Life @ IITK Part -III

For the past 2 days, CS dept conducted test and interview for admissions for M.Tech and Ph.D for the academic year 2007-08 and I volunteered for some invigilating and evaluation work. The entire process reminded me of my test and interview couple of years ago. There were around 200 candidates who wrote the test, out of which 40 were shortlisted for interview and 20 were given the admission. The persons who went before me for the interview mostly said Algorithms or Theory of computation as their area of interest and each one of them were interviewed for at least 45+ minutes. I too had prepared algo for the interview and when I went in, the room (its actually a classroom) was filled with all profs of the dept and may be, on seeing all great CS researchers of India ready to butcher me, I said mathematics as my area of interest instinctively when asked. I distinctly remember the surprise on most profs' face and I knew that if I don't mess it up, I'll make it. They asked just three simple puzzles out of which I answered 2 and was almost through the third one. I was asked to leave soon and the whole interview lasted for a maximum of around 10-12 minutes. The third puzzle which I didn't answer completely is this.

"Given a set of n two dimensional points, find a method to draw a line such that there are exactly n/2 points on either side of the line?"

Things have changed drastically in the next couple of years. The test has become more mathematics oriented with emphasis on discrete mathematics and one ought to mention whether he is a systems guy or a theory guy and he'll be interviewed accordingly. The GATE score for direct admissions is kept as 700 this year which means that your GATE AIR should be less than 65 to secure a direct admission without going through the hassle of test and interview. Even not being in a metro and with the pollution levels in the city (but the campus is a paradise!!) its good to see people who come here leaving offers from iisc and iitb (the two institutes which are on par with iitk for CS and are in metros).