Uncle Sam wants you, well almost.

No, you donot need to go to the US or need to apply for the American Army. No, Uncle Sam Does not need you. I do.
I am passing out of BIT this year. Just in a month. So it will not be possible for me to write on this blog. My statistics tell me that I get 50 readers a day, so just saying goodbye to them and closing this post doesnot seem to be a good idea as well.


If you are of 2003 or 2004 batch, would you like to post here? If you wanna post here let me know and I will give you write access to this blog.

How Bitians get 50% marks and claim it to be 75% marks!

You must be aware of the way marking scheme of BIT, Mesra works. In case you have forgotten let me remind you.
Mid Sems: The question is worth 36 marks and you can attempt all. You can get a maximum of 30 marks.
End Sems: You get questions for 94 marks and you can attempt questions for 70 marks.
The sum of both is taken and then the grades are given. 50-59 marks get you a B which means a 6 on scale of 10, 60-69 marks mean B+ which mean 7 on grade of 10. If that is not enough you have to add 6% to quote your percentage when you convert to percentages.

Say you get 18 in your mid sems(50% of total) then you need just 42 in the end sems to claim 75 percentage. But 42 is not half of 70, I hear you say. Well, but then you get two extra questions, worth 28 marks to leave. And I will claim that if you are getting 42 then you donot know at least one of those two questions. So you get 42 of 84( again half), your sum is 60, which means a B or 7/10 grade, which means 76%.

And then you say that Bit management hates you!

Ankit "ethical hacking" Fadia!

Finally, Ankit Fadiya delivered a letcure. Only one way to describe it, huge, huge success. The cat was overflowing. His course costing 6000 RS was sold out in like 15 minutes. But most importantly he delivered a great lecture, witty, engaging and yet fun. Heck he even attempted a live hacking attempt and succeded.
Fadia's Website http://www.hackingmobilephones.com/

Who is responsible for stress in BIT?

Today, BIT had a stress management seminar, with the emphasis on reducing drug abuse. With the slew of suicides, BIT had to wake up to the drug abuse problem. But thats not the story for today.
Since BIT management considered this seminar to be pretty important, all classes were put off,to enable the students to attend the seminar. However Proff. D. Paul(ECE), insisted that everyone registered to his classes, attend classes. Finally, and Ill guess on instructions from heigher ups, he asked the students to attend the seminar but not before he had said,(almost verbatim),
"All said and done, I have lost my classes, and all due to one guy. Amit Lal. If he had to commit suicide, let him do it outside the collage".
Ok, without going into why Amit commited suicide, Ill say that
"All said and done, he has lost his life, and if he is no more he deserves more respect than that."

BIT Wifi network was named Sexy!

Scoop
In the evening of 11th March, the wifi network which is generally named R and D was renamed to sexy. It was soon changed back to R and D, but seeing it named sexy just made my day.

Bitotsava 06

Bitotsava 06(yes that was its official name, unlike other years) is over. It was celeberated with all its share of glory, pomp, festivity and most importantly scandals, fight and every other assorted thing which is a part of Bitotsava celeberation.
For those of you who forgot, Bitotsava 05 was called Tatva, 04 was Ragazzo and 04 was Mardi Gras. This time it was decided to take a break from tradition and no specific name was given to it.


Unlike the last two years, no rock band came this year. That was one of the major disappointments of this year. Last year it was Aryans and before that Euphoria.
As always the nights are better than days. The days are fun, with all the festivities but its the night that rocks. Music night, Dance night, Core night.

The first night was Kavi sammelan. The guys who came were really pathetic. Most of the kavis were probably not heard outside their houses.
Next night was dance night. Reasonably good arrangement and the groups had prepared well. However the poor sound quality, and acoustic problems in the refurbished OAT, were dampeners. The music night held next night had however better sound.




The final night is always the Core night, where is a team event. Top seven teams from the bitsava reach this night. Pauwa, the best/worst thing about BIT, the omnipresent thing in BIT. In the core, it is almost impossible to stay unbiased. The judges have a decision before the core starts, the team which they support. However this time the best team(IMHO) also had the best pauwa. And DADA team emerged vistoriuous. It was also a first in that a team from extension centre came in top three.

