11-30 Class Notes Cs 100: Fill & Download for Free

1. Most of the people study on the last night before the exam.2. Many IITians drink and smoke a lot.3. Few of the first day companies offer packages of 7-8 lakhs too.4. Most of us are single contrary to popular belief.5. Some of the students are better singer, instrumentalists, dancer, player, actor, data analyst, manager, consultant, finance freak than the trained professionals.6. IITians too fail in subjects very often.7. Many private colleges have better infrastructure and mess food than IITs.8. Many of us are better at arts and we came here just because our parents wanted.9. Connection with seniors and officials matter a lot along with CV in internships.10. Most of us talk more about movies, TV series, football, cricket, politics etc. rather than engineering and technology.11. Majority of us like to show off that we are IITians, in first year. The number of such people decreases exponentially on being senior.12. Some students from non CS departments are better coders than CS students.13. Most of the teachers are below average. They give us a feel like we are not studying in an IIT.14. Most of the classes see less than 50% attendance for whole year.15. Many of us go for CAT & UPSC just because our parents want us to do so.16. A very few of us are interested in research or hardcore technology stuffs. Most of us believe that research sector doesn't pay well.17. On our birthdays, we try to hide to escape from GPL. Alas! There is no escaping.18. No matter how much we keep talking about the IITian girls being ugly, deep within we realise that there are very very gorgeous ladies also out there in the campus.19. If I have a CG of 9+ and my friend has a CG of 9-, many a times the reason behind this is the mood swings of laboratory instructors and tutorial teachers.20. The guy who never attended any class and whom you taught just the night before exam can score more marks than you.21. Most of us play, hangout and having food at canteens around 1–2 am in night.22. I got to know the data of packages of students and I must say that average package is almost half of what other people hope to be.23. Seniors play bigger role in most of our lives than professors. Be it tips for scoring good marks, guidance for career, internship opportunities, CV building etc. it's seniors who help us a lot.24. Seniors here strictly don't like to be called “Bhaiya” and “Sir”.25. If a person is getting 100 likes within first hour on his/her DP, it necessarily doesn't mean that picture is good. It happens because of being IITian also.26. If you find someone wearing IIT's T Shirt then either that was the only cleaned cloth he had or he is single! (Mostly applicable for first years especially when they are in hometown)27. Most of our learnings come from seniors and internet via video tutorials, PDFs and DOCs.28. Library remains like a haunted place except one week before exams and during the exams. Generally library closes at 11:45 pm and opens at 7 am. But one week before the exam and during exam time, it remains open for 24 hours. (Administration too knows when do we actually study)29. We love politics. You can find hell lot of politics going on during Gymkhana elections and all sort of things happen which are expected in general parliamentary elections.30. If you are good at nothing, still you will end up being good at something! The adrenaline for winning the general championship makes you voluntarily to do something or seniors may induce that thing in you in some cases.31. I found students keeping their notes tangled on the front of their bicycle and reading them on their way to exam hall while bicycling.

How I (think I) outdid the IITTL;DR:Throughout my teenage life, I've been fed with beliefs that the IIT is the one and only stamp that certifies intelligence of any form.Despite countless attempts, through Olympiads and the like, I tried proving to my parents, my peers, and the public in general that the IIT meant little to nothing.In the end, I didn't make the IIT, but I made a top 5 institution in America, with a generous aid offer.Three years through, I'm majoring in what I want to (Computer Science), doing multiple research with incredible faculty, have internships that pay upwards of $20k(+housing+most meals+transport) in the summer.I'm taking graduate level courses in college and learning whatever I want to when I want to.The average salary, if this is the sort of thing that matters, for my college and major is about $100k (55 lakh), with about 60-70% of the class being placed at big guns like Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google.The Whole Deal:Upto Class 10:I don't like the phrase 'your average IIT aspirant', but to put it explicitly, I was a kid with above average who loved Math, Computers, Science and learning. Even as an early teenager, I hardly cared about the IITs. I wanted to do experiments, make stuff, invent stuff, and do interesting science-y things for the satisfaction of it. I guess that describes a lot of India, and inquisitive teenagers in general. Soon, I saw the word about the IITs spreading, at the age of about 14 or 15. My dad (who wasn't an IITian