MS Admission Criteria and Procedure

I wrote a post long back about MS admission and future of doing MS in IITs. Since then I was thinking of make a very comprehensive post about MS admissions in India and how to make sure MS IIT admission with less scores. The ideas are simple but most of the time students don’t know what actually IITs are looking for MS admissions.

First let me discuss the admission procedure. Before I start telling about MS admissions, I would recommend you to go through the post MS by research in IITs and its future.

Admission to MS in IITs
The admission to MS in IITs is mostly based on the research attitude and therefore more emphasis is given interview instead of GATE scores or marks. Usually based on the requirements of the labs the admissions are made. The following would definitely help one to secure a MS position in IITs.

1. A good GATE score ( Need not to be as high as required for M.Tech)
2. A good academic recorded ( this have less impact for M.Tech admissions, as long as one have a good GATE score and above 60% aggregate in B.Tech degree, academic doesn’t matter much).
3. Good in-depth knowledge at least about one subject.
4. Good understanding of basics of other subjects (at least know the basic concepts and terminology)

Apart from all these one should have a good presence of mind. I mean, I had always issues with the questions need to be answered at the spot. Usually I know the answers and could answer all the questions that I could not in the interviews.

I attended interviews in almost all the IITs for PhD and felt that MS interviews are of same nature. Professors usually test students’ analytical skills, and ask question form the topics that we usually think hard and can skip during exam preparations.

The questions like why this simple term is also used for testing ones ability. For example if you are from computer science, professor might ask “what is the limit of signed Integer in C? We all know its 32768, now you may get the question why is this limit? There is always an answer for question starts with “why” in engineering so try to find out that kind of question to prepare for interviews.

If you do well in MS interview then it is almost give a ticket to IITs. Sometimes you may feel that you did not do well in interviews but you may also get a chance if some professors like your technical ability. Don’t give up just because professors are taking interview, if you are technically correct better to argue on the concept with polite manner.

A million Dollar Tip for MS admissions
First select a subject you want to focus on then visit the professors’ websites working in that subject and read about their research work. Get an idea about their work and tell interview without taking the name that given a chance you would like to explore that area and you see that only that professor would be asking you many questions. In short, direct interview to your interesting field or a field that you prepared for.

I hope this will help you all when you start running for IIT M.Tech and MS interviews. Wish you all a great luck ahead.