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  1. Firstly they conduct an Objective type Paper containing about 20  questions (10 GATE Oriented Subjects, 5 from Probability, 5 From Machine Learning and AI).

I attempted 14 out of 20 questions and get shortlisted for further rounds.

       2. There was another written exam ( subjective type) containing 2 Questions of Probability+Algorithm . these 2 questions are too good . if you have the complete knowledge then only you can solve it.  I am able to solve only 1 of them.

 

Based on the Objective paper they shortlist the students for Interview.  

Interview could be in 2 or 3 slots by different panel .

Panel-1 Questions

a>  Your fav. Subjects?

Ans .  Computer Network, Algorithms , Network Security

b> What is DNS?  ANSWERED

c> What is DHCP and how it works?

d>Public and Private key concept?

e> Explain the methodology of RSA?

f> flaws in DHCP?

g> Symmetric and Asymmetric key ?

 

Panel-2 Questions

Not asked about fav. Subjects.

a> meaning of LR(1) and LL(1) Parsers?

b> to find 2nd largest element in unsorted array?

c> output of      unsigned int a= -7;

                         printf(a);

d> will it compile or not   int b=5;

                                       a=(b++ , ++b);

e> Define memory Hierarchy?

f> Registers in Computer System?

 

 

adikus1996 posted in Interview Experience Dec 2, 2018
4,065 views
182

I still can’t believe that I am writing a success story after reading GATE success stories of others.

Hi everyone! I am Amit Kumar. I appeared for ISRO interview on 2nd August 2018 and secured AIR-17 in the selection panel. It was like a dream come true when I logged into ISRO careers page on the day result was out.

People asked me to share my interview experience, so I was keen to write it on gateoverflow as I have gained ample of knowledge from here.

Just a little background:

I belong to Patna, Bihar. I did my B.Tech in CSE from DIT School of Engineering (now Amity), a private college in Greater Noida affiliated to DR APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University. I am 2016 batch pass out.

My only dream was (in fact is) to get a single digit rank in GATE. But in spite of my all hard wok I have only the following statistics:

GATE 2016 : AIR-1269

GATE 2017 : AIR-546

GATE 2018 : AIR-1457

I was devastated after seeing my rank in 2018 at GO site before the result was actually announced. I didn’t even bothered to check my GATE result after that. I prepared for GATE 2018 along with job at Wipro.

Now my only hope was BARC and ISRO.

I prepared for BARC and cleared its written but was not selected in the interview in spite of an interview of around 1 hours 15 minutes. Another failure for me.

Coming to ISRO now:

Written Exam:

I got 124 out of 234 marks in the written. Just got shortlisted for the interview :P . Before that I made a blunder in filling up the OMR sheet. I did not filled and bubbled the center code at all. But I had a lucky escape.

Interview Experience:

Date: 2nd August 2018.

Venue: DOS staff Housing, Antariksh Vihar, Dwarka, New Delhi.

Time: 8.00 AM.

I reached at the venue at 7.30 AM. At 8.00 AM, document verification started. I was assigned a serial no. 4 luckily. I was asked to go upstairs and wait there for my turn outside the committee room. I was restless there, only thinking that it would be my last chance for this year. Suddenly, the doorbell rang and my name was announced.

My interview started at 10.10 AM. As I entered the room there was a U-shaped big table with around 10-12 (didn’t dared to count :P) scientists (P1, P2…P10) seated, with the panel head (PH) at the center.

I greeted them with a smile at my face and little fear in my heart.

PH: (smiling) Amit Kumar right….

Me: Yes sir

PH: Have a seat.

Me: Thank you sir.

PH: (looking at my bio data) so Amit u are 2016 pass out.

Me: Yes sir.

PH: What were u doing since then?

Me: Sir, I am working as a project engineer in Wipro Technologies.

PH: What is your job there?

Me: I am working as a JAVA developer there.

PH: What project have u done in your B.Tech ?

Me: Apparel recommendation Engine sir.

PH: Can u tell your favorite subjects?

Me: (I was expecting this question after reading interview experiences and was well prepared with GATE subjects) Computer Networks, DBMS, OS, DS, C Programming.

PH: Ok Amit. thats fine. You tell one subject from advanced computer science that u have studied in 4th year of B.Tech.

Me: (Shocked….  I had read many interview experiences. But none of them talked about this. I was cursing my luck. I thought that its all over for me…… but I thought for 20-30 seconds and then replied) Data Mining and Warehousing Sir (So that i will be able to relate it with DBMS).

PH: that’s good.

Then he asked one of the panel members to continue.

P1: So Amit, u mentioned computer networking. Bandwidth is 1 Mbps. What is the value of M here?

Me: Sir its 2^20.

P1: u know IPv6 ?

explained

P1: If I use 1 million IPv6 addresses per second then how long would it take to exhaust all the addresses?

Answered

P1: Can you tell some error controlling techniques used in computer networking?

Answered

P1: Can u write the CRC-32 polynomial ?

Me: Sir i dont remember the exact polynomial.

P1: What are the requirements of a network?

Answered

P1: What are the factors that limits network capability?

Answered

There were some other questions which I don’t remember exactly.

Panel head then asked the other panel member to continue

P2: So Amit u mentioned Data Mining and warehousing. What is a data warehouse?

Answered

P2: How is it different from normal database?

Answered

P2: What is OLAP and OLTP?

Answered

P2: How these 2 differ and where are they used?

Answered

P2: What is Big Data? How is it different from normal data?

Answered

P2: What are the steps involved in Data mining?

Answered

P2: What is a data cube? How is it constructed?

Answered

P2: Give an example of data cube and how its used in data mining?

Answered

P2: Consider a layered architecture of a database. Lets say 3 tier architecture of DBMS. Where the validation testing will be done?

Answered

P2: Who will do it at all the 3 layers?

Answered

P2: What is Business logic?

Answered

He went too deep in the 3 layer architecture, validation testing and the roles of various stakeholders in the validation testing at all the 3 layers. He also gave some scenarios and asked my approach.

I am skipping that to keep the length of the post in check.

 

Then came Programming language

PH: So Amit. Which programming language are u comfortable with?

Me: C programming sir.

PH: But U work as a java developer in Wipro. Why not JAVA?

Me: Sir I have implemented most of the data structures and algorithms in C programming that’s why.

Then panel head asked other panel member to continue.

P3: Can u write a program to compute the area of any given polygon?

Me: yes sir.

He asked me to go to white board and draw a polygon and tell the approach to find its area.

I drew this:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Image result for triangle

P3: How do you find its area?

Me: half * base * height.

P3: Draw a polygon with more sides.

I drew this :                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Image result for rectangle

P3: (Smiling) How will u find its area?

Me: Length* Breadth.

P3: Draw a random and complex polygon.

I drew this:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Image result for rectangle triangle shape

P3: How will u find its area?

Me: (Smiling) Area of rectangle + Area of Triangle.

All of them started laughing.

Then one of the panel member got up and said humorously: arrey yaar kya kar rahe ho (What are u doing). He took marker from me and said: Aankh band kro or koi sa bhi polygon bana do (Close your eyes and draw the polygon).

He drew something like this:

Image result for irregular polygon

Then they asked my approach of finding its approximate area. They gave a hint: keep it simple.

I started thinking about it. Then they asked to think loud. I told them various approaches using numerical techniques. And thank god they look satisfied and said : GOOD.

Then came Data Structures:

P4: What are linear and nonlinear data structures?

Answered (the most expected question of any DS interview).

P4: Do you know Dictionary DS?

Answered and explained about it.

P4: How can we implement it?

Me: Using hash table.

P4: How can we detect a cycle in a graph?

Me: DFS and BFS

P4: How to detect it using DFS in C?

Answered

 

 

Next came Operating System

P5: What is fragmentation?

Answered

P5: What is internal and external fragmentation?

Answered

P5: How can we resolve the problem of fragmentation?

Answered.

P5: What is compaction? How will we do it?

Answered

Then the Panel head asked me to leave.

My interview lasted for around 20 minutes. It was like a rapid fire round.

Result: Success.

Prepartion Tips:

 

  • I followed NPTEL and youtube lectures.

  • However reading standard books are equally important and along with solving their exercises.

  • Above wont work alone if we don't practice from GO PDF (The Brhamashtra).

 

I Would like to wish all the best to ISRO and GATE aspirants. However I am still a GATE aspirant and working for a single digit rank.

I would like to thank GATEOVERFLOW specially Arjun Suresh sir, Bikram Ballav sir and all others who are selflessly working to guide computer science students to their dreams.

Thank you 

 

Amit.kumar posted in Interview Experience Sep 4, 2018 edited Sep 4, 2018 by Amit.kumar
4,642 views
183

My IOCL interview was scheduled on 18th June. I was not so happy with this date as it was a clash with my BARC interview. I decided to leave BARC and completely focus on IOCL. I knew that my technical is already strong so I need not worry about that. The only thing that worried me was GD/GT(one must score at least minimum in this to get selected). From past experiences shared on Quora I came to know that they are focused on current affairs, national schemes and problems. I don’t read news regularly, so all this was a big problem for me. But I still had around 10 days left with me which I thought were sufficient. First I read the list of various schemes introduced by current central govt. After this I read about various major events that took place in the previous few months. I also read about Jammu and Kashmir since I was staying there and they may ask about it. In the end I read about IOCL and a little about oil business.

I reached the interview centre IIPM Gurgaon. In the beginning we were shown presentation about IOCL, package composition etc. After this documents verification was started. This process is very time consuming in IOCL. I have attended interviews at many palces(ONGC,DRDO and ISRO) but nowhere they took as much time as in IOCL. After this I was called for interview.

Interview

I went inside the room and greeted everyone “Good morning”. But it was already past noon. The two mams sitting there started smiling and replied “ Good afternoon beta”. I then realised the blunder that I had made but instead of apologising I just smiled. They asked me to take a seat and then asked the following questions:

  • Tell us about yourself?

An expected one. I answered. Then they asked me about my college and from where I have done my training. My training was in computer networks so the next questions were asked from there

  • What is a hub, switch and Router?

I explained

  • What is OSPF?

I told its full form and its use.

  • Then they ask about its working?

I had forgotten and I mentioned the same.

  • Difference between Machine learning and NLP?

Explained

  • What is MPLS?

I said I don’t know.

  • If you are to choose between programming and networks which one would you choose?

I said programming. I had mentioned my interests as Shell programming, Machine learning.

  • What is Shell programming and what is its use?

Explained with an example. They also asked me to write the code for the example that I gave. I wrote the code on the whiteboard.

  • Will this code run on windows as well?

Explained that it’s meant for only bash shell. By default windows does not have bash shell but there are applications which can make it run.

  • What is natural join

Explained by taking an example

They asked some more questions(2–3) which I don’t remember now. The interview went for around 10 minutes.

