.::Song Of The Little Road::.

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Dear Abhinav,

My name is Axxxx and I just got an AIR of 44 in GATE 2011 which means that I will probably get into the MTech CSE at IIT Bombay. I got your contact off the IIT website and I was wondering if you could help me out by sharing some of your experience. Your profile seemed interesting and I know I can trust somebody who gets XKCD.

So, how do you find the course compared to your BE at VJTI? (I'm from TSEC and really need a change in the level of teaching standards). What about life at IIT campus? And do you know anything about the placements scenario for MTech students? Is it on par with the BTech placements or is it not that good? I have an offer from Oxford University but I'm probably declining it as the UK visa rules are getting extremely annoying for anybody who wishes to gain work experience after their degree there (plus its bloody expensive!).

Anything that you can tell me will really help me in making this decision (IIT vs Oxford) better for me...

Regards,A B

My response to the query:-

I think I will set out the reasons for my decision to come to IIT Bombay. You must evaluate your situation, opportunities, and inclinations to come to your own decision.

I am fairly certain that I will end up either in academia, an R&D lab, or doing a startup. I joined IIT Bombay because I needed a stronger background to pursue a PhD, both in terms of my technical soundness and the reputation of the institution I was going to study at. I had admits from Uppsala for technical masters, and IIM Lucknow and Kozhikode for MBA, besides the IIT admits. I chose IIT Bombay because I was sure I would eventually get bored with standard management stuff (is that really work?), and (surprise, surprise!) I still liked CSE after I graduated from VJTI. I haven't really regretted my decision so far. IIT Bombay provides fabulous facilities and a beautiful campus, and is about an hour from my home.

VJTI, the institution where I spent my undergrad days didn't have a research culture to speak of. I don't really remember any worthwhile professors or well-taught subjects. In short, my undergrad education would amount to zilch for a person looking for rigorous foundations. Consequently, the difference between the UG/PG quality of education has been immense for me. At IIT Bombay, I have been taught and guided by some really great professors; some of them are forerunners in their particular areas of research. Prof. Bhaskar Raman (Systems and Networks) and Prof. Sunita Sarawagi (Machine Learning and Data Mining) are my personal favorites. Prof. Soumen Chakrabarti is also highly regarded and really knowledgeable, but he did not click with me.

The graduate intake at CSE, IIT Bombay is much larger compared to other IITs. This is a good thing, because it leads to bigger research groups and you almost always have people who share similar research interests. It's a bad thing, because the class sizes increase beyond the desirable graduate class size (maximum ~20-30), leading to lesser attention of professors to each individual student. For better or for worse, the competition for getting into research groups and working under good guides also increases.

Also, IIT Bombay has a much more vibrant social life than other places like IISc and other IITs. It has great placements and a good reputation in case one wants to pursue research further. As far as I know, IIT Bombay has had good placements, but individual preparation and commitment are better indicators of the quality of placements one lands up with rather than past statistics. From hearsay, the placement opportunities for MTech guys are at par with those for BTech guys except for some selective I-banks.

Correspondent's subsequent reply:-

Dear Abhinav,

Thanks for all that information. The one big factor for me wanting to choose IIT over Oxford was that there is very less research activity on distributed systems and machine learning at Oxford (they focus more on theoretical issues of computer science) but I found quite a few active projects at IIT. The only doubt in my mind was whether the MTech degree was good enough or not.

I have seriously been encouraged to go for IIT after hearing your story (and that of a couple of others). For some reason, I had an ill-formed view that MTech at IIT was inferior to the BTech degree (probably wrong feedback from some IIT undergrads).

I had read Prof. Raman's web pages before, and some faculty in my college were telling me about one Prof. Kavi Arya as well. Knowing that professors like these will be teaching us is really exciting.

I'll hope to meet you in a few months then (assuming of course that I get direct admission)... Good luck with your exams and stuff!

Thanks again.

Regards,
A B

My subsequent response:-

Hi Axxxx,

Due to lower competition, the quality of MTech batches in most departments at IITs is lower than BTech batches. That does lead to the currently prevalent perceptions.

However, for CSE, the keen competition does lead to a pretty decent batch, at least at IIT Bombay. I know of seniors who have been placed in Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Credit Suisse, etc. or have gone to decent universities like CMU, UMD, etc. for their PhD. It really depends on the individual caliber of the student.

There is a difference between the BTech and MTech batches, because the BTechs receive rigorous training in fundamentals for four years. More importantly, BTechs have healthier attitudes toward learning and often ask a lot of questions in a class making it interactive and worthwhile. These are differences that cannot be wished away, but which many MTechs overcome through their first semester.

Regarding admissions, you most certainly will get a direct admit to IIT Bombay with AIR 44. Apply to two other IITs of your choice as a backup. I applied to all of them and never had to bother with admits from the other IITs.

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Regards,
Abhinav Maurya

Advice for new matriculants:-