best intuition (3B1B)
  5. Coursera ML (if you’re loving it, continue with second course also)
  6. All interview experience list
  7. Calculus (3B1B) || Good for intuation but you need to do more of calculus

 

Verdict: NOT SELECTED

 

Souvik33 posted in Interview Experience May 19, 2023 edited Jun 4, 2023 by Souvik33
1,413 views
8
P1: What is dynamic programming?

Me: answered

P1: difference between dynamic programming and divide and conquer

Me: answered correctly

P1: how to find height of binary search tree with n nodes?

Me: 2^ (h+1) – 1 = n where n is number of nodes….then we take log on both sides and find h. I am currently unable to derive it.

P1: time complexity of merge sort

Me: O (n log n)

P1: what is the worst time complexity?

Me: O (n^2) and we can make it O (n log n) using priority queue

P2: what is random paging?

Me: in operating system when we select pages at random for processing

P2: difference between micro programming and micro processing

Me: blank

P2: which has better throughput?

Me: blank

P2:  scheduler vs. dispatcher difference

Me: answered correctly

P2:  what is virtual memory?

Me:  the memory that is created and used when there is shortage of memory

P2: what are the different stages of a process in os??

Me: drew the whole thing on paper but at last P2 asked me to say orally….as he could not see anything on webcam….I said: ready – lock – terminate….forgot to say running….but he was in a haste and I doubt he caught that mistake and looked satisfied

P2: how many data types are there in c programming and what are they?

Me: answered correctly

P2: difference between array and structure

Me: answered correctly

P3: what is linear independent of equations?

Me: blank

P3: what is rank of matrix?

Me: answered correctly

P3: what is random variable??

Me: it is a term of statistics. The data values that are taken randomly in a cluster of collected data

P3: you are given probability p1 , p2 , p3,... and random variable x1, x2, x3....what is the expectation???

Me : answered correctly.
abhishekbapon88 posted in Interview Experience May 11, 2023
1,005 views
9

Gate score:690 (GATE CSE 2023), Marks:62.67
Date: 4 May 2023
B.tech: Major in Mechanical and Minor in CSE

 

There were 5 professors in the pannel [ The interview was online ]

P1: Introduce yourself

P1: Why do you want to take CGS?

P1: If you get IIT Bombay CSE, would you still take CGS? I said, maybe I’ll prefer IITB CS, in this case

I said I see corelation between ML and CGS, and I think the more we understand our brain the better we can implement it in machines, so that machines can do repetitive work we do, and we can focus on other important problems.

P2: Asked did I take any course or project in ML/AI? I did the Stanford university course, available in Coursera.

P2: How do you think ML models help in solving problem, what is your favorite example? I said about the cancer detection using ML and explained we’ll have weights, bias and parameters and with time, and data, our model will improve.

P2: Asked about bias in the model.
P2: Asked Sigmoid and asked how will the curve change if we increase/decrease a and b in $\frac{1}{1+ae^{-bx}}$

P2: Asked about discrete version of sigmoid? I said I can’t recall the name, but it starts with ‘P’, he then asked to say the mathematical definition. The name is Perceptron and it is 0, for 0 or less, and 1 for greater than 0.

P2: Asked about error function in model, which I don't know, I started to explain about cost function, he then said it is not erf, so I said I don’t know what it is.

While explaining, the gradient decent came, and I said we use it for linear regression, but he said we can use basic partial derivative instead of gradient decent in linear regression. As far as I know Gradient decent is sum of partial fractions in all directions, I don’t know what was this all about.

P2: Asked how do you connect ML and cognition? What kind of project you want to work using the combinition of them?

P3: Showed this: and asked explain all the labeled stuffs, I only knew about dendrites, so I said it and I said I don’t know what others do.

She also showed another image which looked something like this, not exactly tough, and said to explain it:

 

P4: Asked how do neurons communicate: I said electricity, and then asked how is the electricity produced? I said there must be some potential difference, and she said to guess where and how is this potential difference produced? I said may be by energy in cells, she then said no energy and charge is completely different, she tried to give a hint, think of ions, and I couldn’t get it in time.

And the interview concluded.

