IIT Madras Admission Experience

Details about me:

• Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science.
• Gate Rank 608 CS-2023
• Category – general
• CGPA – 9.2

Online, Theoretical computer science

Interview: Questions asked were as follows:

• Introduce yourself (gate rank and gate score are also required to mention)
• Which Subject U have chosen for the Interview I answered (Data Structure and Algorithms)
• In which topic you are comfortable I said heap
• Name algorithm that uses heap data structure and defines a heap I answered heap sort and define the heap and its property 
• Explain the operation on the heap  I answered insertion, deletion, finding the maximum, finding the minimum,heapify
• You are given a min heap can you find the maximum element in the O(logN) 

 I answered No as in the min heap the maximum element will lie in the leaf node, as the heap is a complete binary tree no of leaf node=ceil(N/2). Hence time complexity if O(N)

• What is the time complexity to find an element in the heap? I said logN but it was wrong it takes O(N) to find the element in the heap
•  If you are given a BST then what will be the time complexity to find the element 
• I explained if the given BST is skewed it will take O(N) to find the element and in another case, it will take O(logN)

The interview duration was around 25 minutes .overall the interview was not too hard to crack, prof was asking the conceptual questions.