Group Discussion

We were given Gender discrimination as the topic to discuss. This topic does not need any preparation. My first point was on Triple Talaq. And then I listened patiently for other people points. I had noted the topic on paper and read the topic again. The topic read Gender discrimination not only female gender discrimination. After this all my points were towards male gender discrimination The others mentioned female gender discrimination. My performance in GD was above my expectations.

Tips for GD:

  • At the minimum try to mention at least 5 points. These points must be at sufficient interval. It should not be like that you say 5 points in the beginning and stay mum for the rest of the process. GD is about active participation
  • Listen to other people views as well
  • If u can start or finish it is definitely a good thing but don’t be to focused on that
  • Don’t repeat other people points. Also don’t just plainly say I agree. Always try to add something.
  • For every topic there are some points which are known to all. Be fast in saying these points

Group Task

Task given: How to boost the tourism industry?

During the GD I neither started the process nor I made the final statement. So I decided to start this time. And along the way I mention some really good points to which everyone agreed. I also said the final solution in this part. GT went even more better than GD.

Result: selected.

Best of luck everyone.

Kishan Kumar posted in Interview Experience Aug 31, 2018
4,062 views
184

My IITD interview was scheduled on 24 May, 2018. I have made up my mind to not join IITB and join IITD(due to location preference). I was setting my foot inside an IIT for the first time in my life. The first shock came when I entered the college gate. I asked the guard where is **** hostel. As I was on foot he started smiling and politely replied beta wo hostel to 2 kilometer door hai. Then I remembered that this is not NIT srinagar(My B tech college). It is one of the most prestigious IITs. How naive of me to underestimate its campus area. While I was thinking all this an auto came from inside the campus. The guard stop that auto and asked him to take me to the hostel. I reached the hostel and told the receptionist that I have come for M tech interview. I was asked to pay Rs800 for two day day boarding and mess facility usage. I was then allotted a room. I met some other candidates and spent the whole day roaming here and there.

On the day of interview first there was a briefing in which Professor Sarangi gave us details about the interview process. Points from the briefing:

  • A candidate has to score at least 7 points out of 10 in the interview to be even considered for M tech programme.
  • A candidate has to score at least 9 points out of 10 in the interview to be considered for MSR programme.
  • Weightage given to GATE score would be 70 percent. 30 percent weightage would be given to interview.
  • Even if only 10 candidates qualify the interview, IITD would proceed with only those 10 candidates. No compromise on quality and no waiting list.

After this we were asked to sit inside a waiting room. My turn came in the very last. I entered the interview room to find 3 people sitting there. I greeted them and they asked me to take a seat. After this the 1st person asked the following questions:

  1. What is quicksort?
  2. Can you find the kth largest element in an array using the approach taken by quicksort?
  3. Write the code for that algorithm?
  4. A rectangular grid was drawn and I have to find the number of paths from one corner to another?
  5. Write code for printing all paths in question 4?
  6. Find the recurrence relation for the recursive solution that I wrote for Question 5?

I was able to answer all questions completely except question 3 where the professor confused me and then I got stuck.

The first professor was satisfied. After this the 2nd professor asked

  1. Give the mathematical proof for If a number is divisible by 3 then the sum of digits must me divisible by 3 ?

I said I don’t know and then he asked the 3rd professor to ask questions?

  1. He explained a processor (which can have infinite number of cores) and then told about a program where the sequential part is 20 percent and rest is parallel. He then asked to find the minimum number of cores required to achieve 10 times speed up?( A tricky one)
  2. My answer to first question made him happy. He made some changes to the above question and asked me to solve the question. I don’t remember that question now. This was the last question of the interview.

Result: selected for M Tech but joined IITB.

Kishan Kumar posted in Interview Experience Aug 31, 2018 edited Sep 2, 2018 by Kishan Kumar
3,078 views
185

My ISRO interview was scheduled on 30th July 2018. I had joined IIT Bombay just two weeks before. Studies have started(even though not in full momentum). This interview meant a lot to me. So I prepared daily for 1–2 hours for the interview. I submitted the weekly assignments on friday and left for Delhi by train on the same night.

I reached the interview centre and found out that my number was in the end of interview list. I became worried as I had my flight at 9PM. I told them about this and they told me that they were rearrange my number. My interview began at about 4:30 in the evening. I went inside the interview room and found 9 interviewers(1 in the middle, 4 on each side). They first asked me about my favourite subjects and I replied Data structures, Networks and OS. Then the following questions were asked:

  • What were the algorithms that you used in your project
  • Explain the working of Random Forest?
  • Is Database a system or Application program( No where related to my favorite subjects)

I answered the first two questions satisfactorily but for the 3rd questions I replied application program and the interviewer(let’s call him X) looked disappointed. He immediately asked the interviewer beside him(Y) to ask the next questions. Y asked 3–4 questions from OS( which I don’ remember now). I answered them. He was satisfied and then he asked X to ask the next questions.

  • What is a tree?
  • Difference between a tree and Forest?
  • If u are given 7 nodes how many trees and forest are there?
  • What is BIOS?
  • What is firmware?
  • What is VLAN?

I explained the first 4 comfortably. For firmware he accepted the definition but not satisfied much. For the last question I told him the full form. Then I said I don’t about its working but I told him whatever I can guess from its name(It was a good guess). He started laughing from my explanation. Then he again asked Y to ask questions. Y again asked some questions from operating system like

  • How deadlocks can occur
  • How can you prevent them
  • What is a semaphore and its operations
  • What is priority inversion
  • Context switching

I answered all these questions satisfactorily. Then another interview who was sitting to the left of head started asking questions

  • What is mutation testing?

didn’t know

  • What is regression testing?

Explained?

  • write code to find gcd of two numbers using Euclidean algorithm?

I had forgotten this algorithm. So I went to the whiteboard and stood there for 2 seconds and then wrote the algorithm. Then I looked towards the interviewers and they said OK

  • Now Y asked in the code that you have written which among a,b,r is the gcd?

Big problem. I knew that r is not the gcd but confused between a and b. I just stood there for 2–3 seconds and then I gave an interesting explanation. My code was

while(r!=0)
{
r=a%b
a=b
b=r
}

I told them that this loop is going to stop when r becomes equal to 0. Now suppose that the loop stops in the nth iteration then in the (n-1)th iteration the value stored in b would be the value of r(which means 0). Now since gcd of two numbers cannot be 0 therefore r and b are eliminated and hence a is the gcd.

At this point for the first time X and Y both were smiling. Now the head started asking questions from Computer architecture

  • What is programmed I/O?
  • What is interrupt I/O?
  • why interrupt I/O is better than programmed I/O?
  • what is daisy chaining?

I answered all of them. After I have gave the definition of daisy chaining they wanted me to tell more about it. I didn’t remember any. At this point X helped me and then I told them about priorities in daisy chaining. At this point again I felt positiveness in the interview room. There were two ladies sitting in among them and both were silent upto this point. The first one asked

  • what is optimum page size and how do you decide where a page size is good or bad?

Explained

  • What is the difference between for loop and while loop( I mean they were asking which is more powerful)?

I said no difference.

  • Then why these two are provided. why not only one?

I told that even though both are equally powerful sometimes the condition can be more naturally expressed by while and sometimes by for.

  • X asked me to go to the whiteboard write the program that I have already written but using for loop

I did that and all were satisfied. Now the 2nd lady asked something about memory management. I asked thrice to repeat the question or explain it more but I was unable to interpret what she was asking. In the end I gave a half hearted answer. Then she asked

  • How is multiplication done in computers?

I told her Booth Algorithm. Then I was told that the interview was over.

Some tips for ISRO interview:

  • I felt that they check the breadth of knowledge and not depth
  • You can use Hindi as well as English during the interview. I initially started in English but got stuck at some point and asked them if I could use Hindi. They said of course. Now during the later part of interview for a few questions they asked me to explain in English. I felt that they were trying to test me and then I gave the answers in English
  • Don’t worry if your interview starts badly. Mine started in a bad way but it ended on high note.
  • Even if you don’t know the exact answer to the question don’t just say I don’t know. Instead tell them you don’t know completely but you have some idea(if you really do) and then try to explain that idea. Happened to me in that VLAN question. However if you don’t have the slightest idea then just plainly say that you don’t know
  • Your presence of mind can help you a lot.

Interview result: Rank 2 in the merit list

81.38 scored out of 100.

Best of luck to future candidates.

Thank you.

Kishan Kumar posted in Interview Experience Aug 31, 2018 edited Sep 13, 2018 by Kishan Kumar
2,147 views
186

My DRDO interview was scheduled on 28th August, 2018 at Recruitment and Assessment Centre(RAC). I had to reach there before 9 AM. I had problems reaching there as address mentioned on call letter was RAC, Timarpur. Some post on google mentioned the distance between New Delhi Metro Station and Timarpur as 3KM. I came outside New Delhi Metro station only to find that Timarpur was about 10 kms away. I faced problems in finding auto for that place. I was able to reach RAC just a few minutes before the scheduled time(9AM). For future candidates the best way to reach Timarpur is Vishwavidyalaya Metro Station.

I went inside to find only two candidates and that too from some other branch. After some time we were asked to sign on attendance register and provided with a pass(mine was 007). We were asked to deposit our phones at the reception counter. From the attendance register I found that only one candidate attended the interview on 27th August. Most of the absentees were people who had been selected at IOCL and even the single attendee was IOCL selected candidate(but temp unfit). The attendance register also mentioned the room number where I was to be interviewed. There was a waiting room outside that room where we were asked to verify our documents. The process took only 5 minutes. After that I was asked to sit and wait for the call. I was called for interview after 5 minutes.

I went inside to find only 5 interviewers. I greeted them and they asked me to sit. From left to right let’s call them A,B,C,D,E. C first asked about my college. As I was replying he was looking at my certificates and then he said you have read operations research and Compiler design. I said yes and then he asked if he can ask something from Operations research. I told him that I don’t remember anything from that subject. Then he ask if he can ask from Compiler design and I had to say yes(Compiler is the subject that I never touched after appearing for GATE and hence I didn’t remember much. But I had to say yes cause I had already said no to the first subject that they asked for). Then they asked if I remember DBMS and OS. I said yes and now the first question came from E

  • What is real time system?

I told her the definition of hard real time system(a big mistake).

  • Give two examples of real time system from daily life?

Again thinking about hard real time systems. After 2–3 seconds E started telling me example of railway reservation system as an example of (soft) real time example. As I was thinking about hard real time system I wanted to interrupt her and say that I don’t agree. But she didn’t notice that and only stopped after her full explanation. However D noticed that maybe I was not in agreement and as soon as E finished D asked me “Do you agree with her ?”. I said no and D started smiling and then asked me to explain what is the reason. I gave the reason but E countered my reasons. Both E and I were correct in their places. But the problem was that I was telling about hard real time system ans E’s example was a soft real time system. After E counter reasoning I started my counter reasoning and used the term latency. E stopped me and asked

  • What is latency?