The electricity potential difference is produced by Na and K ions

Verdict: NOT SELECTED

 

Resource (for nervous system)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPix_X-9t7E&ab_channel=CrashCourse

Souvik33 posted in Interview Experience May 4, 2023 edited Jun 4, 2023 by Souvik33
1,199 views
10

Gate score:690 (GATE CSE), Marks:62.67
Date: 20 April 2023
B.tech: Major in Mechanical and Minor in CSE

There were two professors, read out my details, they had asked to make a ppt presentation before a week, regarding all projects and other things you want to share in the interview.

1. Asked to say about projects

M: Explained, not so well tough, this was the first ever interview and I had no good idea how to present. (Projects: Final yr projects and some app and HTML/CSS website I made)

[[ Well, I made my project during second wave of covid and I'm from mechanical background, I hardly managed to go to a foundry shop and do some nonsense, well this sounds like an excuse, so I did not say this ]]

They also asked about the minor in CSE that I had, which I explained.

They asked what rank you had in college, I said we had no concept of ranking in college.

Technical part

1. Define rank of a matrix

M: Wrt. column space, no of independent cols we have is the rank, and wrt. row space, same thing

2. Is rank in col. space and row space same?

M: Yes in square matrix (I said)  (It's actually same for rectangular matrices too)

3. Prove it

M: I said, if we transpose, row become col and vice versa, and since rank of A and A transpose are same, the rank should be same. They were not at all satisfied with this answer, Like the professor would have punched me for this answer, if it was allowed : )

Next I explained the answer with help of geometry, If I loose a dimension we'll be able to place a vector of a reduced dimension. So rank must be min of MxN, I explained with a 3×4 matrix with abstract values, here they said, what you're trying to say is correct, but we need a proper mathematical derivation.

Then they tried to give a hint, convert to echelon form, but I was dumb enough to not get the point.

Take a matrix, they said, I took this:

$\begin{pmatrix} a & b & c & d\\ e & f & g & h\\ i & j & k & l \end{pmatrix}$

Now he said, I want to remove the forth col “d h l”, Can I do it? 
I said “Yes” cause we have max rank 3 and, 3 basis are sufficient fo it, so we can eliminate one of the 4 columns. Well, he was not satisfied.

Now he said to reduce it, even tough it was possible to work with a abstract matrix, in that pressure, I said I want to take another matrix with numbers and now took this.

$\begin{pmatrix} 1 & 2 & 3 & 4\\ 5 & 6 & 7 & 8\\ 9 & 10 & 11 & 12 \end{pmatrix}$

As soon I was done writing the matrix, he said me say it’s rank immediately, within seconds, I said 3, he was not satisfied, said to do “R3=R3-R1” and “R2=R2-R1”, Well, now I figured out what was wrong, now he asked what’s the rank, I said “It’s one”, he said what one???
I took some seconds and said, it’s two for sure. Well out of all possible 3 answers, I said all of them, one would have been definitely right, this thing was quite embarrassing.

4. Prove, if we raise the power of a matrix, the eigen values are also raised to power.

I proved with the diagonalization formula, but then he said to prove using basic (AX= λX) I did both.


5. Is every matrix diagonalizable?

M: No, if det (A) =0 it's not, realizing after some seconds I'm terribly wrong, then I said no the matrix with eigen value, then he pointed out "is it eigen value"

No I said, it's the matrix with eigen vectors (it's always easy to confuse with eigen value and vector)

Then he asked what I want to do if I join robotics

I said, want to do the programming part, again pretty dumb (maybe it could have been better to say controller codlings like using ROBOML, etc)

So, here it ends and I left the room.

