In this post I am sharing my post GATE experience at IIT Bombay. I appeared for GATE (CSE) exam in 2015. My AIR was 291. Gate score 774/1000. I got interview call letter from IIT Bombay about a month in advance. A month is a good enough time to prepare for the test and interview.
The IIT Bombay M. Tech. admissions page had the required details about the syllabus for the written test. Mostly it was GATE syllabus with focus on some subjects more than the others. There is another page which tells which Research Assistant positions are available for applicants. Make sure you keep checking these pages on a regular basis. These pages continue to update on a frequent basis, subject to changes in the availability of RA positions.
We were asked to report to KReSIT at IIT Bombay at 8 am on the judgement day. Please make sure you reach Mumbai at least a day in advance.
At first the written test took place. The test had about 30 objective questions and the duration was around 90 minutes. There were few questions where multiple answers were correct. There was no negative marking. Most of the questions were GATE level. So if you have studied well for GATE and focussed on the concepts, this test was easy.
The question paper was designed to test your basic concepts in the areas for which RA positions were offered. Hence checking list of available positions, and there research areas (subjects) is very important. The admissions page also lists down the subjects to focus more on. In my case the focus was on computer networks, operating systems, databases, computer architecture, ToC etc. Numericals in computer networks, OS paging concepts, Cache hit ratio, SQL queries were asked.
One interesting type of questions was something like this; We were given a C program and were asked to tell what the program was doing. These questions tested your C concepts, as well as your programming skills.
Once the test was done there were project presentations explaining expectations from students with respect to the projects. It may happen that you might see a couple of projects which were not listed on the web page.
Then came the big surprise for me. There was a programming test. We had to write a C/C++ program in an hour. The program was supposed to add two polynomials of different degrees.
Once the programming test was finished, we had lunch. Then we were asked to give preferences for the RA positions we wanted to opt for. We had to give 4 different preferences, starting from highest priority to the lowest. I had filled ASC, Sysad and a couple of others. Most of the interviews that were happening were quite short lasting for 10 mins. There were few exceptions though.
After a long wait of around 6 hours, my interview was finally scheduled. It was a single interview for my first two preferences. ASC and Sysad. My interview panel had Prof. Puru Kulkarni, Dr. Subhadra Ramchandran, and a couple of senior students.
First they asked me about my GATE details, reg. no., name, GATE score, AIR etc. The interview was mostly driven by Prof. Puru.
Prof. Puru: Whats your name?
Me: Ankit Rokde
Prof. Puru: What is your GATE registration number?
Told my GATE registration number
Prof. Puru: What is your GATE score?
Me: 774
Prof. Puru: What is your GATE rank?
Me: 291
Prof. Puru: Where have you applied for admission?
Me: I was shortlisted for SERC at IISc Bangalore. Unfortunately I couldn’t clear the written test. I have applied to IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Roorkee and IIT Guwahati but haven’t heard back from them yet.
Prof. Puru: What are the your preferences for RA positions here?
Me: I have given ASC as the first and Sysad as the second.
Prof. Puru:Where did you do your graduation?
Me: At Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur.
Prof. Puru: Where did you work after your B. Tech.?
Me: I am working in ThoughtWorks Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. I have been working there for almost 3 years now.
Prof. Puru: What is your role there?
Me: I am a developer.
Prof. Puru: What are the projects that you have worked there?
Me: I have been part of the teams that developed enterprise web applications. Currently I am working on a cross platform mobile app.
Prof. Puru: What is your responsibility on the current project?
Me: I am building and maintaining infrastructure for our application ecosystem. Recently I have developed keen interest in system administration due to the same.
Prof. Puru: Are you familiar with linux?
Me: Yes
Prof. Puru: What is the operating system that you use?
Me: Fedora
Prof. Puru: Are you comfortable with linux command line?
Me: Yes. I am quite comfortable.
Prof. Puru: How do you find IP address of your own machine?
Me: We can do ping localhost
Prof. Puru: But ping will give you 127.0.0.1
Me: Ohh yess. We can use ifconfig command. It will give us IP addresses of all the network interfaces of the machine.
Dr. Subhadra: What does the top command do?
Me: It shows us CPU utilization. Memory usage. And all the running processes on the system. The processes are sorted by their memory usage. (and a few more details).
Prof. Puru: Can a single process run on multiple ports?
Me: No
Prof. Puru: Are you sure?
Me: Every process in linux is run on a unique port. I am not really sure how can a single process run on multiple ports. (My answer is wrong here)
Prof. Puru: Have you done any socket programming?
Me: No
Senior student: What was your final year project?
Me: We had built a content based video retrieval system. (Few more details about my final year project)
Prof. Puru: Have you solved the programming problem ?
Me: Yes
Prof. Puru: Does it work ?
Me: There is some small error in the program. Can you please tell me what the issue is? (I asked one of the senior students)
Senior student: You havent considered this particular case.
Me: Ohh yes. I missed that.
Prof. Puru: You know you will be working at half your current salary. What do you think about that?
Me: No problem sir. I want to learn here.
The interview lasted for around 10 minutes or so. After 10 days I got the confirmation mail saying I was selected as RA at IIT Bombay. Dreams do come true. :)