IIT Jodhpur : M.Tech. CSE and AI Interview Experience 2021-22

Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur (IITJ) is one of the 23 IITs located across India and one of the 8 new IITs established by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. IIT Jodhpur was founded in 2008 and started operating from IIT Kanpur as a temporary campus. Later in 2017, it was shifted to its permanent residential campus at the outskirts of Jodhpur, after a shift to the transit campus identified at MBM Engineering College, Jodhpur from 2010 to 2017.

IIT Jodhpur (Source : Google Photos)

M.Tech. at Department of CSE

Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Jodhpur offers various Post Graduate Programs in varoius Categories in 2 streams - Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Programs Offered

• M.Tech. (CSE and AI)
• M.Tech. - PhD Dual Degree (CSE and AI)
• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in CSE
• Executive M.Tech. in AI (for Working Professionals)

Modes of Admission

• Full time Regular mode with Scholarship (valid GATE Score required)
• Full time Regular mode without Scholarship (valid GATE Score required)
• Self Sponsored (No Scholarship)
• Full time Sponsored (No Scholarship)
• Part time - Online and Project Sponsored

The details of these Modes, Eligibility and Fee Structure can be found in the Official Website of IIT Jodhpur.

Application Procedure

You need to apply for Post Graduate programs through Online Application Portal of IIT Jodhpur. One thing you should not get confused with is that, if you want to apply for different categories/modes for a particular stream, you need to register seperately and apply seperately. In many institutions you can apply for many streams under single registration. But here, you need to register seperately by providing Stream, Program and Mode.

The application fee is INR 300. I was asked to provide all necessary documents of Educational qualifications, GATE score card, Photo, Signature etc.

Shortlisting

The interview is mainly conducted for students applying in all the categories except Full time Regular mode with Scholarship. I applied for M.Tech. in Self-Sponsored category. Candidates were shortlisted based on their Undergraduate Percentage. Although, while applying, I had to enter all my marks of 10th, 12th, Undergraduate and GATE score (if any), but as mentioned earlier, Candidates were shortlisted based on their UG Percentage only.

In Self-Sponsored Category, For CSE the cutoff for this year was 80% and that of AI was 75%. Total 61 students in CSE and 84 students in AI were shortlisted for interview. For the candidates who applied for both CSE and AI, there was only one interview as both these courses are offered by Department of CSE.

The Iconic Clock tower at Library building, IIT Jodhpur

Interview

Here comes the vital part - Interview. Well, there was only ONE interview. The whole interview was conducted by multiple Panels of Professors. In my panel, there were 3 Professors. Now let's get into the questions.

Firstly, I was asked to give a brief introduction about myself. I mentioned my UG College, percentage, Projects I did, Internship/training project. I always mention my Internship because I have done it from Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, which always adds an extra weight to my CV.

Listening to my Internship, one of the professors asked me that if I am comfortable in Machine Learning or Deep Learning concepts. I simply asked them that I haven't prepared those topics. Then they asked me which subjects I have prepared for the interview. I replied them with Linear Algebra, Data Structures, Algorithms.

One of them asked me to write a simple code/logic which was - Take a matrix and print all the elements present in the last column. I used Python list slicing but they asked me to do that using for loop. I did that. Then they moved to Linear Algebra.

Define Rank of a Matrix. I answered. What is the rank of  an Identity matrix? I answered them by taking a small example. Based on it, they asked me what is the rank of a 10 * 10 Identity matrix. I answered.

What other subjects you have prepared ? Theory of Computation ? I said yes. They asked me to define Regular Language. I did. Then I was asked which languages are not accepted by a Turing Machine. I answered.

The interview was around 10-15 minutes long. It came to an end by a positive sign from the side of the Professors. As I applied for both CSE and AI, they asked me if I have any preference. I said I am okay with any one of these (Because if you check the program structures of M.Tech. CSE and M.Tech. AI, the structures are almost similar, only one or two subjects are different). Still, I was really nervous till the Final results were announced.

Results

The results were published around 13 days after the Interview. I was selected for both CSE and AI, and my merit list rank was 2 in both. Just after the announcement of results on the website, I received two seperate emails containing the Offer letters of CSE and AI in them, along with necessary instructions of further process.

At last, but not the least, I got a very low GATE score which is not at all enough even for getting into a good or mediocre NIT. But I never lost hope and I kept on exploring every possible way to of Admission offered by the IITs. I applied almost for all Non-GATE categories in new IITs and got shortlisted for many of them. Some tests/interviews are over but results have not been published yet, and for some I have got a call and I am yet to appear. So, never lose hope!

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you have found some useful insights from this. If yes, don't forget to share this.