I finally figured out the actual derivation of the thing (raw rank equals col rank) I will put it in simple terms here, the hard one you'll find it in the net, anyway…

It goes like this: 

  1.  Piviot Defination: All before the piviot must be zero
  2. Change the Matrix to, RREF (Row reduction Echelon Form) [ See we always have a linear transformation who can do this task by multiplying it to the original matrix ‘A’ ]
  3. Change the Matrix to, CREF (Col reduction Echelon Form) [ See we always have a linear transformation who can do this task by multiplying it to the original matrix ‘A’
  4. When we are done this the matrix always changes to something like this [ and always use piviots to do reduction ] « This is important 

After RREF, we get something like this:

$\begin{pmatrix} a & b & c & d\\ 0 & k1 & k2 & k3\\ 0 & 0 & k4 & k5 \end{pmatrix}$ 

or like this :  $\begin{pmatrix} a & b & c & d\\ 0 & k1 & k2 & k3\\ 0 & 0 & 0 & k5 \end{pmatrix}$ 

or like this :  $\begin{pmatrix} a & b & c & d\\ 0 & k1 & k2 & k3\\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \end{pmatrix}$ 

Similarly do CREF on this and we’ll end up only with piviots, like this:

This is best case full rank :  $\begin{pmatrix} a & 0 & 0 & 0\\ 0 & k1 & 0 & 0\\ 0 & 0 & k5 & 0 \end{pmatrix}$  

Or like this (here we loose a rank):  $\begin{pmatrix} a & 0 & 0 & 0\\ 0 & k1 & 0 & 0\\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \end{pmatrix}$  

 

In tough maths we say it like this: We multiply two matrices, say X and Y with A as, A’ =  $X^{^{-1}}A Y$

Doing this we get something like: $\begin{pmatrix} I & 0\\ 0 & 0 \\ \end{pmatrix}$, The dimension of I is ‘r’ which is rank and is same wrto both row and col.


Fingers crossed, mostly will not get selected, but was a good experience, and there are bed bugs at Bangalore, better take good hotel, I hardly slept the last night and my eyes were red, the professor asked me once, did you not sleep or something, I said no I slept, I thought, maybe it's not so wise to make excuses.

Verdict: NOT SELECTED

 

The derivation of (Row Rank = Col Rank) 

Formal one: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-701-algebra-i-fall-2010/dfd72d3d4a11988c2335b5e9a79ce48b_MIT18_701F10_rrk_crk.pdf

My notes:
one correction: echlon form is always of the form: R2 = R2 - (k * R1) , I did this a bit wrong here


 

Souvik33 posted in Interview Experience Apr 22, 2023 edited Jun 4, 2023 by Souvik33
2,379 views
11

Hi fellow aspirants,
I want to share my Interview Experiences of Top IITs and IISc. These might be useful to some of you who will apply for MS admissions. 

Interview links: https://github.com/surajiitd/Blogs/tree/master

All the Best!!
Suraj Patni
MS by Research(CSE)
IIT Delhi(2021 entry)

Paatni22 posted in Interview Experience Apr 21, 2023
2,073 views
12

Hello everyone,

I’m Anmol Vashishtha, one of the shortlisted candidates for BARC-OCES 2022. 

I cleared the written test with a score of 136.35, the cutoff this year was 134.36. This year 99 candidates were shortlisted for interview out of which 5 have been shortlisted. I appeared for interview on 20th June at BARC, Mumbai.

Interview:

The interview panel consisted of 6 members.

After being seated, I was asked a little about my college and my final semester exam/presentation(as I am in final semester). Then, one of the members asked me “Have you prepared all the subjects from GATE syllabus only?”. I replied “yes sir”.

He then proceeded “But why GATE only? when you have been taught other subjects in college?”.

I replied: “Sir, because I’ve given GATE exam recently and it was also my second attempt, so these are the subjects that I have been thoroughly studying for two years”

He seemed to be satisfied by my response. He then asked me to stand up and write the 5 subjects I had prepared on the corner of the black board. I wrote OS, TOC, CN, DBMS, C.

A panel member asked: “Why have you not written DS and Algo?”

I replied sir:” Sir, I’m more interested in theoretical subjects, and DS and Algo don’t interest me much”, even they were surprised

The member continued: “ but you know right, that these subjects are a very integral part of Computer Science”

I replied : “yes sir I very much understand. I have a strong foundations of these subjects as I have prepared for GATE but when I go the interview call, I took that as an opportunity to dive deeper into these( the ones written on the board), so I have prepared for these only.”

The panel somewhat went along with it. And my interview starts from here.

OS:

OS panel member: “what are the functionalities of OS?”

Me: told about process management, resource allocation, memory management, I/O devices

OS panel member: “so you’ve told process management, what do you mean by a process?”

