Thursday 17 May 2012

My 2nd Interview for the M.Tech programme 2012 was at IIT KGP.

Unlike IITK there weren't any written test at IITKGP.They give priority to GATE SCORE(~70%) and (~30%)for the INTERVIEW PERFORMANCE.The interview panel contained 3 professors and the questions were from GRAPH THEORY,THEORY OF COMPUTATION which were mentioned as my favorite subjects and from CO and ABSTRACT & LINEAR ALGEBRA.The questions were pretty simple and straight forward involving basics.

GRAPH THEORY
1.What is a non-planar graph and give exampes for the simplest non-planar graph.
2.What is Euler's Theorm.

THEORY OF COMPUTATION
1.What is an NP and NPC problem and give example.
2.Proof for Vertex cover problem.(since I stated it as an example.Even before starting with the proof the other professor started his questioning).

CO
1.What is pipelining.
2.Explain and calculate the speed up factor for the pipeline in terms of number of stages and instructions assuming equal time per stages.

ABSTRACT & LINEAR ALGEBRA
1.What is a group.
2.What is an abelian group.
3.What is a vector space.

The interview took some 5-7 minutes.Almost all of the interview panel's questions were based on ABSTRACT & LINEAR ALGEBRA(mainly the topics like eigen values and vectors,Clayley-Hamilton Rule,vector space,basis,vector independency and so on).Questions can be expected from anywhere.Questions regarding undecidability were also common.
While planning to book the slot for interview just leave the initial 2-3 days of the interview slots since there is high chance of IITK written test/interview to happen on these days.Even if for some reason the dates overlap don't worry IITKGP will provide you with a different slot on request.

Wednesday 16 May 2012

My 1st Interview for the M.Tech programme 2012 was at IITK.

Prior to the interview there was an objective written test of 50 questions and 2:30 hours.Main priority were given to Probability and Combinatorics,Graph Theory,Algorithms,Theory of Computation,Basic Number Theory and Aptitude (~60%) and rest (~40%) on DBMS,CN,CO.There weren't any questions from OS,CD.But don't completely ignore them just have a brief look at all subjects.

Cutoff for General : 60/150

My interview took almost 45 minutes with 3 professors in the interview panel.My favourite topics were Graph Theory,Theory of Computation,Number Theory.The panel was very friendly and helpful.The questions asked to me were on Graph Theory and Theory of Computation.

Graph Theory:
1.What is a non-planar graph with an example.
2.Prove that there are even number of odd degree vertices.
3.Prove that in a planar graph the number of vertices is of the order of number of edges.

Theory of Computation:
1.Prove that L1 intersection L2 is closed under Regular Languages with a polynomial time construction.
2.What is a Recursive Enumerable Language with example.
3.Prove that Lu is recursively enumerable but not recursive.
4.Prove that Ld is not recursively enumerable.

My interviews at TIFR and IMSc have helped me a lot for my interview at IITK.Keep your cool inside the interview hall as well.Its not the End of the World.Even if the interview goes bad you have a pretty good chance because the panel evaluates on how you think.Some panels asked question regarding relative velocity as well.I am very much happy to get admission to IITK as I'm a lover of Theoretical Computer Science.