I told her the proper definition.

  • Difference between waiting time and latency?

I had told the definition of waiting time when E interrupted and provided this scenario:

  • Imagine you have gone to a restaurant and you have given your order to the waiter. What is the waiting time and latency in this case?

I said that the time interval between arrival at the restaurant and arrival of waiter is waiting time. The time interval between taking order and order arrival is the latency. E agreed with me. Now C asked

  • What is Gaussian elimination?

I felt that I know this but I was not able to recall anything. Finally I asked C to provide me a hint and he said matrix and I told him that Gaussian elimination is used to find the rank of a matrix. C didn’t agree and I was taken aback. Now he gave me a pen and asked me to write something on paper. He asked me to write an equation Ax=b. Now he asked me how to solve this. I told him that this is a system of linear equations and we can solve it using determinant of A and then also some other determinants(by replacing columns of A with b). He didn’t agree and again I was taken aback. Then he gave me the dimensions of A and asked to find the dimensions of x and b. I did and then he asked again how to solve these equations. Now I remembered another use of Gaussian elimination and I told him about Gaussian elimination and then he asked me the steps. I told him that I don’t remember clearly but told him about conversion to triangular matrices and then using the values among diagonals. E said OK. Now E asked

  • What are the significant programs that you have written till date?

I have done 5–6 projects but I told her about my B tech project. Then they asked me various things related to the project and I was able to answer satisfactorily. After all this, E asked

  • Given two programs how do you check which is better?

I told about time and space complexity. E asked to explain about how time complexity is a measure and I gave her a proper example. Now came the part which ruined my interview. C started asking questions from compiler design.

  • What is YACC?

I told the full form Yet another compiler compiler. But C started smiling and said compiler compiler does not make any sense. I knew what YACC does but was not fully confident about this. So I stayed mum. Now C asked

  • Top down vs Bottom up parsing

I told him that Bottom up parsers are more powerful than top down parsers and he looked surprised. He asked me how can you say this and I replied about LR and LL parsers. Then he asked me where did you read that Bottom up parsers are more powerful than top down parsers. I told him the name of the book Aho and Ullman. Then he asked me to prove that bottom up parsers are more powerful than top down parsers and I said I don’t know. Then he asked explaining that he was asking me bottom up vs top down parsers in general but you have given me examples of LL and LR which don’t cover all cases. C was too much enthusiastic about compiler design. If possible he would have asked me everything from compiler. I told him politely that I haven’t studied this subject in depth. Still he asked questions about syntax checking and three address code. I told him whatever I knew. Whatever interviews I have given till date this was the first time that I felt so much uncomfortable. At one point my throat went dry and I was not able to articulate my words properly. Water bottle was there on the table but since it was closer to C I preferred not to take it. When C was done with all his compiler-giri B asked me

  • Define 3NF

I gave the first definition and B looked surprised. Then I gave another definition. Finally satisfied. He then asked

  • Write a program for bubble sort in python

Did

  • Time complexity of this program

Told him

  • How are functions written in python

Told him about indentation.

  • Draw the graph of n^2, n and logn?

Did

  • Point of intersection of n and logn?

Unable to find any such point. Now A asked

  • What are OSI layers

Explained.

  • What are TCP/IP layers and difference between OSI and TCP?

Explained.

  • Different types of RAM and ROM.

I explained everything. Now D asked

  • What technology is used in hard disk?

Told him about metal oxide.

  • What technology is used in memory cards?

Told him that it is the same as EEPROM with some minor differences. But he wanted to know the basic technology. I first told IC and then transistor. Now C asked

  • What is von neumann architecture?

Explained.

  • What is von neumann bottleneck?

Explained but they were not convinced. E asked

  • Difference between error and bug?

I didn’t know.

  • What is segmentation fault?

Explained.

Some more questions were asked but I have forgotten them. In last they asked my opinion on whether I am ready to work as a Scientist. Then D told me that your college ended in June and this is August. What were you doing for the last 2 months. I told them I am doing M tech at IIT Bombay. He looked shocked(Best part of Interview). After this I was asked to leave.

I have not prepared for this interview. But didn’t expect it to be that bad. I was not able to build any sort of momentum throughout the interview. And the main problem was that they asked from compiler design(I don’t like this subject).

Kishan Kumar posted in Interview Experience Aug 31, 2018
1,035 views
187

After reading all the GATE success stories here, I can't believe I am writing this today for ISRO. TL;DR.

Hello Everyone! My name is Mamta Satywali, I am Computer Science Graduate(2016) from G. B. Pant Govt. Engineering College, New Delhi. I secured AIR-1 in ISRO Scientist-2018. It didn't come the easy way for me because in GATE-2018 I was able to secure an insignificant AIR-3381. I was depressed. Yes! Panic Attacks in the exam are real(for me, panic attack was just an excuse people use, before GATE-2018 happened to me). For a person who was getting Rank-20 in test series just 3 days prior to the GATE Exam, there is no way to not believe the same.

I left my job in Sopra Steria as Software Engineer in mid-August-2017 to pursue higher studies in old IITs only. Let me be very honest here, I didn't know about ISRO's recruitment process last year at this time, which makes it clear that my goal was always GATE only. GATE is the only key to get success in ISRO. ISRO⊂GATE, as we all know.

Preparation-

After turning all the google search links purple for GATE CSE preparation(while I was serving my notice period), I decided not to go for coaching. I had two prime reasons[this depends entirely on you]-

1. I had already paid a bond amount of Rs-1,00,000 to Sopra Steria so, it was not easy for me to spend another Rs-80,000 for coaching.

2. I had notes of AIR-101 of GATE-17. Yes! Akash Sheoran was my biggest inspiration and helping hand in this entire journey because I had never faced GATE before. His notes helped a lot to keep track of what and how topics should be studied.

What surprised me the most is that no one promotes NPTEL lectures except obviously GateOverflow. Yes, they are slow but they are the real gems, use 2X speed and you would love to learn from them. I did my "entire preparation of almost every subject" from NPTEL lectures with reference books as and when required. I had to spend some time to gather the best ones but it was worth in the end. I request each aspirant, please don't underestimate NPTEL videos if you have less time to prepare.

July-August: I was done with Engineering Maths and DLD.

September-November: With the speed of approx. three subjects per month, I completed the rest of the eight subjects. I prepared them in the same sequence as given in the official GATE Syllabus for CSE. I used to solve all GATE previous year questions as soon as I completed a particular subject.

Don't forget to revise completed subjects while you are studying a specific subject especially Engineering Maths. I did this mistake which cost me my entire December for revision only.

January- Full-length Test Series of GO, GATEBOOK, MADEEASY.

04-02-2018- Spoiled GATE Exam.

Mistakes which I did and you should not-

  1. Not revising at periodic intervals. 
  2. Didn't solve GO PDF, I used Made Easy's Previous year question book.
  3. Attempting test series late, hence less practice.

After GATE, BARC backstabbed too, but for BARC I completed GO PDF once.

April-2018: Solved GO PDF again for subjects that have good weight in ISRO like Programming & DS, Algo, CN, COA, OS, TOC and DB. Solved ISRO's previous year(2013-2017) paper with time constraints(90 mins).

22-04-2018(ISRO Written Exam)- I had a really bad throat that day. I did go out of class for 10-12 mins during examination because I was disturbing others with my cough and all. So, with my low-confidence and less time in hand, I came back and solved paper calmly whatever may be the result. No panic attack here because I thought I have already lost the battle.

22-06-2018(Written Result declared)- I secured AIR-96 in written test with 129 marks out of 234.

13-07-2018- Interview Schedule was out.

I read all interview experiences available online and penned down each and every question asked so far in all interviews in my notebook. I asked Sandeep for guidance. A Big thanks to him because his advice did wonders for me, my interview was more or less the same as he guided.

Interview Experience-

Date of interview- 30-07-2018 

Venue- DOS Staff Housing, Antariksh Vihar, DWARKA, New Delhi.

Time- 8:00 AM.

In the big reception hall, everyone was asked to sit and wait for their turn. At appx. 9:00 AM, I was asked to go upstairs for document verification. Document verification was done. I waited till 1:00 PM for my interview turn. This time they had no female priority, we were called up in the same order as given in Interview Schedule. The Interview happened on the 3rd floor.
In the interview panel, there were appx. 10 Scientists(I1, I2,...I10) and Chairman(Mr C) at the centre. I1 asked me to sit at a distant chair facing chairman. I greeted everyone and then I was asked to introduce myself.

Introduced.

Mr C- So, What was the organisation you worked for?
Me- Sopra Steria.
Mr C- What did you do there?
Me- Told my clients name and my work. They were not that much impressed.
Mr C- So, What was your major project in B Tech?
Me- Image encryption using Cryptography and Steganography.


Mr C points I1 to ask questions.
I1- What is the difference between Cryptography and Steganography?
I ended up defining them but not in bookish language.
He reiterated that I asked for the difference.
To which I answered better and Sir was convinced.
I1- So, What did you use for encrypting images?
Me- Playfair encryption.
I1- Why?
Told the reason.
I1- What kind of cryptography it is?
Me- Symmetric.
I1- Why not others?
Me- It takes more time with Asymmetric ones.
I1- Name one asymmetric?
Me- RSA.
I1- What makes RSA special?
Answered.
I2- Explain RSA on board, how it works?
Explained.
I2- How would you send a secret message to me using RSA?
Explained. They all were quite impressed.
I1- So, Which algorithm did you choose for key sharing?
Me- Diffie Hellman.
I2- What is Diffie hellman's limitation?
Answered.
I2-Do you know Elliptic curve Diffie?
Me- No.
I1- You have worked in website development. So, What is the encryption used in "s" of https?
Me- I don't know.
I1- Do you know any Hashing Algorithm?
Answered.
I1-What was the limitation of MD5?
Answered.
I3- What are your fav subjects?
Me- DS, Algo, CN, OS.

I1- Okay! Now some Rapid fire questions. What does a linker do? [They expect one-word answers here.]
Me- Answered.
I1- I have a 6 character password of alphabets in uppercase, how many brute force combinations are there?
Me- 26 to the power 6. [This should be 2 to the power 48, though.]
I1- What is the scope of a variable?
Answered.
I1- What does static or global variable do?
Answered.
I1- What is a write-back cache?
Answered.
I1- How would you define binary trees?
Me- Doubly linked list.
I1- How would you implement it, the data structures?
Me- Using Struct having union inside to avoid extra space for dummy nodes.


