Interview Experience for M.Tech. RA A.I. in I.I.T. Hyderabad

My interview was in July, 2020. It was conducted on google meet online due to COVID-19 pandemic. There were two rounds of interview. the first round was in the morning and second round was conducted on the same day after 3:30 pm.

Round 1:

I don’t remember the faculty name but there were 2 teachers in my panel.

P1: Introduce yourself and tell the topics of your interest in basic mathematics.

I was confused with basic mathematics and told Linear Algebra. But then the clarified and asked mathematical topics from class 9th and 10th like lines, triangles, etc. Then I choose geometry.

Ques1. Draw a graph of mod(x) + mod(y) = 1

Initially I drew it wrong as a circle but later I corrected it as a square.

They asked if I was comfortable in probability, though i never revised after GATE but had no other option and said yes

Ques 2: If you are given a bag in which you have 6 white balls and 4 black balls and you draw a ball and it is known as black and you throw it away. Now tell the probability of getting a black ball.

I tried solving it using Bayes theorem initially, but prof confused me if I already know that the ball was black then why are we using conditional probability. At that moment I got confused and choose 3/9 as my answer.

Ques 3: what is uniform distribution?

I defined both continuous and discrete distributions as I could not remember uniform distribution so later prof asked me to draw the graph of uniform distribution between -a to a. I could not draw at that time.

Later result was out around 2pm and I got selected for round 2

Round 2 Panel included 3 teachers: Prof Maunendra, Prof P. K. Srijith and Prof P. RAJALAKSHMI.

I was asked about my educational background and any project or course that I have done in BTech or otherwise related to Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning.

I told about my BTech final year project as an application of NLP and they asked further details about the same.

I also mentioned doing one course on NLP so he asked me about my learning from the course and few questions related to that.

Later he gave me a question on probability which was as follows:

Ques1: If a company decides to have a lottery and distributes 50 tickets at Rs 10 each and there is a probability of winning as 0.2, also on winning the company gives Rs 40 to every winner (there can be more than one winner) then what is the total profit for the company and Is that profit fixed or can be changed?

I answered 100 and fixed( which i later guess was wrong ans this 100 would be the max probable value for profit but it can change).

Ques 2: The next question was to tell the difference between quicksort, insertion sort, selection sort and mergesort

I told that Merge sort is not in-place and uses O(N) space complexity while other algorithms change in the same data structure and has O(1) space complexity.

After 2 days we got the list of available projects and we filled our preferences. The selection was based on preference and performance in the interview.

Result: Not selected

Tip: Prepare probability and at least know few names of algorithms in ML. That will show your interest in the field. I only prepared Data structures and Algorithms and they asked only 1 question from that.

Interview Experience for M.Tech. RA C.S.E. in I.I.T. Hyderabad

My interview was in July 2020. Due to pandemic it was taken online on Microsoft Teams. It was taken by two professors in my panel say P1 and P2.

P1: Hello Shivangi. I am Prof Sathya Peri from CSE Dept. Show your ID Card.

(shown)

P1: Start with your introduction and educational background.

(told)

(As i was working for 1 year now in IT sector so he asked)

P1: Why are you interested in M. Tech. ?

(told)

P1: As we are short in time so we will ask questions now, just explain the concept and don’t write the code for it.

P2: How can we find the middle element in the linked list in O(N) and only one traversal?

As length of the linked list was not given and only one traversal was in condition so he gave me hint to solve with one slow and one fast pointer…solved at last

P1: How can we print values of a BST in decreasing order?

As Inorder traversal of a BST is ascending order so i initially put that in an array and then reversed the array…but later improved the traversal with modification as we can print like Right, Root and Left and this will give descending order.

P1: Have you heard about the famous 2 SUM problem where a sum is given and we have to find pairs in the array which on addition gives that sum?

I knew the O(N) solution of this using hashmap and told him that…he was impressed with that and later he modified the question for BST and for that the similar concept can be used and i was able to solve that also.

Because of time shortage only these questions were being asked.

Result: Selected for Round 2.

Later they gave us a google meet link where they explained about available projects in M.Tech. RA and gave us a google form to fill with our preference by next day before Round 2 interviews.

Round 2: On Microsoft Teams

Interview was taken in 2 panels and as per my preference, I had to give interview in both the panels.

Panel 1: All professors with interest in ML and AI field were there.

1. They asked for the introduction first.
2. Why M. Tech. after job?
3. Tell in brief about B. Tech. Project.
4. What languages you know and how much experience in C/C++ coding?
5. What is your research interest and then I said machine learning and NLP, so hey asked about any courses that I have done and name of classification algorithms.

Panel 2: All Professors with interest in systems were there.

1. They asked for the introduction first.
2. As per my preference in Networking project they asked me basic question from computer network like
   1. What do you remember in CN?… I stated with layers in CN.
   2. Which is your favorite layer?… I said Network layer
   3. He asked me about routing algorithms…Distance vector routing and Link state routing.
   4. Which one is better for large network and why?
   5. What is count to infinity problem?
   6. Experience with programming in college and work… I told about working on JAVA in my job…so he asked which packages do I use in java.

Later I got the call from Professor Maunendra. He said that I am being considered for M2Smart Project under him and he explained me the project.

Result: Selected for M2Smart Project