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Arun
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So here we are in NIT Warangal - supposed to be among the elite in India, second only to the top IITs. Yet we see companies coming for placements and interns and returning, recruiting one or two on their way. Some even return without recruiting anyone. So who is to blame – the college or the students!?
Why Are We Not Taught That is Required!?
Nowadays, companies recruit only if a candidate is worthy enough – they don’t come with the aim of recruiting ‘n’ candidates to any campus. So the students have no choice but to strive for excellence in all the spheres. Yet, even the best falter at the crucial steps more than once….
As far as computer science is concerned, they concentrate mainly on data structures and algorithm analysis. Even then, we are taught only data structures, leaving the algorithm part to get lost in the mist of ignorance. If anyone feels I’m exaggerating, I’ll say this – I attended three rounds of interview when Amazon.com came for interns and for every algorithm/pseudo code/working code they asked, they wanted me to analyze the time complexity (and also the space complexity in certain cases). They expect the most effective code even if it takes a little more time to develop – something our curriculum never stresses on…
Obsolete Syllabus!?
The course syllabus seems to be hardly in sync with the current industry expectations and standards. The first year syllabus can be justified since it is the same for all the branches. But I wonder why we studied network analysis and maths in second year – I don’t say they are completely irrelevant, but do we really need to sacrifice subjects like object oriented programming for them!? Everyone expects a 3rd yr CSE student to know about virtual functions, placement new, multiple inheritance, etc. But we were hardly taught these subjects, as we were “busy deriving Norton’s Law or finding Laplace transforms”. I wonder why these subjects are never mentioned in the placement and intern interviews if our college considers them so important!?
And now, in 3rd year, we are studying “Theory of Computation” – which even the teacher feels bears very little relevance in the present scenario. And “Microprocessors” which seems to be a repeat of last semester’s “Systems Programming”. Since we spend our time like this beating around the bush, it’s no wonder many are unable to comply with the required standards.
Can We Really Study All This On Our Own!?
The other side of the coin – everything can’t be taught in the college, students have to study on their own. But do they really expect to study the core subjects on our own, while on the other hand, irrelevant subjects are taught in class. I accept a teacher can’t teach everything - it’s our responsibility too. We can study on our own after we are taught 40%, but you can’t expect us to do the same after being taught only 10%. Even now, if it’s possible, I would like some faculty of the CSE dept. to spare some time and teach the basics of algorithm analysis and object oriented programming to the 3rd years. Or we might be in for some more ducks when companies come for interns.
It’s too late for anything to be done for us, but hopefully the authorities would accept the change in the corporate world and the change would be reflected in the curriculum, so that at least our juniors would be able to match the expectations….
Why Are We Not Taught That is Required!?
Nowadays, companies recruit only if a candidate is worthy enough – they don’t come with the aim of recruiting ‘n’ candidates to any campus. So the students have no choice but to strive for excellence in all the spheres. Yet, even the best falter at the crucial steps more than once….
As far as computer science is concerned, they concentrate mainly on data structures and algorithm analysis. Even then, we are taught only data structures, leaving the algorithm part to get lost in the mist of ignorance. If anyone feels I’m exaggerating, I’ll say this – I attended three rounds of interview when Amazon.com came for interns and for every algorithm/pseudo code/working code they asked, they wanted me to analyze the time complexity (and also the space complexity in certain cases). They expect the most effective code even if it takes a little more time to develop – something our curriculum never stresses on…
Obsolete Syllabus!?
The course syllabus seems to be hardly in sync with the current industry expectations and standards. The first year syllabus can be justified since it is the same for all the branches. But I wonder why we studied network analysis and maths in second year – I don’t say they are completely irrelevant, but do we really need to sacrifice subjects like object oriented programming for them!? Everyone expects a 3rd yr CSE student to know about virtual functions, placement new, multiple inheritance, etc. But we were hardly taught these subjects, as we were “busy deriving Norton’s Law or finding Laplace transforms”. I wonder why these subjects are never mentioned in the placement and intern interviews if our college considers them so important!?
And now, in 3rd year, we are studying “Theory of Computation” – which even the teacher feels bears very little relevance in the present scenario. And “Microprocessors” which seems to be a repeat of last semester’s “Systems Programming”. Since we spend our time like this beating around the bush, it’s no wonder many are unable to comply with the required standards.
Can We Really Study All This On Our Own!?
The other side of the coin – everything can’t be taught in the college, students have to study on their own. But do they really expect to study the core subjects on our own, while on the other hand, irrelevant subjects are taught in class. I accept a teacher can’t teach everything - it’s our responsibility too. We can study on our own after we are taught 40%, but you can’t expect us to do the same after being taught only 10%. Even now, if it’s possible, I would like some faculty of the CSE dept. to spare some time and teach the basics of algorithm analysis and object oriented programming to the 3rd years. Or we might be in for some more ducks when companies come for interns.