Mr C asked others to question-
I4- I have 220 as a number, how many bytes in binary representation do I need and how many in ASCII?
Answered.
I4- Do you know Quantum encryption?
Me- Ma'am, I have heard about this but I am unable to recollect.
I4- No worries. [She started with another question.]
Me- I am sorry to interrupt. I know what is Quantum Encryption. [Starts explaining Quantum encryption, I4  & I1 smile on my curiosity and stopped me midway saying we know that you know it.]
I5- So, when is a binary search tree used?
Answered.
I5- What Data Structure do we use in recursion?
Answered.
I7- Difference between void and null?
Answered.
I7- Difference between a full binary tree and a complete binary tree?
Answered.
I4- What formats did you use in your project?
Me- I didn't get the question, Ma'am.
I3- She is talking about the format of input data.
Me- I didn't get it, I extracted pixels from images...[Interuppted]
I3- No the formats of images like png etc.
Me- It was implemented for png and jpeg using RGBA.
I6- Which is the fastest sort?
Answered with reasoning.
I6- How many trees do you have with 3 nodes, draw on board?
Drew all 5.
I8- So what is the processor in your computer?
I said Windows. [The side effect of reading interview experiences multiple times is you think, you know what they want to ask and don't listen to the question presently asked.]
They all laughed and said Oh! you have Windows as a processor.
Me- I am sorry that's OS and processor is i5.
All- Thank you, Mamta.
As I was moving towards the door. I1 stopped me and asked for my score in the written test. I don't know why that was asked. Overall, the Interview Board was very supportive, it didn't feel like an Interview at all. Duration of the interview was 20mins.

Interview Preparation-

  1. I prepared each and everything related to my Major Project which is the only reason I chose Computer Networks as my fav subjects for this interview.
  2. I solved GO PDF for DS, Algorithms, OS which was on my fav's list.
  3. I had job experience so I also did basic level preparation of topics related to the projects I did.
  4. Most importantly, you should prepare Software Engineering. I wasn't asked questions from it but this subject if asked may lead you in the danger zone if not prepared.
  5. A day before the interview I tried to answer each question from each interview experience which I already jotted down in my notebook. Just to gain some confidence.

Last but not the least, I am still a GATE aspirant, I am yet to achieve my goal in GATE. So, please make your own strategy, this worked for me in ISRO, this might not work for you. I have just put in extra efforts for ISRO as it was my last hope of this year. I dedicate my AIR-1 entirely to GOD and my family's blessings. Special mention for Sukannya, she was the girl who believed in me even when I was unable to believe myself. Thank you so much GO for gifting me such a great friend!

I suppose, the number of times I have used the word "GO PDF" above, I don't have to describe explicitly the importance of GateOverflow! 

Thank you so much for reading! 
 

Mamta Satywali posted in Interview Experience Aug 27, 2018
18,466 views
188

Hello Everyone, I am Ashwin Kulkarni(GATE 2018 Rank 323, Score 759, Fresher) Sharing my Interview experience at IITH for TA programme. 

I would suggest every aspirant one thing, please don't stop your revision or study even after getting GATE rank (especially in the range of 200-400) because that confidence and knowledge will be helpful in the Interviews.

IITH interview has mainly 2 stages - Written and then Interview.

Date - 5th July 2018

 

Written Test - 

We have to answer 3 questions in a written format.

Question 1: Let M is n x n matrix, and k is an Integer. You have to write a program which takes input for M and k and computes Mk.

Answer: I have written a program where initially it takes input for n x n matrix, then used efficient way of computing Mk as - 1) If K is even then used (M2)k/2 else 2) if k is odd then used M.M(k-1).

But remember M is not just a number its matrix. Hence wrote a function which always does matrix multiplication.

 

Question 2: Take a function n2long - n + 7 and prove  n2long - n + 7 = O(n2logn).

Answer: Using simple notation rules of Big-Oh I just proved it where f(n) $\leq$ c.g(n) and found values of c and n

 

Question 3:  Let T is a tree and a,b are any nodes then find their least common ancestor.

Answer:  I used a way where initially by traversing and analyzing each node and its children reach up to a and b and save its parent. then check if those parents are same or not otherwise find grandparents of those nodes recursively. 

 

(This test was for an hour and they distributed all students among four panels)

 

My interview was conducted by panel 1. where 3 professors were present. 1) HOD - M. V. Panduranga Rao 2) Srijith P. K. 3) I don't remember sorry :p

you can check all faculty members here - http://cse.iith.ac.in/?q=People/Faculty

I will use notations as Interviewer 1, 2 or 3.

Interviewer 1: Hello Ashwin Tell us your Gate score and Rank.

 

Me: Good Afternoon sir, My Gate score is 759, and rank - 323.

 

Interviewer 1: Kulkarni, Means Maharashtra? Pune? Smiling :p

 

Me: Yes sir, I am from Maharashtra, Aurangabad.

 

Interviewer 1: Okk, Ajantha, Ellora caves, Daultabad fort. :p (Tried to feel me comfortable). So you have mentioned about research paper can you give an idea about it, and about your project?

 

Interviewer 2: Before that, you have given preference as ML, so can we start with Mathematics, Probability?

 

Me: Yes sure sir, (I gave an answer about a simple question on probability) and but sir I filled ML because of its interest and my work on Natural Language Processing, but don't really much confident about it.

 

Interviewer 2: Ok, let's take Linear algebra then. just give us an idea about Eigen Values and vectors (On the board)

 

Interviewer 1: First of all, define vectors, Eigen values and vectors then prove its equation.

 

Me: (Defined Eigen values and also wrote its equation on the board) then tried to explain each term of it and how we compute (lambda) 

 

Interviewer 1: (half satisfied face). Tell us about the rank of a matrix.

 

Me: Told about the rank of matrices.

 

Interviewer 2: You have worked on NLP, then which how you have used this concept tell us broadly about it and which algorithm you have used in Name entity recognition?

 

Me: (told about NLP) Sir, I have used Stanford CoreNLP libraries for the whole process. and through its jar files, I did Name Entity recognition,

 

Interviewer 2: Yes but which algorithm have you used for Name Entity recognition?

 

Me: I directly used libraries so I don't know the internal algorithm so I told them Sorry I don't remember sir.

 

Interviewer 2: Can you tell us about Dynamic Prog? and write the equation of Longest common subsequence algorithm.

 

Me: Wrote the equation and told all the terms of it. 

 

Interviewer 2: Let's take two strings XCXX, XCXY then calculate its LCS. (I calculated using Dynamic programming matrix)

After that, they impressed :)

 

Interviewer 1: Okay let's tell us your favorite subjects 

 

Me: (Alas! now they asked me :p) I said, sir, I am much confident about DS and Algorithm

 

Interviewer 1: tell the definition of graphs.

 

Me: Graph has a set of nodes and edges (I literally just told this definition without even thinking)

 

Interviewer 1: Okay then tell us the difference between graphs and trees.

 

Me: Trees has n-1 edges (I was somehow upset at this point, and thought I even don't know the basic definition) :p

(That's why I told in the starting of this post  don't stop studying after GATE result. because we remember how to solve questions different algorithm, but we forget these simple definitions and terminologies)

 

Interviewer 1: Only n-1 edges is enough? and came to the board and gave me a graph which has 4 nodes but 3 edges and which was not a tree)

 

Me: Ohhk sorry tree should be connected, it should be single connected component.

 

Interviewer 1: You are from Maharashtra, then take Aurangabad, Ellora cave, Ajantha cave and daultabad and some other places as individual nodes. and draw edges between them (He told me to draw an edge from this node to that like) then tell us how I should reach from Aurangabad to Ellora? 

 

Me: Using Shortest path Algorithm found the shortest path

 

Interviewer 1: Good, now tell us What is Data structure, is graph a pure data structure?

 
Me: (Messed up and told) data structure is a set which saves the data and we can retrieve whenever we need it. and yes in the graph we save data at each node and edges so it has to be a pure data structure 

 

Interviewer 1: are you sure? think about it.

 

Me: I am not totally sure with it sir, but i just thought this way.

 

Interviewer 2: Okay think on it after the interview 

(I thought it should be end of my interview :p)

 

Interviewer 1: now do you know hashing functions? hashing?

 

Me: Somehow I gamblled and told something about hashmaps (like key value pairs) then again thinked on it for sometime then gave an informal definition about hashing functions.

 

Interviewer 1: half satisfied. then whats the use of hashing and hash functions, and why its different form array?

 

Me: Actually using hashfunctions we can map many items at one place but in the array we can store one element at a place.

 

Interviewer 1: still place for storing elements is same then what's the advantage?

 

Me: Using hashing we can locate and retrieve the data faster than array in some cases O(1) time.

Interviewer 1 and 2 : okay. you have written on the paper, big Oh as worst case complexity but for what?

 

Me: it's complexity of an algorithm. (They said are you sure?) ohh then I said it's worst case of a function. 

 

Interviewer 1: okk, nice talking with you ashwin. We will let you know the result. 

 

Me: Okay thankyou sir.

 

(I wasn't expecting the result will be in my favour, because at the end I messed up somehow)

 

But on the same day (5th July) on the 7.58pm they sent a mail that I am provisionally selected for MTech CSE TA course at IITH.

I was very happy for cracking an interview in front of those talented young professors. 

Ashwin Kulkarni posted in Interview Experience Jul 8, 2018 edited Apr 15, 2019 by Ashwin Kulkarni
7,369 views
189

GATE 2018 Rank - 453

Category - General

year of graduation -2015

stream - CSE

Here I will be talking about my IISc CSA research interview.

My date of CSA Research interview was 21' st May, 2018.

CSA M.Tech. Research interview experience

For CSA Research , we had been given a selection form where we had to fill our choices of the research area, sub areas and background subjects which we wanted to be interviewed on. My choice-

Research area - Intelligent systems

Sub areas - Machine learningdata mining

Background subjects - ProbabilityLinear Algebra

Before the interview, we had a short half an hour written test. The paper for written test was different for every research area group - Intelligent Systems, Theoretical Computer Science and Computer systems.

The test was moderately easy with 10 questions in total. It had 2 questions from probability, 2 questions from eigen values and characteristic equation of a matrix, 1 question to sort the given functions into increasing order of time complexity, 1 question to guess the output of a c program, 1 question from computer organization cache part(to calculate the no of bits in tag field). There were 3 more questions which I don't remember. 

My advice on written test- In the question paper itself we had rough work area below each question. Try to provide the solution of your answer neatly in that area for each question as well. This might help the interviewers to know your level of understanding. Moreover it might create a good  impression of you on them.

I could answer 7/10 questions and all were correct to my knowledge. The results of the test was quickly announced within 1 hour. I was shortlisted and we were headed towards our interview rooms. My interview panel had 3 professors.

I1: Suman, you have graduated from IIEST Shibpur in 2015 and you have a cgpa of 8.02.

Me: Yes sir.

I1:  So what did you do for these 2-3 years after graduation?

Me: Sir, I was working at Lexmark International India Pvt. Ltd as a software engineer mainly on automation.(They did not seem much interested in knowing my job profile though).

I1: So Suman, you have selected Intelligent systems as your reasearch area and selected mc learning and data mining as sub area with background subjects probability theory and linear algebra?