Me: told the standard definition i.e. “process is a program under execution”

OS panel member: "when do we call something a process? I mean like we have programs right, when does a program turn into a process?”

Me: elaborated the process of loading a program into main memory from the secondary memory and then tried to explain that these programs become processes when they are allocated main memory resources.

OS panel member: “while explaining you mentioned the word interrupt, what do you mean by an interrupt?”

From this point on the entire OS section shifted towards interrupts, so this discussion consisted more of concepts of Interrupts as covered in Computer Architecture rather than OS but luckily interrupts was a topic that I had put a little extra effort while preparing for GATE . I’ll summarize the series of cross questioning.

  • what is an interrupt
  • what happens when an interrupt occurs? I told about the mechanism and Interrupt Vector Table and Service Routines.
  • How do we know what to do when an interrupt has occurred? told about the vectored interrupt mechanism
  • How does the OS know that an interrupt has occurred? told about the control signal mechanism, the INTR lines etc
  • Why do we need interrupts in the first place? told about privileged instructions and kernel mode execution
  • Little cross questioning on kernel mode and why some instructions are declared as privileged 
  • What’s the difference between interrupts and exceptions?

At last the OS part was completed.

C:

Then they shifted to C. I faltered a little in this section but the panel members gave ample hints and time for me to identify my mistakes and to rectify them.

C panel member: “write a program that accepts an alphanumeric string and extract the number in it, for example if the string is ‘a2b3cd4’ your code should return the number 234”

Me: Before writing anything I preferred to verbally explain my thought process. “Sir we would iterate through the string and whenever we encounter a number we would extract it and store it as an intermediate result”. Then I started writing the code. Whenever I was stuck I used to quickly take a sample input and dry run my code, this helped me find all errors immediately.

C panel member: "how will you handle negative numbers?"

Me: told that we can add a check and then make the number negative after processing the string.

C panel member: "what can be the maximum size of a number that can be extracted by this code?"

Me: I wasn't able to provide a satisfactory answer, but I tried to answer in all ways I could.

TOC:

Then they shifted to TOC. 

TOC panel member: "what are the uses of finite state automata?"

Me: described a little about FSA, then the only example that struck my mind was the LR(0) item set. How FSA is used to track what productions have been scanned. Eg -> S -> A.B, S-> AB.

TOC panel member: "you've mentioned parsing and grammars, where else is FSA used in compilers?"

Me: told about lexical analysis.

TOC panel member: "Can you design a FA for accepting integer declarations? For example int abc;"

Me: I wrote the Regular expression first and then proceeded to draw the FA, followed by a bit of cross questioning on FA and parsing in general. 

After this they asked few questions from the remaining Subjects. I'll summarize them:

  • DBMS:
    • What all topics have you learnt? Told Transactions, Normalization, Indexing etc
    • How are transactions implement isolation? I told them about view and conflict serializability but the member was expecting the isolation levels. I said I cannot recall those at the moment.
    • Why do we need Normalization? Give examples
    • What are types of relation in DBMS? Told one to one , many to one etc
    • Give example of each
    • Kind of data structures are used in DBMS? Thought for a moment and told hash tables, B tree etc
    • Explain B trees and Hash tables?
    • How collisions are resolved ? What do you think is better for collision resolution in general? Thought for a bit and said that I would prefer linked list approach because in worst case if insertions are made to same slot again and again LL approach would not affect the rest of the hash table, while inserting into successive slots would affect the rest of hash table as well.
  • Data Structures:
    • As I had mentioned Linked List in DBMS topic so the DS panel member asked me about LL a bit.
    • Write declaration of LL
    •  How would you find the middle element? Told about the brute force solution to scan and count the number of nodes and traverse again till n/2 elements
    • Can you do it in single traversal? Told about the double pointer approach and moving one pointer twice as fast as other.
  • Computer Networks:
    • What is subnetting?
    • Why do we need subnetting? I felt that I couldn't provide a satisfactory answer to this, but again I tried to explain my best.
    • A little about subnet masks
    • You've explained subnetting, now explain Supernetting, why do we need supernetting? Again I felt that I couldn't provide a convincing answer but I explained that "contrary to subnetting, when an organization wishes to combine two or more networks to achieve a higher level of logical abstraction. I told them an example that for example an institution had an ML and Neural Network departments, so it can combine these n/w to form a supernet and logically designate it as Artificial Intelligence department".
  • Java:
    • DS panel member asked whether I was familiar with C++ and OOPs. I replied that I have learnt Java rather than C++.
    • DS panel member: tell me about OOP concepts?
    • DS panel member: tell me about Polymorphism, how is it achieved in Java? Told but I got confused in Method overloading and overriding. But I corrected my mistake after getting a hint.