It’s too late for anything to be done for us, but hopefully the authorities would accept the change in the corporate world and the change would be reflected in the curriculum, so that at least our juniors would be able to match the expectations….
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College (NITW)
Posted by
Arun
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One good thing about NIT Warangal is the number of companies that come for placements and interns (this is, of course, without considering how many they recruit). So we had Goldman Sachs and then Amazon coming for interns. I, incidentally, made it to the interviews of both – and flunked out in both. And here I’ll write about the Amazonian debacle (should I call it so) as it is still fresh in my memory. The GS one would be followed up later…
The Aptitude Test – Stepping Stone to Failure!?
So on the 20th,we had a hard-core technical aptitude – full of stacks and queues and trees and algorithms. A joy for the technically sound, but a disaster bell for the others. We had two rounds – one objective and one subjective. And I got 17 in both (I got to know my scores later when I saw my answer script during the interview). So a total of 34 on 90, and still I qualified – guess that says a lot about the level of questions and the level of correction. And we got the results at 2:15 AM… Don’t think anyone expected that, or anyone was awake to expect that! It was just by chance (or maybe it was fate) that I woke up at 2:30 and saw the sms.
So there it was – interview the next day, ie. 21st at 10:15 AM. Four were shortlisted – and we hoped at least one would make it. Not to be… The count remained a big ZERO. Anyways, I’ll tell about my interview – maybe it’ll help others.
1st Round!
My first round started at 2 PM (true, I was sitting-doing-nothing for 4 hours)– and by that time, others had already got their results of their respective first rounds. So these were the questions asked to me :
• There are 25 horses. Maximum 5 horses can run in a race and you’ll know the top 3 of each race. How many races (min.) will you need to find the overall top 3?
• There is a doubly linked list in which the back-links are ambiguous, ie. they need not point to the previous node – they can point to any node occurring before the current one. Write a function to make a copy of it. (Mind, they want the moist efficient one)
• What are the four basic concepts of OOPS?
Guess that was all – rest was just beating around the bush.
2nd Round!
Perhaps the best of the 3 rounds I faced. Duration 3PM - 4PM.
• Can a knight move from one corner of the chessboard to the opposite while visiting each square once and only once?
• What are the different sorting mechanisms?
• What is bucket sort?
• Which is the most efficient sorting mechanism?
• Tell me the algorithm of quicksort.
• Write a fully functional code for mergesort.
• Minimum spanning tree algorithms – Kruskal and Prim's.
• A singly linked list branches at a certain node into two. Identify the branching node in least possible time.
• There is an array of size ‘n’ having integers 1 to n. But a certain integer ‘l’ is missing and another integer ‘k’ is repeated twice. Find ‘l’ and ‘k’.
He literally ground me to pulp – but I managed to scrape through somehow.
3rd round!
The worst round – and perhaps which brought about my downfall. I was the only one left to attend this one – everyone else had been eliminated. I was hoping it might be non-technical. But alas! How wrong I was…
• Can an object of a base class be initialized using a function of a derived class?
• In Amazon, we maintain records of the pages viewed by customers on each day in a file. I’ll give you the files for two days. I want you to create a list of those customers who visited on both the days and at least two distinct pages. Which data structure would you use?
That was all – quite a short one. But I had to wait for two hours for this one.
I guess I learnt quite a bit – but it was disappointing falling down at the last hurdle. But there’s always the next chance!
The Aptitude Test – Stepping Stone to Failure!?
So on the 20th,we had a hard-core technical aptitude – full of stacks and queues and trees and algorithms. A joy for the technically sound, but a disaster bell for the others. We had two rounds – one objective and one subjective. And I got 17 in both (I got to know my scores later when I saw my answer script during the interview). So a total of 34 on 90, and still I qualified – guess that says a lot about the level of questions and the level of correction. And we got the results at 2:15 AM… Don’t think anyone expected that, or anyone was awake to expect that! It was just by chance (or maybe it was fate) that I woke up at 2:30 and saw the sms.
So there it was – interview the next day, ie. 21st at 10:15 AM. Four were shortlisted – and we hoped at least one would make it. Not to be… The count remained a big ZERO. Anyways, I’ll tell about my interview – maybe it’ll help others.
1st Round!
My first round started at 2 PM (true, I was sitting-doing-nothing for 4 hours)– and by that time, others had already got their results of their respective first rounds. So these were the questions asked to me :
• There are 25 horses. Maximum 5 horses can run in a race and you’ll know the top 3 of each race. How many races (min.) will you need to find the overall top 3?
• There is a doubly linked list in which the back-links are ambiguous, ie. they need not point to the previous node – they can point to any node occurring before the current one. Write a function to make a copy of it. (Mind, they want the moist efficient one)
• What are the four basic concepts of OOPS?