Me: Yes sir.

I1: So what are the topics you have prepared for linear algebra?

Me: Matrices and determinants, Eigen values.

I1: Shall we start with eigen values?

Me: Yes sir.

I1: What are eigen values and eigen vectors?

Me: Answered.

I1: If you are given a matrix of order mxn, what are the number of eigen values it will have and why?

Me: (There was a trick in this question) Sir, for a matrix A to have eigen values we should have the order of A as nxn(i.e. it should be a square matrix and determinants exists only for square matrix). When we write the characteristic equation of the matrix, it comes out be a polynomial equation of degree n, and no of roots of a polynomial equation of degree n is n. The roots of this equation will be the eigen values, hence n eigen values for an nxn matrix.

I1: What do you mean by degree of a polynomial?(At this point I understood that they dig really deep to know whether we understand the basic maths concepts or not)

Me: The highest power of x in a polynomial in terms of x.

I1: Can a matrix of order 3 have 3 eigen values, two of them real and one of them complex?

Me: No sir. Because the characteristic equation of this matrix will be a polynomial of degree n and every polynomial equation has complex roots, if any in conjugate pairs. (This was a tough question for me and I gave a wrong answer).

I1: Take an example of a diagonal matrix and write it on the board.(I wrote). The matrix looked somewhat like this - 

I1: Looking at this example can you say that it is possible to have a complex eigen value and two real eigen values?

Me: (Confused) Yes sir. (Clearly it can be seen that eigen values of this matrix are 3i,1 and 2. So I said yes. But I am still confused about this.)

I1: Lets proceed further. Given a matrix relation A2=A, can u determine what will be the value of rank(A)+ rank(A-I)?

Me:(I was completely unaware of this, still I tried to deduce something.) It can be seen that A is an idempotent matrix. With the given relation we can write- 

A(A-I)=0, which means either A=0 or A=I (which is completely wrong. By now they would have seriously started doubting me.)

I1: Okay lets proceed Suman.

Me: (I somehow remembered for the previous question that if product of 2 matrices AB=0, it is not necessary that either A or B has to be a null matrix. I quickly fixed my mistake by saying it.) Sir, I made a mistake there, it is not necessary that either one of A and A-I has to be zero.

I1: Okay.

After this I was handed over to the 2nd professor who remained quiet all this while.

I2: What are the topics you have prepared in probability?

Me: Sir conditional probability, random variables.

I2: Okay so do you know what is a CDF?

Me: No Sir.

I2: (surprised) Have you never heard of it?

Me: (At that moment I could not remember anything as I was disappointed with my performance so far) No Sir. But I know what a PDF is.

I2: What is a PDF?

Me: Sir probability density function(I could have also said probability distribution function but this is what I could remember at that time. I explained what a probability density function in detail by explaining it on board with the help of graph of a random pdf. I also explained how the integration of probabilities of all the points on x axis turns out to be 1.)

I2: Okay. Can you tell what is the pdf of an exponential random variable?

Me: (My confidence went down further because I remembered the pdfs for all other random variables except this. I still said yes in the heat of the moment)Yes sir. It is

xe-λx (This is incorrect.Correct function is, f(x)=λe-λx where x >0 and f(x)=0 otherwise)

I2: Okay. Prove how the sum of probabilities for all the points for this random variable is equal to 1.

Me: I tried by integrating this function over x from x=0 to 1.(Even though my function was incorrect I tried to follow the correct method of proving it. The interviewers helped me one or two times wherever I was stuck, still my result was not coming out to be 1 because of the incorrect function I was using. I even remembered and said the correct function for exponential random variable somewhere in the between, but the interviewer said that the function does not matter, which implied that he was more interested in the approach I was following)

I1: Okay Suman, we are done with the interview

Me: Thank you Sir

Result: Selected

Suman Gupta posted in Interview Experience Jul 2, 2018 edited Feb 20, 2019 by Suman Gupta
6,118 views
190
IISc CD-CS written test and interview

 

General info: In IISc M.Tech Research interviews are conducted in a span of 5 days and two sessions every day(morning: 9 am and afternoon: 2 pm). The written test starts at the specified time in the call letter. There are no specific instructions regarding what to do on that day, you need to directly report to the department half an hour before your test time. In each session they first take a written test of about 30 minutes , its result is declared within next half an hour and then they call for an interview based on your preferences.

 

I had CSA interview on the 21st-morning session and CD-CS interview on 22nd May 2018.

 

CSA Written test : 10 Que in 30 minutes.

 

I’d chosen systems so the questions were from the programming, DSA, COA(cache), DBMS, Compiler, OS, probability, and permutation-combination etc. The questions were very basic thus one can easily clear written examination. I also heard that other two streams paper were easy.

 

-> cleared written

 

I was 4th in the queue for the interview.

In the room, there were 8-9 professors, each having their own field of interest.

In starting they read all my details from my application form and then asked questions related to programming [inplace reversal of singly LL] and to program it on the whiteboard. After that they asked some questions related to previous questions.  Then they switched to OS and asked some questions from scheduling and execution of the instruction from basic to advance level . A bit shorter but good experience.

 

----------------------------------------------------

 

CD-CS written test: 22nd May morning session

 

Only one paper for all different labs. They took our lab preference in another form before the test.

 

5 question in 30 minutes

Q1: given partial code for finding node at d distance from the root node and we have to complete the remaining. The question was easy but many of us struggled with the logic to their partial implementation.

Q2:Given two-persons A and B. A work x hours in a day. B starts at 11th day. However, B worked overtime and at the end of 30 days, both A and B get same payment. For this thing to happen what is the max value of X possible.

 

Q3: The question gave outline of the rainbow and of the 7 colors of the rainbow. Then asked that in how many ways we can fill it?

 

Q4: Given a deck of 10 cards numbered 1 to 10. Select 3 cards one by one. Find the probability that selected cards is in increasing order. Eg : {1, 5, 7} or {8, 9, 10} etc

 

Q5: with n vertices and self-loops allowed, how many undirected graphs possible?

 

After some time they declared shortlisted candidates and 7-8 students got selected for systems interview and 15-17 for Data science research from a total of 46 students.

 

->cleared written.

 

I was 3rd in the queue for the interview.

 

In the roundtable, there were three profs. for taking the interview. Like in CSA, first they go through my details from application and option form. Then they began with algorithms. First, they asked about graph coloring problem. Then they asked for diff approaches to the solution and asked me to code it on the whiteboard. They also asked me to explain the code and find it’s time complexity. Then they’d asked about overlapping range problem. So, I gave the algorithm and also implemented the code on board.

Then they switched to OS and asked about scheduling, round robin(what is going on in the background in round robin) and other things related to scheduling and virtual memory. The interview ended here.
rushitjasani posted in Interview Experience Jun 24, 2018
3,906 views
191
My interview was on Third day (13th June,2018). There are 4 panels for CSE, named panel 11 to panel 14. I was in panel 14 and serial number allotted is 7 hence my interview was completed around 11:30 AM.

 

PS : This distribution of students in 3 days and 4 panels are totally random procedure. Don’t try to relate your exam performance with your day and panel and sequence number. now let’s go to the interview room.

 

There are three interviewers. As soon as I entered Interviewer2 asked to give my file and project report to Interviewer3.

Then interviewer2 started by reading my details, like from where I am, name of the college from where i’ve completed my B.Tech, my gate rank, my college cgpa etc.

(8th sem is running when I fill the form so that cgpa is upto 7th sem) I commented that final result is there and final cgpa is also there.

Interviewer1 : what is the reason of the increment in cgpa? Project work or some subject..

Me : final sem is project or internship.

Interviewer1 : so tell me about your project.

Me : answered.

Interviewer1 and 2 asked some question regarding project and related stuff eg : write in sequence all the system calls that client and server make for TCP\IP in socket communication?

Me: wrote on the board and explained.

Interviewer1: from your project it seem you are familiar with Dbms and OS.

Me: yes sir. I’m more comfortable with OS.(as I haven’t touched DBMS from long time and have good grip on OS)

Interviewer1: gave me a case => two process and one buffer. One process writes in buffer. Another take it and sort them and write back to buffer. First process again take sorted data. give a solution using mutex.

(the accents of professor is very different. I asked 4 times that I didn’t get the question)

After trying for many times i was able to give thme partial solution.

Then he handed over to interviewer2.

 

Interviewer2: do u know what is arithmetic mean?

Me : yes

Interviewer2: what is mean of first 5 even numbers?

Me: (calculated by hands in air and gave ans : 15 (shows complete nervousness) )

Interviewr2 : do u think mean resides outside the range?(all three laughed)

Me: wrote numbers on the board and gave ans.

Interviewer2: what is median of this numbers?

Me: same as mean.

Interviewer2 : what is mode of these series?

Me : i think no mode is present here bcoz mode is the number which occurs highest number of times in sequence.

Interviewer2: correct. Tell me that mean of any arithmetic series with odd number of terms and median of that series is same?

Me: maybe yes.

Interviewer2 : always?

Me: yes. It should be.

Interviewer2 : prove it on the board.

Me : (i don’t know how to prove this silly question and totally nervous but tried step by step and done it correctly)

Interviewr2: good. Thank you. You can go now.

 

It took almost 20-25 min.

Results declared on 20th : got selected for M.tech CSE
rushitjasani posted in Interview Experience Jun 24, 2018 edited Jun 25, 2018 by rushitjasani
5,211 views
192

CAUTION:Long post

IIIT Hyderabad Interview Experience and GATE 2018 journey

PART A: GATE 2018 JOURNEY

Hello everyone, I am Hitesh Kaushik. I appeared for GATE 2018 and it was my first attempt. I ended up with a rank of 1824. I hardly managed to complete my syllabus till 15th january 2018. I was strong in theory but didn't got time to practice much questions due to time constraints. These time constraints were enforced because of various factors, lets not discuss those.

I started following Gateoverflow website and FB group seriously from july-aug 2017. I wish I could have done that when i started my preparation in jan 2017.

COACHING

I joined a nearby coaching in the month of jan 2017.When i started my preparation, i had no clue about what strategy to follow and what resources to utilize. It is after I discovered GO, I was on the right track.In my coaching, one of the faculty (lets name him A) was a legend of his subjects.His subjects were Algorithms,TOC,OS,C language,Data Structures,General Aptitude.All logical subjects were beautifully covered by him and I got a strong hold on these subjects.Actually for every concept, he had his own way of explaining it. HE HATED THE WORDS FORMULA, CRAM, etc. More than for myself, I wanted a good rank for him.I will not find such person again in my life.

Now coming to preparation again, the above mentioned subjects were my strong subjects.The weaker ones are COA,CN,Compiler(I didnt studied it at all for GATE),Maths. The subjects in which I was moderately comfortable were Databases,Digital Logic.