Then the last question I was asked was from TOC again.

TOC panel member: "how can you implement DFAs in C?"

Me: told about the matrix approach

TOC panel member: "What if we don't know about the number of stated beforehand?"

Me: Thought for a bit but couldn't answer properly

Then my interview concluded, I greeted them and came out of the room. My interview went for about 1 hour and 23 minutes.

Preparation:

Written Test: Just revised my GATE notes ( I have attended Made Easy Online Coaching) and for practice I combined all the previous year Gate 1 marker questions in a single pdf. I used to solve all these and then evaluate my performance.

Interview: Reading through past interview experiences on GATE Overflow, Quora etc, I realized that revising notes wouldn't be enough. So I turned towards university lectures available on YouTube. I used to watch a lecture and then go through the corresponding topic from a standard textbook. This was naturally time consuming so I limited myself to important topics of each subject. I'll summarize the resources:

I wish all the future aspirants best of luck for all their endeavors.

anmolv posted in Interview Experience Jul 19, 2022 edited Jul 22, 2022 by anmolv
by anmolv
3,599 views
13
Had a written test, based on which I was called for interview.

Round 1:

P1: Find value of i^i, explain your approach.

P2: A numerical question related to dependent variables, don’t remember the exact question.

P3: Explain Selection Sort, and maximum number of swaps in Selection Sort.

P2: Given a column vector A, what is rank of AA’?

P2; What is the maximum and minimum possible rank of a matrix consisting of N k-D vectors? What are the assumptions involved in each case?

 

Round 2:

P1: Explain your background with ML/AI.

P2: Explain any one project on AI that you worked on.

P3: Why MTech RA?

P2: Explain why residual connections allow deeper networks. What happens in deep networks without residual connections?

P2: How do you decide Hyperparameters like Learning rate or number of layers when training neural networks?

P1: Which subfield of AI are you interested in?

 

Result: SELECTED!
susmit600 posted in Interview Experience Jul 1, 2022 edited Jul 7, 2022 by susmit600
1,104 views
14
There was a written test for self sponsored category of AI and CSE on 24th June 22. I got shortlisted for both of them. My interview was on 25th June 22.  My interview was scheduled at 12 but after waiting almost 1.5 hr, they admitted me into the WebEx meeting... So the questions were :

1. Did u sit for placement?

I denied. They asked me the reason. I told them i was quite focused on gate only so didn't get much time for placements.

2. Graduated in which year, which stream and which college?

3. Do you know programming? If yes, write a code to find palindrome of a number without converting into a string.

They shared me Google doc link where i had to write the code.. i wrote it.

4. Given two matrix , write code to multiply them

I tried but couldn't do that. So they gave me values of A and B matrix and told me to find answer of A*B mathematically. I did.

5. Do you know data structures? What are the types of data structures?

I told them all data structures

6.. how to convert stack into queue?

I told them to use two stack..pop from stack 1 and push to stack 2. Then later pop from stack 2, you will get the queue.

7. What is ur preference? ai or cse?

I told them that it's cse.

They asked me why not AI?

I told them my reasons

And the interview ended!!!
swati2001 posted in Interview Experience Jun 28, 2022
1,579 views
15

My interview was on 27th June 2022. The interview panel had 2-3 interviewers. The questions asked were:

  1. Introduce yourself.   : I introduced myself and also stated at the end that my fav subjects are DS and Algo. 
  2. They asked me if i m comfortable with probability. I said that I haven't done that in depth but they still can ask. They said that they wont ask on probability then. 
  3. They said “Let me ask very basic questions which you have learnt in high school. I will give you equations and you have to find of the values as well as plot graphs. 
  4. They gave me 3 equations.
  5.  y =  |x|
  6. |x|+|y| =1
  7. x+y=1

I drew the graphs and explained the logic to them. Also i showed them the graph drawn in front of camera. They told me to name the x and y axis. 

