The intention of this blog is to give you some information about aspects
of doing mtech at IIT. I hope after reading this, one should be able to
make a more informed decision.
Quality of Education
Most people think that quality of education in mtech is not as good as
in btech. This is incorrect as the faculty (and facilities) for mtech
and btech is the same. In fact even some of the courses done my btechs
and mtechs are same and for some of the courses I have attended classes
with the btech guys. So if the quality is good for them, its good for
mtechs too. As far as my experience is concerned, this is the first time
in my life that I have seen really good faculty. Faculty in my btech
college was horrrible. Here in IITs I have studied from profs who have
Phds from Stanford, Cornell etc. and some have experience of over 20
years in teaching or industry. Its a great experience to learn from such
people, something I would have never got in any other college.
Expenditure
Mtech from IITs is cheap. Although the fees has gone up phenomenally
this year, it is still cheap. I think it will cost about 35K per
semester for mtech in IITs. This includes your tution fees, hostel fees,
mess dues, etc. In this amount you get to live in a quality IIT
environment, and get to use all the facilities like labs, sports
facilities, internet etc. Plus you get a stipend of Rs. 8000 per month
(i think this could increase this year). So that almost covers your
fees. Compare this with doing MS in a US university or an MBA.
Work Load
Most people think mtechs dont have to study much and they can relax for 2
years. This is not entirely true though it could be partially true.
Here's how: Courses in IITs can be divided into roughly two categories:
1) Courses that are really very good but at the same time extremely
tough. It is very difficult to get a good grade in such courses but you
learn a lot. It is in these type of courses that you get the real
advantage of being at IIT.
2) Courses that are very easy but mostly useless. You can easily get a
good grade in these courses without much effort but they will hardly do
any value addition.
So if you mostly take easy courses in your mtech career, you can end up
with a good CGPA without working hard at all. But then your mtech would
be a waste and you will struggle to get a good placement. On the other
hand, you can take the tough but good courses, you will learn a lot, but
believe me, it becomes very hectic. These courses will make you work so
hard that GATE studies will look like a piece of cake. But at the end,
it will be worth it. Same logic applies to your choice of project. As
such how tough or how easy your mtech is will depend on how much hard
work you are willing to do. Unfortunately, most people take the useless
easy courses, dont work hard at all during mtech and then say doing
mtech in IITs was a bad idea.
Placements
This is the million dollar question, literally. People have this
perception that after doing an mtech, the only thing you can do is
teaching. I dont know about other branches, but this is certainly not
true for mtech in computer science. In my batch itself mtech people got
placed in Amazon, Adobe, Morgan Stanley, Oracle, Citrix, Cisco, Mircrosoft etc.
Some of these companies hired more mtechs than btechs. Placement in
IITs depend very much on your caliber than on anything else. Companies
that come for campus allow a lot of people to appear for their written
tests. So one gets an opportunity to appear for a lot of companies. But
if you cant clear their written test or crack their interviews, there is
nothing anybody else can do about it.
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