After joining GO and getting involved in it, I realised that I could have prepared without coaching.Gateoverflow is enough if someone is confused regarding self study. The reason I am saying GO is enough is because, first of all it is a complete collection of almost all previous year questions and their perfect answers(100% correct).The discussion on each question is what i like the most.Secondly, GO includes the references to all the standard resources for all subjects and topics. 

I still sometimes wonder about the questions on multilevel paging,heirarchical/parallel cache problems and many more.I dont know how I would have learnt these concepts without GO.These are the topics in which most of the students mug up the formulas and end up doing wrong.

I will not cover study references, test series etc. For them you can refer here:https://gateoverflow.in/blog/3813/my-success-story

Remember , consistency is the key. You have to prepare daily.Either make a time table or be disciplined enough.

PART B: IIITH

By this time , I was undergoing 6 months training in the company I got placed in.

After performing miserably in GATE, it was the time for PGEE exam.I didnt prepare anything specially for PGEE after GATE exam, took PGEE with whatever I retained after GATE preparation.

The exam was easy as compared to GATE. The important points in this exam were : no -ve marking, multiple options correct.

After 10 or 15 days, the results were published and I saw my name in the chosen ones.After the results, i had exactly 1 month to prepare for Interview..Due to ongoing job, I was not able to prepare properly for the interview but then I somehow managed to revise 3 subjects: Algorithms, TOC,databases.While discussing with my friends, many of them suggested me not to choose TOC as it is pure theoretical and research based subject and the interviewers may go to any level.But my love for TOC was at some other level.I didn't listened to their advices and went ahead with these choices.

Date: 13th June 2018

Location: IIITH

There were 4 panels(numbered 11,12,13,14) for CSE.Mine was with panel no 13. I saw my name in the list and my turn was 4th. My turn came, I went in.There were 4 panelists.The room was not properly lit.There was a blackboard for solving questions.

Me: A very Good morning to all(with a big fake smile on my face).

Panel: They just nodded.Please have a seat.

Me: Thank you sir

Panel: So whats your name?

Me: Myself Hitesh Kaushik.

Panel: Where are you travelling from?

Me: Sir, I am travelling from Chandigarh.I am excited to be here( again a big fake smile).

Panel: From where did you completed your btech from?

Me: Told college name and place.

Panel: One of them immediately googled the college name to check if it is govt or private.

Panel:Whats your GPA?

Me: 8.28 till 7th sem.

Panel: Why mtech from IIITH? Why not a job?

Me: Gave a properly prepared answer. 

Let me tell you guys, those people were expression-less all the time.I was like "are they numb?"

Panel: what are the subjects you are comfortable in?

Me: (Now i knew how to turn the table) Sir i like theoretical subjects. So i would prefer TOC,algorithms,DBMS.

One from panel : and maths?

Me: Sir i can try maths.

Panel: No just tell your strong ones.

Me:(thinking, isnt that what i told them earlier).Sir TOC,Algorithms,Databases.

Me: SIr you can ask ANYTHING from TOC.

Panel: 2 of them looked at each other.( I started sweating) .

P4 from Panel: Do you know recurrences?

Me: yes sir 

P4: take this chalk and approach the board.Write a recurrence: he dictated T(n)=T(sqrt(n))+1.What will be its answer?

Me: (thinking, are they kidding me?) Wrote O(loglogn).

Panel: How did you arrived at the answer?

Me:(thinking, how the hell can i write a direct answer.I should have solved it step by step) Sir , I will recursively solve this using substitution method and there will be O(loglogn) function calls.

Panel: Do it.

Me: Did it in fraction of seconds.

Panel: They now looked somewhat satisfied for the 1st time.

P2 from panel: can you draw dfa?

Me:(talking to myself in mind, "apna ilaka aa gaya bhidu") yes sir sure.

P2 : draw a dfa for even no.of zeroes with 0,1  as the alphabet.

Me: (now they are seriously making joke of me) drew the transition graph.

P2:OK while nodding in agreement.Draw dfa for even 0 and odd 1.

Me: (By this time I was frustrated by the level of questions) drew it again in moments.

Now P3 interrupts: draw FA for "3rd symbol from right side is 1 on alphabet 0,1".

Me:made NFA for it quickly.

P3: now draw DFA.

Me: I tried with some initial logic.But I knew this question isnt that straight and requires some more thought process.Somehow, made a partially correct DFA(I knew it was 100% wrong).

P3: He looked satisfied bcoz while drawing the dfa, I was moving my hands to show that i am thinking about the transitions and trying to apply some logic.He said it seems correct(I was happy that he didnt noticed that it was not correct).

Meanwhile P4 interrupts: But 101 is getting rejected here.(Now I was caught). I looked at the dfa and said that "yes i think i missed some cases".

P4: ok first draw dfa for "3rd symbol from left is 1".

Me: made it super quickly.

P4: explain its logic.

Me: explained

P4: then why you are facing problem in previous one?

Me: Sir the last 3 places can have 8 possible combinations and because of that the number of states will increase and the logic will change accordingly.I can definitely do it but now I think I am not able to concentrate properly on the board.

Panel: Everyone was nodding in agreement(I felt good).

P1(finally its P1): (he was going through my certificates and marksheets) thank you hitesh, you may leave. He handed my folder and I left.

After coming out, I was not at all happy with the level and number of questions they asked. I thought they will grill me in TOC and Algorithms but nothing like that happened.

I started analyzing my interview. I was sure that as the number of questions were less, hence they are not interested in me.Either they didnt liked my projects(mentioned in resume) or they were not ok with the choice of subjects.

I came home.On 20th june ,results came out. That day I was continously refreshing the portal on my phone.

Suddenly after one refresh, I saw a button named "ACCEPT SEAT".I rubbed my eyes ,again refreshed it, again saw the button.

I WAS SELECTED.

I went to my team director , told him I got selected(I already told him beforehand that if selected, I will leave the company). He said congrats.You can leave the company whenever you want. My bond letter signing was to be done after the completion of my 6 months training which will be completing in july , hence I was free to walk out.

For me , The interview was short and simple.

SPECIAL  THANKS:

  • Arjun suresh sir - for this wonderful platform and amazing answers on GO.You are a role model.
  • Bikram Ballav sir - Sir, we aspirants owe a lot to you.Keep doing this selfless job.
  • Habib mohammed khan - epitome of knowledge, thanks for your perfect answers to toughest questions.
  • Debashish Deka
  • Sachin Mittal
  • Hemant parihar
  • Praveen saini
  • Pooja palod 
  • My friend Ajinkya Jumbad (congrats again man for IITB)
  • and many more

You can always ping me here or on fb. I will be more than happy to help you.

All the best to future GATE and other exam aspirants.

 

 

 

 

 

Hitesh posted in Interview Experience Jun 23, 2018
by Hitesh
4,042 views
193
Following are the details of my interview at IIITH:

My Interview was on 11th of June 2018.I was allotted Panel 13 and my serial number was 6.
Due to my serial number I didn't have to wait for long and I was called in at 10:45 for the interview. I went in.
Interviewer1 asked for my folder and asked me where I am from and where I did my B Tech.
Q) Asked for my favourite subjects (answered OS, DS, DB)
Q) Create a tree using singly linked list (tried but failed to do so)

Interviewer2 asked from DB
Q) What is foreign key? (explained with example)
Q) Formal definition of foreign key (tried but wasn't able to give them textbook definition)
Q) Why we need normalisation and what it is (explained)
Q) Difference between 1nf and 2nf (explained)
Q) Why would you normalise if it increases fetch time(tried but wasn't sure if it was proper)
Q) What would big companies like Google Twitter use in their database (tried and he asked me if I knew NoSQL and I told them
what I knew which wasn't much)
Q) Which database you have used till now (told about Databases I have used in my projects)

Interviewer3 asked my preferred programming language,I answered Java but my project report had a Python project
so Interviewer2 mentioned it and had a little laugh with Interviewer3 saying he was going to ask something from Python.
Then I explained why we had to do that project in Python and they understood.

Interviewer3 told Interviewer2 to continue with the questions.
Q) What you did in your project (was trying to explain but they were busy with something and not quite listening.
I thought they have already rejected me so they are not listening)
Then I was told to leave. Interview lasted for 15 minutes.
I thought it was OKish and not so good.But it turned out good enough for them and I was offered admission to M Tech CSE (my first preference).

Tip: Be calm. Tell them what you know properly. Be confident.
Don't answer like a robot, be friendly while answering and keep interacting with them.
priyendu mori 1 posted in Interview Experience Jun 21, 2018
2,539 views
194

I was called in for the interview at 4:21 pm and the interview lasted till 5:22 pm. The interview panel consisted of about 5-6 members. They all sat around a roundtable. For rough work, I was given plain white rough sheets and a pencil.

First of all, they asked me some general questions like when did I arrive in Mumbai, whether I liked the city or not, etc. After that, they told me to write my favorite 5 subjects.

I wrote :

  1. Algorithms and Data Structures
  2. Theory of Computation
  3. Operating Systems
  4. C language
  5. DBMS

 

1. Algorithms

Q1: What all notations are used to find the time complexity of a program?

Q2: Explain all asymptotic notations with their graphs.

Q3: When we write f(n)=Ѳ(n) this means f(n)<= c1*n and f(n)>=c2*n , here is c1==c2?

Q4: Find time complexity :

Void fun1(int n){

int i=1;

int s=i;

while(s<n){

   ++i;

   s=s+i;

   }

  }

  Q5: Consider the C statement int a[], what can be the maximum size of the array?

 

2. Data Structures

Q1: What all data structures can be used to represent graphs? (I told adjacency list and adjacency matrix)

Q2: In which case we prefer adjacency list and in which cases adjacency matrix?

Q3: Draw a graph(any random example), make adjacency list representation of that and also indicate how to represent adjacency list in C language.

 

3. Operating Systems

Q1: An array is a contiguous allocation of memory, but in paging or other memory allocation schemes the array is stored in a discontinuous manner(supposing the size of the array is large).In that case how to retrieve array?

Q2: What is the virtual memory? What are additional things required at the hardware level to implement virtual memory?

Q3: What is re-entrant code?

Q4: Suppose there are two processes and they both have printf() statement. So, the code for the printf() function will be copied in main memory for the execution. This coping of code is done one time or each time the printf() function is being called?

 

4. Theory of Computation

Q1: What are the different types of automata?

Q2: ∑={a,b,c} L=Ending with ab or bc or ca

Identify type of language and draw a FA if possible.

Q3: ∑={0} L=Containing zeros in the multiple of 6

Identify the type of language and draw a FA if possible.

Q4: Write grammar for the unequal number of zeros and ones.

Q5:Is the grammar above, same as the grammar for { 0m1n |m!=n,n>=0,m>=0}.

 

5. C language

Q1: Difference between(in terms of memory allocation) :

 

int a;

                      

struct t{

int a;

};

 

#define a 100

 

Q2: What are macros?