Then they shifted to linear algebra

  1. Given a system of linear equations Ax=B, what are the cases when we get unique, no solution and infinite many solution?    ; I explained them the geometric aspect that solution will be the point where the lines will intersect. 
  2. What do you mean by homogeneous and non homogeneous equations?

When will you say that the solution is unique or infnitely many Mathematically? ;; I told them the rank concept.

 

And so the interview ended

Never thought that they will ask so many basic questions. But if you have a good command over maths, then you can ace  the interviews. 

swati2001 posted in Interview Experience Jun 28, 2022
1,202 views
16

Initially for MINDS(IITD) or CMINDS(IITB) there was a written test, if you qualify then you will proceed to the interview round.

You can follow the link given below for the syllabus. As both the written tests (no -ve marks) was more or less the same:

https://bit.ly/3Or8Nrw (IITB CMINDS)

 

In IITD there were 3 coding questions in addition to MCQs & MSQs and the test was conducted on HackerEarth platform.

 

IITD Interview Questions and Resources:

Around 40 people were shortlisted for the interview.The interview was conducted on 3rd June 2022(Till that time 3 coap rounds were over).My interview was scheduled at 4pm on Microsoft Teams.In my panel there were 3 professors.Each professor asked me questions from different subjects(given below).And the interview lasted for around 40-50 mins.

 

General Questions:

  1. Give a brief academic introduction about yourself.

  2. Currently what offers do you have?If you get M.Tech will you consider it or stick to MS(R) program and Why?

  3. What are your favorite subjects? (Best answer, Linear Algebra & Probability for AI and Data science profile interviews.)

Also go through basic AI/ML stuff. Resource: https://bit.ly/3xy4tzO

 

Linear Algebra:

Take an equation Ax=B

  1. Explain the solution of the system of linear equations w.r.t column space?

  2. When will the system have a solution?

  3. If matrix A has full rank, then for what B vectors does the system have a solution?

  4. If the B vector doesn’t lie on the column space of A then how to get an approximate solution(projection concept)?

Resources:

https://bit.ly/3Qza41C (Must read upto 23rd video)

https://bit.ly/3xIokMP (Alternative to above resource)

 

Calculus:

  1. What is a convex function?(Read thoroughly about concave & convex functions).

  2. What is gradient?Give its geometrical significance.

  3. What's a directional derivative? 

Resources:

https://bit.ly/3OdsK5h (Must read Gradient section thoroughly)

https://bit.ly/3zOvvpc 

 

Probability & Statistics:

  1. What is covariance for 2 random variables x & y?

  2. Proof that for independent random variables covariance is 0.

  3. Prove E(x+y)=E(x)+(y) for both independent & dependent cases.

  4. Prove E(xy)=E(x)E(y) for an independent case.

  5. A coin is tossed n times we define a random variable as follows,where xi is ith coin toss, prob. of head in each toss is p(success):

     Find E(x(bar)) and Var(x(bar)).(Use linearity of expectation concept)

 

Also do read thoroughly joint pdf,pmf, conditional expectation,total expectation,CDF etc.

Resources & Tips:

Keep handy all the distributions equations and graphs,specially normal distribution and approximation of poisson & binomial distributions using normal distribution.

Also go through proof of the memoryless property of geometrical & exponential distribution.

 

Recommended videos:

https://bit.ly/3OtYFhK (Must read upto 98th video)

https://bit.ly/3OoqmbC (Sampling distribution concept)

https://bit.ly/3n1d499 

https://bit.ly/3OaaZ6O 

https://bit.ly/3HBPE3G (Just go through week 3 important set of problems)


 

Algorithm:

  1. Suppose you need to climb a stair of n steps and you can take at a time 1 step or extend your leg and take 2 steps or 3 steps at a time.Finds number of ways you can climb n steps.

