I was recently interviewed for TECHBYTE, which is a magazine the Computer Science Department of BITS Pilani Goa Campus has come up with this year.
Thought I should put the contents of the interview here for those who do not happen to have access to the magazine.
First of all, many congratulations to you!
Thank you very much!
So tell us, What is your work ethic? How did you manage all the awesome stuff - Placement, IIM calls, GRE score, admits, CGPA?
Well, there was a saying in 3 Idiots that went something like this... Pursue excellence and success will automatically follow. This has always been true for me. I have always lived life one day at a time, trying to make the best use of it. No, I don't mean I always made the best use of my time, or always studied, or anything like that. I just did what I felt like doing. Some days it was chatting on DC or Google Talk, some days just bunking all classes and watching TV series the whole day, but on some days, I would actually have to get down to business and get some serious work done, be it completing assignments, or studying for the (never ending) T1s, T2s and compres.
Yeah, the transition from school/junior college to BITS was tough for me, and I'm sure it has been the same for many people. I started out with a 7.79 GPA in the first semester. Thankfully, my parents believed in me and encouraged me to do better than just blaming my computer for the poor GPA. Yeah, I had a computer with me right from my first day at BITS. You may not believe it now, but people around you, friends, parents and especially professors do matter a lot and influence you in ways you may not see immediately.
Let us start with the 'CSI IT Idol of Goa'. How did that come about and how was your experience?
Yeah, with this competition I just got lucky. In fact, I wasn't even thinking of applying to it. One of my friends, Kartik (eragon) asked if I wanted to apply just for fun. And that's why I did. Guess it turned out great at the end. To be honest, I hadn't expected winning the competition. There were numerous rounds to be cleared. The first one was the written test. That was simple enough, Rasagy, Kartik and Yogesh got through it with me. The second was the programming round at Goa University. They asked us to code for some program (to construct and search in a tree, I think) and that was fun as well. The next was a presentation round and I had been asked to present on the topic "Future and Challenges in Cloud Computing" This round had been only a few days after Test 2, so none of us who had qualified had adequate time to prepare. Thankfully, all our presentations were top-notch. The last round was interviews with a panel. I learnt a valuable lesson here. Humour always helps. A small joke goes a long way in creating a positive impression in the mind of the interviewers. It gives them something to remember you by and almost always tips the scales in your favour.
You got placed at Oracle. What preparations did you do for that?
I knew that the placement situation on campus was poor looking at the placements in the previous semester and the general state of the economy. However, we had the good fortune of being visited by some fine companies, Oracle Server Technology being one of them. I think that the matter of clearing the written test is usually a matter of luck and impromptu thinking more than preparation. The verbal section does need the study of English or the inculcation of the very important habit of reading which most of us give up right after coming to BITS due to various reasons. However, if you're preparing for the GRE then this does not pose a problem. The interviews are all about keeping cool and being honest. Tension shows easily and usually brings out the worst in a person. It helps to stay calm and answer confidently, and say that you don't know the answer to a question if you don't rather than fluking. Interviewers can catch flukes and drill you on your answer. At the end of the day, all that matters is what you learnt in your CDC semesters and a bit of luck. The best part about being placed at Oracle was that it happened the day before Waves, and for that very reason, that was the best Waves in these four years for me.
Coming to 'Belling the CAT'. How did you go about it?
To be honest, I was never serious about the CAT or pursuing an MBA course immediately after BITS. It's just that I was curious and CAT has had a reputation of being one of the tougher and more competitive examinations, so I decided to give it just like that. Trust me when I say that I hadn't put in any preparation for the CAT. I gave it in Bangalore on January 30th because I had faced technical difficulties while giving my examination at home in Mumbai. I guess the change in pattern and difficulty of the examination helped me.
How did it feel to get a call from one of the most prestigious B-schools - IIM?
It's definitely a great feeling. In fact, when I got my CAT result, I was pleasantly surprised to see 99+ percentile on my score card considering I hadn't put any effort towards preparation for the examination.
Okay so tell us, why do you think so many engineers go for an MBA nowadays? Don't you think that undermines your first degree?
I believe that pursuing any engineering course helps to build certain skills in a person, some of them being logical thinking, working under pressure, meeting deadlines etc. Even though so many students pursue engineering, some do aspire to be managers rather than pursue a technical career. Studying engineering before management allows individuals to be well versed with both the technical aspects as well as the managerial expertise. This gives engineers an edge when they are at a managerial post in a technical organisation. Hence I do not feel that an MBA undermines the importance of your first degree.
You also did very well in GRE. What preparations led to that?
I gave my GRE at the end of the summer vacations after my third year at BITS. Unfortunately, I wasn't satisfied with my preparation because I ended up not studying for most of the summer (because of the BITSian habit of procrastination) I studied vocabulary for only a fortnight before my GRE date. Thankfully, I ended up with 1400, which is a decent enough score. I regret that I could not pursue an internship during the summer as most of my batchmates did. My advice would be to try to get an intern during the summer vacations after your third year. An internship really helps while applying to universities abroad. And as one of my friends (Nilesh Kulkarni) proved, you do not need 2 months to prepare for the GRE. One can study and give it in fourteen days of tremendously hard effort and get a score greater that mine.