Q3: Write a macro that returns 1 for an even number and 0 for an odd number.

 

6. DBMS

Q1: Draw an ER diagram for the BARC institution where we have two entities Employee and Department where an employee belongs to a single department but a department can have multiple employees. Assume attributes of your own.

Q2: Write an SQL query to retrieve Department name and number of employees in the department.

 

7. Computer Networks

Q1: Explain flow control, congestion control and contention control policies and in which layer of OSI Model they come into the picture.

 

Overall it was a nice experience. The interviewers were very helpful and supporting. Even if you go wrong they give you hints and make you reach the correct answer.

Result selected.

VS posted in Interview Experience Jun 18, 2018 edited Jul 3, 2018 by VS
by VS
4,168 views
195

I scored 806 in GATE CSE 2018 and got rank 176.
I applied to IITD(MTech and MS both), IITK(MTech), IITB(TA and RA both), IITKgp, IITM and IISC.

IITKgp, IITM and IITB(TA) offer direct admissions. I received an offer from IITKgp in the 2nd round of COAP and I chose to Retain and Wait. I did not participate in the 4th round to find out if I received an offer from IITM. No offer from IITB(TA).

I received Interview calls from IITD(both MTech and MS, cutoff 800 for both GEN source), IITK(MTech cutoff 725 GEN source), IITB(RA). I did not receive any interview calls from IISC even though the cutoff was 800 source.

IITK Onsite Experience (Admissions Website with all info)
The onsite exams for MTech consisted of-

  1. Written Test (Syllabus)
  2. Programming Test (Syllabus)

For MS, there was an additional Interview round scheduled on the next day.
There is a detailed GO post listing the questions of the Written test and the Programming test. Also a post for MS Interview experience.
I prepared the Theory Section for the written test, although it is advisable to prepare for Systems, since it has only 6 topics(compared to 11 for Theory) and they are exclusively from the GATE Syllabus. I think my written test went well, but I do not remember any of the questions. Both sections had some common questions from Algorithms, Data Structures, Logic, Math.

The Programming test was way too easy this year. I was able to finish it in half an hour, where the alloted time was two hours. But do not expect the programming test to be this easy next year. There is no fixed pattern whatsoever in case of Onsite exams. Until last year, Onsites for MTech included an Interview as well, but this time that was not the case.
Overall I was confident that my Onsite exams went well.

Results came out on 23rd May, and around 77 people were offered MTech admissions and 20 or so were offered MS admssions. For exact numbers visit the results section of the IITK PG admissions site.
I was waitlisted at the 2nd position in the General Category.

After COAP Round-2 ended on 9th June, my name was shifted from the waitlist and I was offered admission for MTech at IITK. 2 other General Category students got shifted from the waitlist alongwith 2 OBC and 2 SC/ST category students, for a total of 7. Follow this link for information on further rounds.

Edit: IITK MTech Last Waitlist Number 2018-
1. GEN- 15
2. OBC- 9
3. SC- 7

IITD Interview Experience
The interviews for MS and MTech at IITD were scheduled on 23rd and 24th May. My interview was scheduled on 23rd May. Prof. Sarangi told us that this year the intake for MS and MTech will be less than last year. Needless to say the anxiety level in the room rose manifold.
The Interview started with them (3 Professors) asking me a few things about myself. Then they moved on to the questions-

  1. Proof of Correctness of Kruskal's Algorithm
  2. Proof of "Divisibility by 3 test"
  3. They provided a Code and asked to find errors.
  4. Asked Binary Search Recursive Code, and questions on that.

Please note that while preparing for interviews at IIT's, it is important to focus on the Basics and Technical aspects rather than having an intuition of how things work. For Example, having a general idea of the algorithms will not take you very far in the interviews, What they need is Proof of Correctness, Time Complexity derivations and other relevant stuff. Focus more on knowing Why and How an Algorithm works, taking into consideration all the data structures used.

IITD released their offers for MCS(code for MTech) in the 3rd round of COAP(source at the end there is a list of offers released in each round). Around 40 people have been offered admissions in MTech at IITD, 0 MSR offers(source). I received the offer letter for MCS(MTech) at IITD after COAP 2nd round ended on 9th June.

I did not attend IITB(RA) interviews scheduled on 17th May, since I wanted to complete my Masters in 2 years.

Overall I had to choose between IITD, IITK and IITKgp for MTech Admission. These were the offers I received in the 3rd Round of COAP on 16th June-



Final Decision - IITD MTech

cmkmanwani posted in Interview Experience Jun 16, 2018 edited Jul 9, 2018 by cmkmanwani
2,960 views
196

Hi Friends,In this post i am going to share my MS Interview Experience which was held on 15th may at IITK.

First we had to clear written and programming test,held on 14th may 2018 and common for all M.tech/MS/PHD candidates.

You can find written test and programming questions in below post.

https://gateoverflow.in/blog/4508/iit-kanpur-m-tech-test-experience-14th-may-2018

Remember,they had two categories for test Theory and system and you had to choose any one of them.

I choosed System.Questions were easy.Most of them were from CO,OS,DBMS and few from algo and C.

I done very well in both written and programming test.

In the evening we got list of shortlisted candidates for MS interview.I got shortlisted for the MS interview which was scheduled on next day 8:30AM.

Those who  applied only for MTECH were free to leave ,after programming test.

I wasn't that serious about the interview,because i heard that they have very limited seats for MS.

I woke up at 8:00 AM and rushed to the interview venue without an breakfast.

There were 50-60 candidated shortlisted for sytstem category and around 20-30 for Theory category.

My turn came at around 12 AM.

There were Three professors in Room,all of them were very polite and encouraging.

Interviewer:Tell us something about yourself.

Me:I Told about my educational background and Job.

Interviewer:What kind of work you do at job? And then some other simple questions related to job.

Me:Told.

Interviewer:Have you passed all the test cases for both programming questions?

Me: said yes.They looked impressed with that.

Interviewer:What project you did in your b.tech.Do you remember that?

Me:i said yes and told them that my project was about designing a online Kmap calculator.

Interviewer:Can you please explain that on white board.

Me:i explained them about gui part on board and also the algorithm that i used in that.

(After this i explained everything on white board till interview ends.)

Interviewer:What was the motivation for this project.

Me:Told.

Interviewer:What are your favorite subjects and why?

Me:I said CO and OS and told them i was very interested in cpu design in b.tech and designed a 8-bit cpu from using only logic gates in a simulator.

(Again they were very impressed)

Interviewer:How can you implement a given FSM into the hardware?

Me:I took some time and told them by using combinational ckt.(may be sequential but i said combinational).

Interviewer:They gave me a FSM in truth table and asked me to design combinational ckt. for it?

Me:I designed it using i/p and o/p relationship.(i used these things when designing cpu).

Interviewer:Draw block diagram for the ckt.

Me:I drawn block diagram with the all input /output connections.

(Then there were some other basic questions related to modifications that we can do in that ckt.)

Interviewer:What is your favorite part in OS?

Me:I said process management.

Interviewer:How process starts?

Me:Told them that os first bring that process or part of the process in the MM.Then scheduler select process anI draw it and explain all the inputs and o/p.d assign cpu to it?

Interviewer:How cpu know address of instructions in process?

Me:In virtual memory system ,we have page table that translate LA to PA.

Interviewer:Where page table is stored?

Me:In Main Memory.

Interviewer:Can user Process access Page table entries?

Me:No,it is done in kernel mode.

Interviewer:so,every time we cpu access MM it need to switch to kernel mode to access page table?

Me:i wasn't sure but i said yes.

Then they discussed if any other professor wants to ask any question.

But all looked satisfied.And they asked me to leave.

After coming out from interview room,i was very sure that i will be get selected.

And ,in the end i got both M.tech and MS offers from IITK.

I will be going for M.tech.

Please keep in mind that in any MS interview they have following structure

1.Job experience or b.tech project

2.Favorite subjects.(Prepare these subjects thoroughly from basics)

And also see the area where you are applying and choose subjects according to that.

I choosed os and co because i had selected system and i also got benefit of this.

 

jatin saini posted in Interview Experience Jun 15, 2018
5,944 views
197

This Year IIT Delhi kept the same cutoff for MTech and M S students, and the Interview was conducted in two days i.e on 23rd May and 24th May,Around 200 students were called according to the list given by them,the candidates with even registration number were called on 24th May and mine one was even too, 

Pre-Interview Introduction to MCS and MSR course:

It was given by Smruti Ranjan Sarangi sir, he told us how the procedure of interview will be going, he mentioned that

"70% of the total marks assigned will be on the basis of GATE Score and remaining 30% will be on the basis of how well you perform in the interviews,since majority of you have almost same score, so interview will be a deciding factor for your admission"

"Interview scores will be given internally on the scale of 10 and to eligible you must have at least a score of 7"

"MSR will be our premier course so whoever have appeared must have the score of 9 to get eligible for MSR"

"Interview can long from 2 minutes to 20 minutes depending on the response of the student" 

"Interview will be conducted on different panels according to the alphabetic order"

Interview

My panel was examined by Prof. Rijurekha Sen mam and Prof. Parag Singla Sir.

Our conversation went on like this

Prof.1(Looking to the records of mine):So,You are in Final year right?

Me:Yes mam.

Prof.1:What is your favourite subject?

Me:Networking and Algorithms.

Prof.1: Okay, can you tell me what all problems can be faced in a LAN in data link layer?

Me:Collision and channel access related problems might be there.

Prof.1: Can you tell me how collison can be detected and solved?

Me: Explained about the increase in frequency and jamming signal.

Prof.1:Okay what is this technique called?

Me:CSMA/CD.

Prof.1:Do wireless LANs use the same?

Me: No,mam I think it uses CSMA/CA.

Prof.1:Do you want to answer some questions on probablity?

Me(shaking head to say no as I was not confident about that subject:p):No mam.

Prof.1 saying to prof. 2:"Algorithms aur networking bola tha isne to topic of interest me" (means he said he is interested in Algorithms and networking)

(Now Prof. 2 started asking the questions)

Prof.2: can you make a program to find weather the number is prime?

Me(given whiteboard and made the program like this):

boolen isprime(int n){

for(int i=2;i*i<=n;i++)

if(n%i==0)

return false;

return true;

}

 

Prof.2: why did you wrote i*i?

Me:sir,since we only need to check till square root of n.

Prof.2:Can you prove it?

.....................................................Thinking for a while but couldn't answer it....................................................

Prof.2(Coming near to the blackboard and drawing crossroad)

:

he gave me the problem like this

  • you are given a task to find treasure that is situated in any one of the direction, and you need to devise an efficient algorithm.
  • you are currently at the centre of the crossroad.
  • all the paths are infinitely long,so you need to take that in mind, travelling in any one one direction won't work.

Me(Thinking for a while and thinking deep inside that what kind of problem is this suddenly an idea came into my mind): Sir can we perform an operation in Breadth first manner?