 

(Hint: Take sol. as T(n).For T(n) we have 3 tree branches T(n-1)(taking 1 step at a time)/T(n-2) (taking 2 steps at a time)/T(n-3) (taking 3 steps at time) then again solve the subproblems of size (n-1)/(n-2)/(n-3) )

 

Verdict: Selected (IITD)

 

Note:

  1. If you have a 650+ Gate score(Gen) you should definitely prepare well ahead as you will most probably get a call.Applicable for all branches.

  2. IITB focuses more on LA & Prob.(specially joint distribution which was not part of the GATE syllabus).You have to study beyond the GATE syllabus.

  3. You should never go out of studies after GATE for a long time else it will be difficult for you to crack the interviews.

  4. Must be prepared with the B.Tech final year project.

 

Best of Luck for your selection :)





 

                                

AnkitMazumder14 posted in Interview Experience Jun 21, 2022
4,708 views
17
I was selected for an interview by Standing Committee, therefore I didn’t have to give PGEE and my GATE wasn’t considered. In case anyone wants to know, my GATE (2021) score was 627.

The interview panel had 3 professors.

 

P1: Current role, past research experience, past research topics.

Me: Told

P2: Explain Vector Spaces

Me: Told

P2: What is dot product? What is its significance?

Me: Told

P2: What is the rank of a matrix? What happens if a vector is multiplied by a matrix with rank lower than its no. of dimensions?

Me: Told

P2: What are basis vectors?

Me: Told

P2: Given N vectors in N-d space, how would you find N perpendicular vectors using the given vectors?

Me: Initially told about SVD. They wanted the answer using dot product, answered after some hints.

P1: Given a graph, is the shortest path between 2 vertices always included in the MST?

Me: Told no using counter-example.

P1: Explain K-Means Clustering

Me: Told

P1: Explain Neural Clustering

Me: Didn’t know

P1: Explain any of your papers and the math involved

Me: Told

P3: What makes a neural network non-linear?

Me: Told

P3: What are the properties of a sigmoid activation?

Me: Told

P3: What is the derivative of sigmoid?

Me: Told

 

Result: SELECTED!
susmit600 posted in Interview Experience Jun 20, 2022 edited Jun 20, 2022 by susmit600
1,077 views
18
I got shortlisted for interview at IIT Hyderabad CSE via self sponsored mode. It was held on 13 June 2022. I had only revised DS-Algo and Maths. The interview consisted of 2 interviewers.

Person 1: Pls introduce yourself in 30 sec. Like your name, college name, favourite subjects, thesis name,project name etc

Me: (I told them abt myself)

Person 1: What was your thesis on? Can u explain it?

(I was completly unaware what thesis meant as in our college, we only did major project, so i told him that we only had major project and explained him that)

Person 1: Did you deploy your project?

Me: Yes I did

Person 1: As you told your favourite subject is algorithm, can u please tell me the time complexity to find 2 numbers in an unsorted array in such a way that those 2 number’s sum is target. Target will be given as input

Me: I first explained the naive method of O(n^2). Then i said that i will sort them and use 2 pointer method to find..tc= O(nlogn +n) ~ O(nlogn).

Person 1: Can you optimize it further? Have you heard of hashmap, can u optimize using that?

Me: I was pretty struck there..I tried doing it but couldnt do that. Later after the interview i realized that i already knew the method but due to the situation, i panicked and couldnt give the ans.

The ans was , take a element from the array, check if target-element is there in hashmap or not.. do this for every element.. searching in hashmap is O(1) .. thus tc = O(n)

Now person 2 started asking me question

person 2: Tell me the worst case complexity of quicksort

Me: I explained him the entire quicksort.

Person2: Suppose you are given median element using a certain algo which takes O(n) tc. will the time complexity be reduced

me: I told them the recurrance relation of quicksort using median as pivot .

 

And the interview ended. The results are awaited.
swati2001 posted in Interview Experience Jun 16, 2022
1,455 views
19

Hi Everyone! 

This is Anmol Garg, I got a GATE CSE score of 749 (AIR 343) in 2022 and 742 (AIR 447) in 2021. I applied to IIT Bombay MS By Research program in CSE with my 2022 score, as I am a General candidate and knew I won’t be getting a direct offer from any top IIT.

