I was called for M.Sc. (Engineering) for research program at IISC. I had given my preferences as
1) Electrical communication (EC)
2) Electronic design (ED)
I was initially not going to apply for M.Sc. But i thought what the hell problem in applying, just waste of 500/-. So i applied and i think that decision was quite right and clever one.
If you want to do Ph.D. it is better to M.Sc. in IISC. It is wholly research oriented and sometime it is considered better than ME in IISC. Many people don't apply for M.Sc. IISC call almost all people applying for the interview. So even if you do not get good rank in GATE it is the best opportunity.
So my both M.Sc. interview were on 10th June.
ED was at 9 AM and EC was at 2PM.
In this blog i will talk about ED interview.
I was not so much willing to go for ED interview as initially i thought it is only in VLSI domain and i did not want VLSI, i was intersted in communication. But later i came to know ED department offers "Communication networks" besides VLSI and power electronics. So i decided to go as an experience.
I was late already half an hour, but luckily me turn was yet to come. After going there, i was given a form in which i had to tick my only preference and the work i had done before. Environment in the waiting room was quite tensed and it has to be! At the last you are competing for IISC which is the best science and technology institute in India. Many people had come to interview who had 2-3 years job experience. So i was little bit tensed thinking i had to compete with these experienced people. But i was not so much serious.
After half an hour, i was called in the interview room. There was 2 people in the panel. They were belonging to Communication networks. Both asked me to relax and not to take tension. They saw my application and became very happy as a fresher come for a research program and not taking his 6.5 lakhs job in the recession period.
They began informally, asked whether final year result out or not. For what i am applying M.Sc. or Ph.D? In the research program one can apply for direct Ph.D. also if he or she wants. i wanted to do M.Sc. only and Ph.D. abroad., so i said "fr M.Sc.". Then thay asked me "Why M. Sc. and not Ph.D?". Remember at IISC, in every research interview you will be certainly asked this question. I said,"I am not s much motivated to do Ph.D. and do not know which field should i choose for Ph.D.,so for a now M.Sc. only". One of them argued,"What do you mean by motivation?". I told i am little bit confused about my field for Ph.D.
Then real interview began. Typical question. "In which field you are interested?"
Mistakenly i said "Signal processing" which belonged to EC department. They said that ED does not mean for signal processing, go for EC which was my the first preference. I said immediately i would also love to work in communication networks.
Let me told the interview as a first person. Call interviewer "Int"
Int: OK. What courses did you take in your under graduation?
Me: Computer networks,
Int: Which books did you refer?
Me: Kurose and Ross.
Int: What is MAC layer?
(I did not study computer networks by heart in my under graduation. I did not know MAC layer which was very basic. I felt shameful.)
Me: Sorry sir, i do nor know.
Int: That is basic.
Me: Sorry.I am weak at computer networks. I know only UDP,TCP and like that. But i know about wireless networks.
Int: Ok. Have you heard of wireless lans? Have you seen them?
Me: Yes. I do know and i have seen them, they are in our hostels.
Int: Good. Now suppose there are 10 transmitters, how they will communicate with receivers?
Me: I told some "Back off phenomena" and collision avoiding related stuff.
(They looked impressed the first time. I relieved some what.)
Int: What is the probability that only transmitter no. 2 will transmit the first? Each one consist of counter up to 32.
Me: There should be minimum count on Tx.2 that the others.
Int: Right. You are on the right way. But prove it mathematically.
(Remember at IISC, you have to be very very good at Mathematics, specially Linear algebra and random processes.)
I started deriving. It took me almost 15 minutes. In between whenever i went wrong they used to give me hint. Finally i came to final equation and suddenly one of the interviewers excitedly shouted "you have derived very correctly". They were very very cool and they were very patient in that 15 minutes.
Int: You seem to be good at probability. What is CDF?
(I answered.)
Then they draw a sinusoidal CDF and asked me to comment on that.
Me: It's wrong. CDF can not be sinusoidal as CDF is nondecreasing.
Int: Why is CDF nondecreasing and not increasing?
Me: As probability may be zero.
Int: How will be the CDF of discrete random variable?
Me: Staircase function.
Int. Thank you. You can go.
Me: Thank you.
Comment: This was the best interview till then. Profs were very very cool. From questions you can see that they were stressing on the basics and mathematics. I got admit from IISC within 10 days for ED.
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