Prof.2:can you explain?

Me(drawing lines on the diagram like this)

:

if we divide the road into uniform length partitions and traverse a unit distance at the first time,in each direct and 2*unit distance at the second time and so on.....

Prof:Okay, can you find its complexity, if the treasure is at k distance from centre?

Me(On blackboard): 

8*(1+2+3+.......+k)=4k(k+1)=O(k2)

Prof.2: Can you make it more efficient?

Me:(NO CLUE TILL 2-3 minutes then he gave me some hint that to increase it exponentially) and I got the catch,and now it was like

8(1+2+4+8+16+32+.....+2logk)=16*2logk =O(k)

Prof.2 :yes, this how it is solved.

I was happy that interview was good enough

Things which I noted during IITD interview:

  • you should be good enough with algorithms, to deal with problems they give.
  • even if you say CSO or Networking is your favourite subject they will ask question from algorithms so, better say algorithm from your side too.
  • they emphsize on formal mathematics proofs,so be prepared for that.
  • profs. are friendly enough so no need to get tensed.

Verdict:-Selected :) 

reno posted in Interview Experience Jun 13, 2018 edited Jun 26, 2018 by reno
by reno
2,942 views
198
I had been Selected based on Gate Score and My Interview was scheduled on 4th June at IIST Trivandrum. After Document Verification Candidate were being sent to Interview Panel.

There were 5 professors in the Interview Panel. As the course offered by IIST is Machine Learning and Computing So they will ask Question From Mathematics and Machine Learning(Basics only).After Entering into Interview room

1st Question:Introduce Yourself

Me: Gave small Introduction

2nd Question:Tell me the subject you are comfortable with

Me: As i knew they are asking question fom Mathematics,So I told Calculus,Linear Algebra and Probability,then the expert from calculus asked some question

3rd Question:they asked how to find maxima and minima of a function

Me: i told them the approach then they sent me to the board and gave one Function F(x)=(x-1)(x-2)(x-3)(x-4) and aksed what are the roots and tell me global Maxima if the Range of function is [-1000,1000]

i simply drew the graph of function and told the roots are 1,2,3,4  and after 4 graph willgo on increasing so maxima will be (1000-1)(1000-2)(1000-3)(1000-4).they were impressed with graphical solution

then they asked as this is 4th degree equation and during calculation of maxima nad minima we have to find F'(x) that will be 3rd degree,so tell me efficient approach to find roots

i told them how to find roots of 3rd degree.

then 2nd professor from ML started question

4th question: what do you know about machine Learning and what are the applications and tell me some algorithm

Me:Frankly speeking ,I dont know much about ML But i know ML is most exciting technology nowadays and Iam really excited to learn , I know only overview such as Applications of ML and explained Fuzzy Logic

then 3rd professor from Probability

5th question:What is random variable

Me: simply told and then explained poisson and binomial distribution

6th question:they gave some probability question and asked to find the probability

Me:took some time but somehow answered.

7th question:what is the probability of getting a success(head) at 5th toss.if no of trial is 5

Me:i told the probability but, they were interested to know that whether it will follow independent or mutully exclusive logic,Initially i didn't understand the question ,so they gave some hint,after some time i told it will follow Independent logic

Finally one peace of advice prepare probability

On 8th june Got the Offer
Suraj Kumar 1 posted in Interview Experience Jun 10, 2018
3,078 views
199

I had my IISc Mtech(Research) interview from the CSA department scheduled on 25th may 2:00 PM.

The process consisted of written test followed by the interview on the chosen background subjects based on research area chosen.

We were given 30 mins for 10 questions,we had to attempt all of them. Questions were

(1)A simple C code. We need to tell the output.

(2)Given a grammar S->aSa | bSb | a|b. What language does it generate?

(3)Given a B+tree in which the maximum number of keys in any non-root node were told. We were asked to tell the minimum number of keys in any non-root node.

(4)Question-based on Unix Inode, finding maximum size of the file in file system.

(5)Cache size, block size, associativity and physical address length is given, find the length of tag bits.

(6)Some functions were given, arrange them in increasing order of asymptotic complexity.

(7)Given a max-heap representation as an array A, what would be worst case time complexity to search for an element?

(8)Two dices are rolled. Let Y be the maximum of two outcomes. The expectation of this random variable Y.

(9)Given a non-singular matrix A, with eigenvalues $\lambda _{1},\lambda _{2}....\lambda _{n}$.Given a non-singular matrix R, find the eigenvalues of RA2R-1.

Within 10 minutes results of the interview were declared and I was shortlisted for it.

Chosen areas:

Main Research Area-Computer Systems

Sub-Area: Database and Computer systems Security

Background subjects: Data Structures and Algorithms, Engineering Maths.

Interview: The interview panel consisted of three professors and they had my application form beforehand.

I will refer I for the Interviewers and M for myself.

Questions asked were

I: Given a binary tree and a traversal order can we construct it uniquely.?

M: To this, I replied that we need inorder and anyone from the postorder, preorder or levelorder.

I: why do you specifically need Inorder.Why not any other order?

M: I told them that Inorder provides us with the details of the elements present in left and right subtrees of an element.

Now came another question

I: Given an arithmetic expression, can you draw an expression tree?

M: Yes sir.(now got tricked!!)

I: But now only you said you need two orders for constructing a binary tree, now in this case how can you construct the expression tree.

M: Sir, because in the expression we know the associativity and precedence of various operators using which we can draw expression tree.

But the interviewers didn't seem to be impressed by this answer and they were expecting something else.

I: Okay Ayush. Let's take a linked-list and an integer n. Design a function which will delete the nth node from the last.

M: I thought and told them first we can count the number of nodes in the list and accordingly take pointers and make the delete operation.

I: You are not allowed to count the number of nodes in the list!!.

M: I got stuck now!. I thought a lot but was unable to answer.

I: You can take multiple pointers if you want.

M: Since I was completely blank at that moment, I didn't get to know how to use the above hint that was given.(Yes, Multiple pointers!!).

I: Okay Ayush! We'll ask you some other question.

I felt bad as it was the initial phase of the interview in which I failed to make an impact. Still, I waited for some good things to come.

I : You have a graph with n labelled vertices. How many undirected graphs on these labelled n vertices?

M: Answered as $2^{\frac{n(n-1)}{2}}$. Explained to them how this expression came. Whatever I was thinking, I was telling them. They guided me accordingly.

I:Okay. What this term $\frac{n(n-1)}{2}$ is called?

M: I told them this is half of the degree sum of the vertices or the maximum number of edges in a graph or result of handshaking lemma.

I: No no!!, it's something else!!.

M: I was puzzled. What more it could be now I was thinking inside.

I:aaahh it's $\binom{n}{2}$.!!

M: Yes sir. That evaluates to exactly this :D

I: And, what would be the result in case of directed graphs?

M:I replied it's $2^{n(n-1)}$

I: It's correct!. Do you know graph isomorphism?

M: I forgot that the adjacency matrix for an undirected isomorphic graph are similar and not equal always, but said they were equal.

I: No, they are not same. They could be permuted in some another way.(He gave a hint about the existence of a permutation matrix which can transform one matrix to another in case of isomorphic graphs).So, give me a mathematical expression for graph isomorphism?

M: I was again puzzled(Mathematical expression??), so I told them the definition of isomorphic graphs.

I: Okay, given a cycle on n vertices which is isomorphic to its complement. Can you find n?

M: I started to solve it, and was stopped in between as they said: "Yes, you can find n okay stop!".

I: Ayush, you have chosen your sub-area of research as computer systems security.

M: Yes sir.

I: So, what all do you know in that?

M: Sir, I know all the protocols that we have studied in network security.

I: Please name a few of them.

M:Diffie hellman, RSA, Digital Signature, DES.

I: Okay, what is the pitfall in Diffie Hellman?

M: I explained him the scenario of Man in the middle attack without actually naming this phenomenon.

I: What this phenomenon is called?

M: This is known as the man-in-the middle attack.

I: Yes, and what do you do to prevent this?

M: We can authenticate users before going for the process of setting up key.

I: How do you authenticate users?

M: We can use digital signatures.

I:Yes, we can use it.

Okay Ayush, let me give you a scenario based question.

(I was like OMG. What scenario it may be. Okay let's deal with it)

M: Yes sir Please say.

I: Given a Web-application that runs on a server, this Web-Application uses a database, makes some modification to it and at the end of the day saves the database to a hard disk present on some remote location. Now, an intruder comes up and corrupts this database. Next day when the Web-Application will start, how will it come to know that the database is corrupted?

M: I thought a bit and answered that we could save the last modified attribute of the database, store it in some encrypted format at both places the web-server and the hard-disk and when the next day Web-application starts up it can check whether this last update is same or not.

I: But the intruder can modify the database and can still keep the last modified attribute to be same.

They were expecting some different answer.

I: There are many approaches to this, tell anyone.(He gave me a further hint).

M: I thought of the checksum approach but then was sceptical about it because the database will be large. But, I told him this approach.

I: Yes this is a nice way. Good!!.

I: Okay Ayush, we are done.
 

Overall, I liked the experience at IISc.The professors were extremely helpful and were not in any hush-hush to get an answer. Enough time was given to think, correct and re-answer on each query. And the best part is they try to make you comfortable as in when you enter the interview room.

Final Status: Not Selected.

Ayush Upadhyaya posted in Interview Experience May 29, 2018 edited May 31, 2018 by Ayush Upadhyaya
5,054 views
200

Interview for the post of Scientist/Engineer at ISRO held on 23/02/2018

Reporting time was 8 am. Every interview took approximately 15-20 minutes. After hearing questions from everyone, I felt subjects like Computer Graphics, Software Engineering(specifically testing part), Networks, Information Security, Programming languages were really focused on in the interview. My interview began at around 4.30 pm. There were around 10-15 interviewers.

Q1. Introduce yourself.

Q2. Tell us your favorite subjects (told them DS and algorithms)

Q3. So, are you comfortable with networks? (yes sir)

Q4. Explain the OSI model. What is the function of session layer? What is port forwarding and port mirroring?

Q5. Do you know any protocol which is used at the network layer?(told them Internet Protocol(IP))

Q6. So can you tell us the structure of IPv4?

Q7. So, you told it has TTL. Explain in detail the working of TTL.

Q8. Which programming language do you use? (told them C)

Q9. What do you mean by abstract data type? What is an exception?

Q10. Tell us the difference between Windows based OS vs Linux based OS.

Q11. So, are you comfortable with Information Security ?(Yes Sir)

Q12. Tell us what is phishing? How can you detect/prevent it?

Q13. What do you mean by authentication? Difference between authentication and   authorization. If I am entering a password, what will it be authentication or authorization?

Q14. What is SQL injection attack?

Q15. Explain two factor authentication.

I got Selected.

Niharika Ahuja posted in Interview Experience May 27, 2018
4,401 views