Hello folks, some bad news from placements. The top 25 from CSE, the top 15 from ECE and the top 20 from IT departmenst went to the Coimbatore Institute of Technology (CIT) to attend offcampus Yahoo! placements. The pre-placement talk was good and then we had the AT. The AT spelt doom for all 60 from TCE. UNIX questions were truly difficult and most of my friends didn’t even try those questions. The greatest disappoinment to all of us was that inspite of neing the top 60 students of the college, not even one cleared the Aptitude test and went to the second round.
Some of the Yahoo! placement AT questions include shell scripting and PERL. For example, we were asked what would be the output of the script “kill $$” followed by “echo “hello world” “. There were lots of questions on UNIX commands and few from Operating Systems as well.
We had the AT from 3:15 to 4:45 and then were let free. The results were expected to be announced by 9. But they were announced only after 11. Three of our students (Sridhar, Arun and Balaji) were waiting for the results. Finally when it was announced, we were all totally disappointed. The fact that none of us could get through even the AT was really troubling and hurt us all a lot.But then, after a day now, on detailed analysis, we were able to find a few solutions. The solutions that I was able to come up with are,
- Complete change in syllabus atleast for CSE and IT .
- Change in exam pattern and methodology.
- UNIX classes for interested students after college hours.
A change in syllabus includes the fact that the syllabus must be the same as what the industry wants and not what all other colleges/universities follow. Possible suggestions include introducing GNU/Linux or UNIX in the earlier semesters. Advanced UNIX programming as an elective for those interested in operating systems( this could be an option for Advanced Databases) Another major issue is the role of SIGs. The SIG for FOSS must have sub groups for OS and networks as FOSS is extremely wide and has everything in the world of computers.
Change in exam pattern is the most important. Instead of testing the memory of the student by asking questions like explain/describe/write notes on, we can have questions like analyse/design/*. The questions of theory papers must also be thought provoking and interesting. For example, a question on file systems can be like “Design a file systems with support for the following ——” instead of asking explain file systems and “Describe a file systems with the following properties——“. I would also recommend giving mini projects for students every semester.
Activities of GLUGOT can be made more useful and more practical oriented instead of discussing about Emacs and SVN, there could be discussions on issues like memory management design or something like the design of emacs itself.
“Programming in GNU/Linux” paper should be introduced during the beginning of 3rd year,preferably.I heard that the students of GCT had a paper “Programming in Unix” including a lab!!Pity 🙁
changing syllabus is good.But those are not the solutions you have found.BTW How many people from other colleges got selected? At no point you have admitted individuals fault. The whole point is learning things by yourself and finding the winning ways.
Glugot is being run by you people. you are the ones who has to make the changes.Sorry if i had been sarcastic or icey
@Praveen
I admit that the fault is on our part as well. But the feedback from yahoo was that we had done much better than PSG and others in C Data Structures and Algorithms and DBMS. We failed to clear the UNIX part. But, what I meant to say is that by having papers like UNIX prog. or UNIX as such in our syllabus, we could gain more than what we would gain otherwise.
You were right in pointing out that we had not admitted our mistakes. Sorry for that. By the way 3 people got selected- 2 from PSG and 1 from GCT
Who stopped you from Unix programming. If i am right you are working in *nix for three years, so i think you don’t need someone to teach unix. College syllabus will teach you the basics, you have to build upon that. College has to consider people at all levels. You also have a lot of resources in our college when compared to other colleges. Its upto you to use them. Ask yourself whether you fully utilised the resources available in college.
Looking at the past, when the syllabus was worse than this many greater minds have evolved from college. Hope you have not forgotten that. Dont blame the college for everything. Prepare well, all the best for your future interviews.
@Senthil
You were right in pointing out that I had been working in *nix for the past three years, but what about the department as a whole. How many of the 115 od students know unix? How many have used unix? Not more than 30. And I am not just blaming the college.I am actually making suggestions for improvement When I spoke of the syllabus, I meant that earlier, when there were the great people, there was one paper called UNIX programming. And again, there wre ECE students who attended the placement program. And there are a lot of background stuff that I need to explain. I will do that in personal mails.
Do you claim that it is the unix paper that gave them all knowledge. Still i think students in our college are exposed a little to Unix, but they feel even that is tough and stay away from it. The point is college alone is not responsible, students are to be blamed. Students have resources which they dont use. The above post never mentioned about that. That was the point.
Why didn’t the 115 odd people take part in GLUGOT?? This is also an college wide initiative to promote Unix. opportunities always comes in a disguise it never pops up in the form of syllabus and tell “hey!! study me well, to get yourself placed in Yahoo” What did our 115 odd people do in system programming labs?? didn’t they use GNU/Linux?
Having Unix paper in syllabus will not give enough knowledge unless they are applied practically and applying practically is mainly the interest of the students. We had paper in 7th semester and even after that most of the people don’t understand Unix in my batch. As a engineer, everything should be interest driven, not pushed to do it. Having industry standards in college syllabus is not a good idea because each and every company has their own standards etc., Also while attending placements they will look for people who are strong in basic skills. Without getting basic knowledge in subject you cannot master any subject and if you plan for basics followed mastering subjects, then i don’t think 4 years is enough for completing engineering.