Congratulations all for getting good colleges for your Masters.
All the best to the ones who are still waiting for your turn. Make an informed decision.
You all know that the previous two semesters were online, so to the new upcoming batch….do not expect your seniors to know everything. They will tell you what they have experienced and what they have heard. We(your seniors) are learning the rules as and when they are implemented or imposed on us. Its better to check with some faculty whenever you have some doubt related to the policy being followed at your respective institutes.
The most important decision that you will face just going and starting your master’s is choosing subjects. Every institute has its own policy and set of subjects that repeat every year. Sometimes some new subjects might be added, and some old ones might be deleted.
For those joining IIT Hyderabad: Last year, it was compulsory for everyone to take at least two subjects from each bucket of Systems, Theory, and Data Science in the CSE department. There will be one subject that will be compulsory, i.e., Advance data structures and algorithms. Choose your subjects wisely. For next semester there will be some subjects that might require subjects from semester one as pre-requisite. For example, Introduction to Machine Learning will be a pre-requisite for deep learning and Natural language processing. You can always convince faculty to waive off the pre-requisite if you think you know the subject already, but this will depend only on the faculty. Therefore try to find out such combinations beforehand. This information will be available in the academic portal. Professor is the one to allow you to sit in his subject. There are no standard rules applied for every subject. Faculty have complete power to define pass and fail for their subject.
The second thing that I would like to say is…some subjects are lightweight and easy to score in, while some are difficult to score….but the level of difficulty depends on personal interest. Some seniors might say the course was challenging but blindly following the notion of difficulty of the subject from someone else’s point of view is wrong. Try to attend few lectures during the add/drop period and decide for yourself. Difficult subjects give a good learning experience. Try to form a balance between your subjects.
The third thing is choosing partners for course projects. Having a good partner makes a project easy and exciting to work on. Luckily, I got good partners for every subject that I took, but choosing someone with whom you are not comfortable talking and working might lose interest in the project. Making friends in online semester is not easy for many of us. Most of us are introverts but try to make the best out of our current situation. There is no better option right now than leaving your comfort zone and talk.
One more thing….I was in two different IITs for the previous two semesters, and I observed this one thing…no one will take the initiative to organize a video call and group call just to interact. We all tend to wait for others to go ahead and make efforts. Even when someone tries…there are only a few to join. Such calls are awkward at first, but I think they are necessary. Otherwise, the result will be that you know only 1-2 students even after spending one year. Like I know only 2-3 students studying with me. Some who went to college before the second wave are at an advantage here.
Some students have a fixed reason for MTech, i.e. getting a good placement. They start doing leetcode questions from semester one. But if you are still exploring your interest between research and placement, then I think Mtech RA and MS course is a good option for that. You get more time to explore your interest.
So if I share my story now, I was getting MTech TA at IIT Ropar and MTech RA at IIT Hyderabad. I choose Hyderabad because they have better placements than Ropar. There was no restriction on time for me…some have certain family issues and can’t wait for 3 years to start earning, but I have no such problem….so I choose Hyderabad. I joined with the interest of pursuing some research in Natural Language Processing. Then I took one subject called Information Retrieval. I loved that subject and interviewed at IIT Delhi with an interest in pursuing NLP and IR together. I took a course in Advanced Information Retrieval. I got introduced to cross-modal retrieval, which involves working with text and images. So now, I again refined my working direction. For those who feel that they don’t really know what they want to work on for their MS, I will suggest reading more and more research papers….that is the only way to find your interest. Try to implement something or run some paper implementation available on GitHub. You will undoubtedly know better and choose your interest for yourself and don’t follow someone else’s point of view blindly. Other people can only guide you but cannot take your decisions. I know I was so anxious about this when I was filling forms for MS. Choosing a topic for research is a process, and you will get better at it when you start reading research papers.
In MS, there is no compulsory course at IIT Delhi. You have to first discuss your courses with your potential guide, and then you have a choice to follow their decision or choose on your own. I made a mistake denying to choose a subject that my guide told me because I heard from seniors that the course was really difficult for them. I thought I won’t be able to score good marks in that. That’s why I feel…taking your decisions based on other’s pov is not good. Many will tell you that Machine learning courses are difficult to score in….I agree they are challenging, but If you are interested in learning that topic, definitely take the course and don’t think about grades beforehand.
Special topic courses generally involve research paper reading and presentation; also, they have a project which is no less than implementing at least one paper. Assignments are really good at top IITs, and they are generally to be done in groups of 2 or 3. Be prepared to work hard and even fail sometimes. I literally tried one assignment over a month and at last got zero results. That was heartbreak, but at least I learned something…so it is okay. Plagiarism policy is very strict for the coding assignments and even for term papers or survey papers that we write as part of the course. It’s better to learn from online sources but never copy stuff directly. TAs use software to catch similarity(MOSS). They themselves are students like us…so they know all the sources and ways to copy anyway.
My other batchmates may have different views but this is something I felt and I experienced. I thought someone might get a feeling reading this, that he/she is not alone being confused. Many people still don’t know what they want from life….and they (including me) are exploring as they go. Its okay to be confused but take your own decisions. Blame it on yourself later and not on others.
Ending on a famous quote ” सुनो सबकी करो मन की ” 🙂
Shivangi Bithel 