I have cleared the GATE 2020 exam with rank AIR 970. I was shortlisted for MS interview in IIT Madras CSE department. The cut off for the call is shown in below image.
Totally 200 applicants are called for MS interviews on July. I was nervous as most of the candidates have good GATE score than me. They asked for my subject preference before the interview. I selected DBMS as my choice.
On the day of the interview:
The interview is held online through google meet.
There are two parts in the interview:
Part 1:
They asked a programming question. We should code the solution in C programming language ( They did not give me a choice, otherwise I would prefer python :) ).
The question they asked is a very simple one. How to convert a Doubly linked list to a circular doubly linked list . We should write the code for doing this in C programming language. I managed to complete the code in 2 minutes .They did not ask to compile the code , so I am safe :) .
Part 2:
There are two professors from CSE department. But only one professor asked me all the questions.
1. Tell me about yourself.
2. What is DBMS ?
3. What is a transaction ?
4. What is a schedule ?
5. What are ACID properties ?
6. What is serializability ?
7. How can we guarantee a schedule to be serializable ?
8. How can you check if a schedule is serializable or not ?
9. What happens if there is failure during a transaction ?
10. What will oversee that the transactions are consistent ?
11. How can we maintain consistency in an online transaction ?
12. What is locking mechanism ?
13. How to prove a schedule is view serializable or conflict serializable ?
14. Write an SQL query for sorting in descending order of marks of students table.
15. Find the highest and second highest marks of students table using relational algebra ?
Surprisingly, these questions were easy . I answered all of them. The professor seems to be happy with my answers.
RESULT: After 2 weeks the results were announced. Out of 200 shortlisted candidates, 18 were offered admission with HTRA. I got selected with Assistantship (HTRA). I finally left all other institutes ( I wrote another post on what colleges I got offers from ) and joined my Dream college in my favourite research course(MS).
Tips:
1. Prepare for DS and Algorithms thoroughly.
2. Prepare for atleast two favourite subjects very thoroughly during your GATE preparation and after GATE exam to clear research interviews.
3. Always good to have a publication if you want to do MS in IIT.
Brother, I have one doubt. You got interviewed in DBMS but, how did you get into intelligent systems pool?
ReplyDeleteHi, The admission interview is not related to the research area you want. It is purely for admission. There is a separate process after admission to choose your guide. The guide and the student will decide which area they will work on.
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