Journey to IIT Bombay

 I am currently pursuing my M.Tech in CSE department as a RA(Research Assistant) from IIT Bombay. So, today i am going to share my interview experience and my journey to IITB.

I passed my B.Tech in 2016 from Kamla Nehru Institute of Technology, Sultanpur (Uttar Pradesh). I gave GATE 2016 and got AIR 482 with a gate score of 737/1000.

I got an interview call from IIT Bombay for RA (i.e. a 3-year Programme) on 19th April 2016 and the interview dates being 18th May 2016 and 19th May 2016. So, i was informed one month earlier about the interviews.

What is RA?

In IIT Bombay, there are two M.Tech programmes,

1. Teaching Assistant (TA)
   (2 -year Programme) (Selection Criteria : Gate Rank only ) (Cut-off : AIR 80 -90 for General)
2. Research Assistant (RA)
   (3-year Programme) (Selection Criteria: Gate Rank and Interview) (Cut-off : Interview calls till AIR 650 approx for General )

The only difference between RA and TA is that RA get to spend one extra year in this beautiful and lively campus of IITB :D . This is because TA's have working hours of 8 hours/week and RA's have working hours of 20 hours/week. So the RAs get another year to complete their courses.

So, coming back to the time when i got an interview call from IIT Bombay. Since, i was unsure about joining a 3-year programme and being busy in enjoying my last days at my college, i didn't prepare at all for the interview.

Amidst all that end sem exam pressure of B.Tech and excitement+gloominess of leaving the college, here came the day of IITB interview. I reached Mumbai on 17th May and got a hostel room there for next 3 days.

Interview Procedure:

It was a three step procedure:

1. MCQ Test (Elimination Round)
2. Programming Test (Non-Elimination Round)
3. Interviews(Final Round).

We were asked to report at 8:30 am at lecture hall on 18th May.

MCQ Test
It started at around 9:30 a.m. on a mini laptop. The test duration was of one hour . The test contained three sections. There was a sectional cut-off and an overall cut-off. The difficulty level of questions was almost equally divided among easy, moderate and difficult questions. But mostly the questions were on your basic concepts of technical subjects, programming skills and maths knowledge.

It contained a good portion of data structures and algorithms especially the complexities part. Then there were questions from operating systems, probability and permutations and combinations. Mostly questions on probability were solvable from Bayes rule.

Presentation ( not a part of Interview)

After this, we were given a 10-minutes tea and snacks break. After which, we were supposed to assemble for the presentation. So, every year IIT Bombay has certain number of RA positions (20-30 approx, total 24 positions in 2016). All these positions are scattered under different professors for their research project work.

One-by-one all the professors give a small presentation about their research project. On the basis of these presentations, you have to decide your preference.

At the end of these presentations, the list of shortlised candidates was announced. The shortlisted candidates were asked to fill the preferences.

Programming Test

This was a non-elimination round. We were given two programs to code in either c or c++.
One of them was to convert decimal number into its binary representation.
Programming questions were quite easy.

Interview

Now, according to our preferences, we were called for the interviews. I gave 4 interviews.

1. System Administrator
   
   This position required a good knowledge of linux and networking. A panel of 6 people (consisting of Professors and some senior students) was there to interview. They asked about my B.Tech Project, networking concepts and Linux. The interview was having moderate level of difficulty.
2. Machine Learning
   
   They were asking simple probability and permutations and combinations questions.
3. Application Software Cell (ASC)
   
   They were mainly focussing on Java Servlets and jsp. They asked some tricky programming questions too.
4. Computer Center (CC)
   
   A panel of 2 people was there. They were giving me quite interesting situations about linux and were asking me what will i do if i m stuck in such type of situation. Basically, the main focus was on knowledge of linux commands.
   
   So, basically they were testing you not only the knowledge of your subjects but also for your hands-on experience with real life problems like linux servers, bitcoin etc.

Finally, the whole procedure ended at 11:50 pm in the night. Though, i was extremely tired but since this is IITB, its night life has a different kind of charm. So, me and my friend decided to take a stroll around the college and we were out there exploring IITB till 2:00 am.

And then on 31st May 2016, my phone beeped. There was a message from IITBOM reading "You have been provisionally selected for M.Tech Programme in IIT Bombay." For a moment, i couldn't believe that i made it. I read it twice, thrice and finally screamed in joy ;) .

Presently, here i am sitting in one of the hostels of IIT Bombay penning down my experience and hoping this experience to help you. Good Luck!!

P.S. : Trust me, IIT Bombay is worth giving three years. *The statistics given are approximate according to year 2016. The stats may vary in further years.*