A call from Purdue and recently, Georgia Tech. Lots of options to weigh upon. Which do u plan to take up and what do you plan to study there?
Yes, I got an admit from Georgia Tech just a couple of days back. Other admits I received were from Purdue, University of California at Los Angeles and Ohio State University. Indeed, a good number of options to choose from. I had a very difficult time choosing between UCLA and Purdue before I got the GaTech admit, and now I'm having an even tougher time choosing from the three. Most probably, I will be attending Georgia Tech this fall. My interest has been Networking, Distributed Systems and High Performance Computing. Nettech and my research for the CSI IT Idol presentation helped me realise what my interests were. I had also chosen varied courses in my fourth year, such as Computer Graphics, Artificial Intelligence and Parallel Computing to help me decide, In the end, I decided that Parallel Computing was more interesting as compared to the other two, and this strengthened my interest,
Lots of students here will be interested in knowing how to apply to these prestigious colleges? what all do they look for in the applicants?
Students interested in pursuing a Masters or a PhD should join the BITS2MSPHD Yahoo Group at the earliest. It has a group of really helpful seniors who answer the queries students have about applying to US universities and offer any other assistance if required. One should also start going through the websites of the universities that interest them so as to gain an insight into the professors and their research areas at the university. It also helps to keep in touch with seniors studying there. As far as what a university looks for in an applicant, I think the first parameter is probably the CGPA. A higher CGPA increases the chances of an admit tremendously. Apart from that, the Statement of Purpose is also very important and must be written in a concise manner but must still clearly explain your reasons for graduate study. The SOP allows the Admissions Committee to understand you better and gain an insight into your personality. Letters of Recommendation also matter a great deal. Be sure to work on atleast one project in your field of interest with a professor at BITS. Last but not the least, internships at known research institutes such as IISc, TIFR, etc boost your chances by a fair amount.
After having done it all, do you think it's wise for students to do all 3 things - CGPA, MBA prep and GRE Prep?
At the end of the day, no matter what others say, your CGPA does count a great deal, but at the same time, it's not the only thing that counts. It is also important to enjoy your four (or five) years at BITS as you will never get this much freedom to explore yourself and your interests later in life. Yes, I think it's reasonable and quite possible to pursue all three at once if you are focussed. If you have a specific interest such as pursuing an MBA or an MS, then one must concentrate on one specific task than trying to achieve everything. I wanted to pursue graduate study, so the GRE was my first priority. I gave the CAT just to see how far I could go without any preparation, and I just happened to get lucky.
You must have worked on several computer languages. Which one do you think is the future?
All programming languages are built with a specific purpose in mind. C, C++ and Java were built for general programming, PHP for small to medium scale web development, Perl and Python for scripting. I use a specific language based on the application. For instance, string processing is very difficult in C but is extremely simple in Perl, Java and Python. Therefore, I think there is no one specific language which will be used in the future. However, the simplicity of Python has been really fascinating. I think one should definitely have a look at Python as a language for quick and pain-free development.
Which are your favorite websites for resources.
Google usually helps in most cases. Apart from that a special mention to http://www.w3schools.com/ for some amazing tutorials and http://www.cplusplus.com/ for complete reference for the C and C++ programming languages.
Tell us something about the CSD. The experience, your work, etc. (You must have been partly responsible for blocking several sites huh :P).
Working with the Centre for Software Development was an amazing experience. In fact, I spent most of my time between classes in my third year working at the CSD. I was always interested in the real world application of what I was learning at BITS. The internet has been a severe problem for a while now. We tried our level best to cooperate with the Computer Centre and propose new solutions in order to provide safe, yet fast internet access to students. I believe some of our efforts have helped to alleviate the problems to a considerable extent. We also set up a few repositories for popular distributions such as Ubuntu and openSUSE to promote the use of GNU/Linux in campus. The CSD also brought me in contact with professors such as Dr. D.M. Kulkarni and Mr. Mangesh Bedekar and it has been a pleasure working with them. As students, we understood the difficulties faced by students in accessing certain sites blocked by accident and in fact, we tried to propose ways in which only sites necessary would be censored without affecting the productivity of the internet access. Therefore, we were responsible for unblocking wrongly blocked sites rather than blocking more sites.
Now a few fun questions:
Comments on the new name of the campus?
Any change meets resistance initially, but I think changing the name of our campus has made it stand out from the other BITS campuses. It has made our campus more special and given it a new personality.
If you had 10 crores, what would you do for the campus? Let your imagination run wild for this one.
10 crores is a really large amount. I would probably use it to build a swimming pool (it's really hot in Goa during the second semester) and establish new research laboratories in our campus. And build India's fastest supercomputer in campus too.
Who on campus do you think deserves a golden mural?
Far too many people, in my opinion. The B-dome would be full of them if we made a golden mural for every person who I think deserves it. ;)
One final question, where do you see yourself 10 years from now?
As I have mentioned before, I live life a day at a time, and putting down where I see myself 10 years from now would just be limiting the endless possibilities. As it is said popularly, the sky is the limit, and I would let that be. Just drop me an email in ten years, and I'll tell you where I am :)