Does every club in BIT need to do a technical fest? Every club, worth(or not) its salt is doing some fest or other. In the next month, we have Zeitgeist, Dristant, Bitotsava. Will not it be better if there were lesser events but of better quality?
But Dristant promises to be real huge. Ankit "Ethical Hacking" Fadia is coming for guest lectures. So are many other lumanaries.
Recently Prof. Pant, head of Placement cell, told me that he has visited this blog. And I was wow.

How to get placed witout studying.

How to get placed without studying?( well almost without studying).
Short answer: There is no way. If you want to get a good placement, a high paying job, how can you even expect to do so without putting in your best effort.
That said there are some places where your efforts are best put to use. To get a great job you have to work hard as well as work smart.

How am I equipped to answer this question?
Um, this might sound like self congratulation, but I daresay I got the best job in my college, Bit Mesra. And I did work hard, but there were people who worked harder, but did not get as good a job. I don’t claim to be more intelligent than the next guy. So only thing I can attribute my success to can be working smart. Still, take everything here with a pinch of salt. I am no authority on this subject, and just speak with experience (or lack thereof).

On to strategy……
No matter what company you are preparing for, there will be at least three things you will have to face. Aptitude test, technical test and a personal interview. You need to be good in all three of them to excel. Remember, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. But you need not be, nor can you hope to be, exceptionally well in all three.

The Aptitude test.
The aptitude test will gauge your logical thinking ability. Most of the questions you will face will be of numerical ability, though puzzles are not uncommon. If you did prepare for engineering entrance exams and clear them, numerical ability problems should be easy for you. Still it is necessary to get practice, identify your problem areas and work on them. The book I used and found extremely useful was “Quantitative Aptitude for CAT” by Arun Sharma, TMH. Any other standard book of quantitative aptitude should be good enough as well. If you have the time a good book of puzzles can be useful. However you must be careful that you do not end up wasting too much time in this.

The Technical test.
If you are preparing for the software companies, most of the questions will be from general CS papers like C, C++, operating systems, data stuructures. Don’t expect questions from neural networks, compiler design and the like. Some companies may test you on DBMS and Java but this is quite uncommon. In C/C++ pointers is a common topic and file handling is what most people fumble in. You can expect questions from I/o streams and precedence table.

Personal Interview.
If you clear technical and aptitude rounds, you will have to face personal interview(s). Here the panel is more interested in knowing how you present your self, and less in what you know. To excel in this you need to have good communication skill. It does not mean you must have very good English, but rather that you must be able to get across your ideas.
Nothing beats group discussion when it comes to improving your communication skills is a really short time. So even if you are sure that a group discussion will not be a part of selection process, participate in some GDs. Form a group of 8 to 10 like minded people and get started. Finally undergo as many mock interviews as you can. You can ask your friends to form a panel, and they can take your interview, while you can take theirs. Quid pro quo.

Final notes.

1. Whatever happens, don’t panic.


2. Remember the company needs you as much as you need them. Do your best, and you can clear any selection process.


3. Even if have very poor GPA, poor English, bad mathematics don’t despair. With six months of hard work, you can get just any job. I did.


4. Don’t be afraid of hard selling yourself. If asked about your strengths don’t be apologetic. The selection team wants to know the best of you.

These days we are making some real progress. Period! The collage has got a amazing speed net connection(100+ KBps per computer), and about 50 computers in the institute have been connected. We have a public WiFi hotspot near the collage with as good speed. And there is a plan to coonect all the hostels. What more can you ask?
Finally a ATM too was set up in the collage(SBI). God it was really needed.

College is Wifi enabled!

It seems that Wifi was in college from some time. Just that it is only in the collage and not in the hostels. But fortunately its a unsecured Wifi network with anyone able to login. So people from hostel 1 are using it, coz it is the only hostel where Wifi network reaches.
And it has amazing speed, too. But we are still using our trusty dial up. A wifi card is too costly, and we dont know till when the network will be unsecured.