The admission process is available here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vShA2OZKqslk08AYc7C5_Y-4rTMtQET5MddL0YtHnUA86wT2a2-3BBT0G2RM3LOXXUph778c-oHJMAO/pub

The process consisted of 2 rounds, 1st round being a written test on Codetantra (pen-and-paper based) and 2nd round being an Interview. I had chosen Computing Systems (CS) Stream for my test and interview.

ROUND 1 – WRITTEN TEST
---------------------------------------

As I had chosen CS stream, I had the option of attempting any 12 questions out of the following 3 panels:
1. Software Engineering, Compilers, Programming Languages
2. Systems Software
3. Hardware and Security

I mostly solved questions from Programming, DS & Algo, Computer Networks and Operating Systems.

Result :: SELECTED

ROUND 2 – INTERVIEW
---------------------------------

Before interview we were asked for our preferred stream (CS/TS/IS), and any RAP project (optional). I had chosen CS as my stream and Virtual Labs (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1op-KwA6B99WHKCoZOkMR3ULcIDPvvbboRWmBtT7QBNI/edit) project under Prof. Kameswari Chebrolu as RAP Project.

My interview panel consisted of Prof. Kameswari Chebrolu and Prof. Bhaskaran Raman

Initial questions were about my past projects and work experience, and the flagship projects I did when I was working.

I was then offered a choice between Computer Networks and Operating Systems as topic for Interview. I decided on Operating Systems as it is my strong suit.

OS questions were mostly from basics of Virtual Memory. I don't remember the exact questions, but some of them were like:

  1. What is virtual memory?
  2. In which cases is it used?
  3. If you have an unlimited amount of storage, will virtual memory still be used?

After answering these questions, I was given a choice between TA & RAP. I chose RAP as the Virtual Labs project seemed very interesting.

As I have experience in Back-end and microservices development and deployment, I was mostly asked questions from that space. Some of the interesting questions were:

  1. What is docker, and how does it work on a hardware level?
  2. Suppose you are maintaining a set of microservices, and you notice they are getting slow. What steps will you take to mitigate it?
  3. Do you know what AWS is? 
  4. What can be a real-world example of implementation of feedback queue. Give examples from projects you have done previously

After answering these questions, I was told that they were done, and I was free to ask them any questions. I asked questions about the project, such as:

  1. What’s the current state of the project
  2. If I join, at what state do I have to start work from (from scratch or not)
  3. What technologies were being used
  4. What’s the current timeline for this project

I learned that the project’s back-end is being built using Django, in which I have around 1.5 years of experience, so I told them about my experience and all the projects I have done in it. It was clear that they were impressed by it.

Then they asked me that if I were to be offered admission, will I join IITB or do I have any other preference, and if I do join IITB, will I prefer TA or RAP.

I again answered that IITB is my top choice and I would prefer RAP as I wanted to work on such a large scale problem.

Then the interview ended. It lasted for around 45 minutes.

Result :: SELECTED FOR RAP IN 1st ROUND

garganmol11 posted in Interview Experience Jun 8, 2022
1,941 views
20
An interview was conducted with all the candidates who applied for Mtech CSE IIT Delhi.

I have given my interview experience below.

The panel consisted of 3 professors.

The 1st professor started off by asking about the subjects I am interested in. Since I mentioned Data Structures and algorithms, he started asking questions about them. The first question was about all pair's shortest path algorithms, the significance of k and whether the looping involving k is outside or inside the loop concerning the i and j nodes in dynamic programming formulation. The next question is on the usage of min-heap and union-find for obtaining a minimum spanning tree.

The 2nd professor asked about an approach to finding the median of an array. He told me to optimize the approach without sorting the array. I couldn’t come up with an approach to do it. Next, he asked me to assume such an algorithm exists and use it to come up with an optimum algorithm for the fractional knapsack problem. I couldn’t come up with an approach to do it too.

The 3rd professor asked a few questions on convolutions since I said I am interested in Computer vision which I answered completely.

The interview overall lasted for about 15-20 min. The professors were quite friendly and provided hints whenever I am stuck. They care more about the clarity of concepts rather than just plain answers.

Thank you
hs97 posted in Interview Experience May 19, 2022 edited May 19, 2022 by hs97
by hs97
1,959 views