Hey everyone!!
I hope you are doing awesome.
Introducing myself a bit, I got under 100 rank in 2018 and now heading to complete my masters from IIT-M this summer. Thankfully, I’m placed in one of the big 4. I want to share some of my (personal, debatable, probably biased, unorganized) views on many not so related things mostly about IITM, which I hope can be helpful for the community.
Acads
- I chose IITM even after receiving offer from IITK and IITD because of many faculties working in ML. It turned out to be a good decision in this respect because there are indeed many faculties working in this area and lots of good courses are offered each semester. So, most importantly, do check the program structure, its flexibility, and the courses offered of each insti from their official website. P.S. IITM reduced the number of courses to be done in first year from 9 to 8 and only 2 courses will be mandatory which are ADSA and APL. I mentioned this here because the committee recently took this decision and it might not have been updated on the site.
- M.Tech. at IISC or IITs is definitely a rigorous program and you are expected to put good amount of effort. So, please come with a mindset that you will be required to STUDY.
- Being good at Math actually gives you very good advantage in most of the courses. And since CGPA matters, Math will matter too. :p
- You will do yourself a great favor by improving your programming. It is one of the biggest predictor of success at IITs. It gives you an edge not only in courses but also in getting internship or placements. I repeat, it gives you a very significant edge. Some professor here, often discuss this in the class committee meetings that many M.Tech. aren’t good at programming. So, please try to improve it even before you take the admission.
Placements
- IITM is allowing students to do summer internship and companies come in their first sem to recruit them. Many are likely to receive PPOs. (I had also received PPO but I’ve declined the offer.)
- (Warning: Lot’s of philosophy but I just wanted to write this down somewhere, feel free to ignore this point though). I encourage people for research, acads and other activities but still if the only thing you’re focused at is placement here comes an arguable piece of advice. If you’re at a place where your peers are less capable than you, you are much more likely to get good placement as it’s very relative process. I got this advice from a smart person on GO fb group back then, I researched on it and I also think that it matters. So, for example, IITK takes student with programming test, people there on average would be a better programmer. This increases the competition. And the only thing you have to judge your peer group before admission is their gate score. Many great companies visit at least all old IITs. So, I dont rank the IITs on this parameter but you can do your research and ONLY if you believe this factor might play a role, take this into account. But I think it is very less likely that anyone would like to consider this as people like to associate themselves to the best institutes that they can get but that’s okay too.
Environment
- IISC is definitely great for research but you miss out on quite a few cool things about the life at IITs. The competition with CS B.Techs., Thrilling Placement Season are just some of the many precious experiences.
- B.Tech. guys are fun and you can make friends with them. I have never ever observed any superiority complex in them. This year 2 out of 4 major international job offers were fetched by M.Techs.
- Talking about other general things, Campus is beautiful and filled with greenary, Climate here wasn’t much of an issue for me though it’s surely hot and humid, a mess which serves food without root vegetables was so relieving for me as it saved me from a lot of hustle.
Thank you. I wish you lots of happiness and success.
