Chapter 19: Post Grad Admission Woes…

It was during my graduation that I took my studies seriously, with the interest in girls taking a dip (after the evident breakup). I was frenzied with the idea of scaling great heights in engineering that I gave my GATE when I was in third year.

I was not primarily interested in getting my post graduation degree, but I wanted to have a rain check on my fundamentals and gave the exam to gauge the same.

When the GATE results were declared, I and my parents were huddled close to the computer refreshing the result screen… I for one was skeptical that I might not even get a score, but I was proven wrong. I scored 95.38 percentile in GATE 2002 (IN) which reset my priorities; I now wanted get myself a post graduation degree.

My first preference was to get a Masters in Bio Medical instrumentation (primary field of interest being MEMS and Neural networks) I was called in for a written test and an interview by IIT Mumbai. I cleared the written test, was the second in the class.

I was rejected in the interview, not because I was unable to answer the questions put forth, but because of the reason, that my final year project was purely software, and the folks at IIT had a preconceived notion that for any student to get into BioMedInst it was mandatory that the project taken up in the final year consist at least of some hard ware, which mine did not.

I felt it was unfair on their part that they did not give me a chance, now looking back I would have done the same thing had I been in their shoes, the reason is that my project was not a very complicated one, in fact it was a general algorithm that could be easily found on the appendices of most text books on DSP. The reason for me selecting such a project and my professors approving the same is that it gave me a lot of time for studies, the algorithms were fairly simple and most of the code could be reused.

IIT taken care of, my next target was IISc, I was called in for an interview at Bangalore, that I attended. I had 2 interviews lined up for me, one in DSP and one in biomedical Inst. I dreaded the former since I was not particularly fond of the subject, and it did not even matter to me when I failed miserably there. I cleared the Biomedical interview, and was full of hope that I would definitely get a seat, but destiny trimmed my hope and I was rejected yet once again. The reason given to me this time around was that IISc had no projects in Biomed for research, the only projects available with them were the ones from HAL, and it was something related to “Surface coating of windshields in combat aircrafts” that required a MSc Physics degree (that I did not have), what I was offered though was Lab Assistant ship that I blatantly refused.

I did not let go that easy when it came to my QA session, I grilled them over an hour on ethics and how it was incorrect on their part to invite some one who doesn’t fit the bill, And the answer that I received was “That how the organization functions”, I have never personally regretted not getting into IISc since then. I got up and walked out without wishing any of the “Big shots” present for the interview, went straight to the station and got my tickets confirmed in the next available train Home, for that’s where my heart really was.