Guess that was all – rest was just beating around the bush.
2nd Round!
Perhaps the best of the 3 rounds I faced. Duration 3PM - 4PM.
• Can a knight move from one corner of the chessboard to the opposite while visiting each square once and only once?
• What are the different sorting mechanisms?
• What is bucket sort?
• Which is the most efficient sorting mechanism?
• Tell me the algorithm of quicksort.
• Write a fully functional code for mergesort.
• Minimum spanning tree algorithms – Kruskal and Prim's.
• A singly linked list branches at a certain node into two. Identify the branching node in least possible time.
• There is an array of size ‘n’ having integers 1 to n. But a certain integer ‘l’ is missing and another integer ‘k’ is repeated twice. Find ‘l’ and ‘k’.
He literally ground me to pulp – but I managed to scrape through somehow.
3rd round!
The worst round – and perhaps which brought about my downfall. I was the only one left to attend this one – everyone else had been eliminated. I was hoping it might be non-technical. But alas! How wrong I was…
• Can an object of a base class be initialized using a function of a derived class?
• In Amazon, we maintain records of the pages viewed by customers on each day in a file. I’ll give you the files for two days. I want you to create a list of those customers who visited on both the days and at least two distinct pages. Which data structure would you use?
That was all – quite a short one. But I had to wait for two hours for this one.
I guess I learnt quite a bit – but it was disappointing falling down at the last hurdle. But there’s always the next chance!
Labels:
College (NITW)
Posted by
Arun
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Food, clothing & shelter aka roti, kapda aur makaan – the basic necessities of life. Now coming to the situation in hand – the average hosteller. Of course, the college can’t provide clothing to us. But they are in-charge of food and shelter while we are in college. Till last year, we used to curse both our shelter and our food – but now we realize how wrong we were to curse the food. Now the curse is upon us….
7th Block with I Mess!
That was the situation last year – a hostel which seemed as though it was built during the reign of the British, filled with cracks and a mess which seemed a little below average in a fleeting glance. But however bad we said it was, it was always full during lunch hours. In fact, people had to reserve places for the next round. Such was the demand… And the monthly special messes were really a treat to a connoisseur of good food.
In spite of the hostel and the mess being on the two extremes of the college campus, no one had second thoughts about walking the distance – for we knew what awaited us there! And now even though the “food court” is a stone’s throw from our rooms, we think twice before going there to eat…
1K with Food Court!
This is the situation this year – a grand hostel room, a comfy bed, a cushion chair, well-furnished cupboards, a computer table, 24hr internet connection. We couldn’t have wished for more. But as the principle of equivalent exchange states (I’m speaking alchemy I guess) – “In order to obtain something, you have to give something of equal value in return”.
So the “something of equal value” we had to give was our food. The crowded mess gave way to a deserted food court. Many left it and began eating outside (including me). But, however one may praise the food outside, it’s a pain going out each and every time just for the sake of filling your stomach. In case a class gets extended or your teacher leaves you 10 min late from the lab – you are cursed to attend the afternoon classes on a hungry stomach…
Do we really deserve to be sentenced to a life befitting of a prince but with the cuisine suited for a pauper!? Perhaps we do – coz some of us chose to run away to eat outside rather than strive to improve the situation and the rest remained unfazed. Or perhaps, it is just the principle of equivalent exchange…
7th Block with I Mess!
That was the situation last year – a hostel which seemed as though it was built during the reign of the British, filled with cracks and a mess which seemed a little below average in a fleeting glance. But however bad we said it was, it was always full during lunch hours. In fact, people had to reserve places for the next round. Such was the demand… And the monthly special messes were really a treat to a connoisseur of good food.
In spite of the hostel and the mess being on the two extremes of the college campus, no one had second thoughts about walking the distance – for we knew what awaited us there! And now even though the “food court” is a stone’s throw from our rooms, we think twice before going there to eat…
1K with Food Court!
This is the situation this year – a grand hostel room, a comfy bed, a cushion chair, well-furnished cupboards, a computer table, 24hr internet connection. We couldn’t have wished for more. But as the principle of equivalent exchange states (I’m speaking alchemy I guess) – “In order to obtain something, you have to give something of equal value in return”.
So the “something of equal value” we had to give was our food. The crowded mess gave way to a deserted food court. Many left it and began eating outside (including me). But, however one may praise the food outside, it’s a pain going out each and every time just for the sake of filling your stomach. In case a class gets extended or your teacher leaves you 10 min late from the lab – you are cursed to attend the afternoon classes on a hungry stomach…
Do we really deserve to be sentenced to a life befitting of a prince but with the cuisine suited for a pauper!? Perhaps we do – coz some of us chose to run away to eat outside rather than strive to improve the situation and the rest remained unfazed. Or perhaps, it is just the principle of equivalent exchange…
Labels:
College (NITW)