himself), for one, would glorify its awesomeness and establish how necessary it was for success of any form. Like most dads, he has life "all planned out" for me. Luckily, I was more or less interested in the things he wanted me to be. At 16, I joined a "coaching class", while still going to school. I'm not going to lie, I quite liked it. For the first time since I could remember, I was surrounded by incredibly smart individuals - some who would go on to clear Math Olympiads, Physics Olympiad, Chemistry Olympiads and Cyber Olympiads. The class was studded with KVPY and NTSE scholars. About 70% of the class of 25 or so ended up achieving one or more of those things. I thrived in the competitive environment, and in classes 9 and 10, it wasn't really about the IIT - it was more about learning and I enjoyed that. I would place within the top 4 in class usually, and I felt a strong sense of pride in it. Later on, I cleared 2 of the above and yes, I felt pretty boss about it.Upto Class 12:As a kid educated in what people would call those "elitist English speaking" schools, I had a fairly different view of leisure than my friends at coaching. Frankly, my school friends never understood what the big deal about Olympiads and the like was and my coaching friends didn't understand fun. I was coming of age. In class 11, I was 17. If I wasn't gonna enjoy my childhood now, when was I, I thought. Class 11 was the prime of socialization. Guys met girls, guys would socialize with them, ask them out on dates, you know the deal. It was also the age guys would begin indulging in weed, cigarettes and alcohol. We'd listen to 60s to 80s rock music. Sex, drugs and rock n roll, right? We were naive westernized teens.I did all of these substances, sometimes in great proportions. Also, in class 11, I would meet my second girlfriend.And yes, I think I had my priorities right. I put fun first,something I will never regret, and something I think more people should embrace. Plus, coaching class changed in class 11. That's when the majority of kids started pouring in. I'm not gonna be nice - they were stupid kids who performed well in school because school was easy. They had no intellectual curiosity whatsoever. They wanted the label of being in IIT. And that's it. In class 11, our teachers became worse. Coaching became worse. I began bunking. I mean, I had a girlfriend - I had commitments.Everyone tells me about how people perform badly in class 11 in schools. Well, with all the knowledge I'd embraced from coaching in class 9-10, I went in prepared. I aced class 11. It was a breeze. I spent plenty of time trying to be the badass, smoking at will, rolling joints in alleys with friends and frequently consuming large amounts of alcohol. Life was good. (Mind you, I feel like, even then, I was an immensely rational individual, and I never once was addicted to smoking, or drinking, or ever let IT control ME).Sometime in the middle of class 11, I realized what I really wanted to do with my life. I liked Computers. I wasn't willing to sacrifice my social life. I wasn't willing to settle for second best. I knew that if I wanted to study CS at the IITs , I'd need a 150 rank or less. I thought I had the potential, but I just wasn't ready to put in that much work, and sacrifice things that meant more to me. I decided, much against my father's will, to take the SAT. I scored well, about 2300. It wasn't easy though. It's hard when your parents aren't supportive of your decision. Everybody in our fancy school had fancy "American university coaches" who would frame their recos, their essays, and their application in general. It's just the way it works. These coaches cost about 2 lakh to hire, and my father never even gave it a thought. I had to go through the "normal" way, getting my own recommendations and writing my own essays. I applied to my top choice "Early" (you can apply to one college early) and by December, I'd found out I'd made it, with a great aid offer as well. I was at the pinnacle of my happiness.The IIT:The IIT and my board examinations were still ahead me, however. And my father had given me the ultimatum - either you make the IIT, or I'm not sending you abroad. Shocked? So was I. Apparently, it's not a very uncommon ultimatum, I later realized. However, again, I had my priorities elsewhere.I had a knack for reasoning out my own decisions, and I reasoned that the board examinations were something that would last longer on my permanent record than the IITs. I studied hard. Would've been spectacular to say I topped class, but our class was pretty legendary. I made top 5, topping Physics and Math. I was quite pleased with myself.Then, while the dreaded IITs approached, my motivation to do well left. When all the people who would come in the top 5 of the coaching class I'd go to were going full speed ahead, I was chilling with my girlfriend. I had made the college of my dreams, I really didn't care. My teachers had high hopes for me. Whether or not I'd get top marks in class, they knew I had it in me to be IIT material. The mocks I'd take before all predicted a top 500 rank. And then the IITs hit me. Like a bang.I'd love to make it sound excessively melodramatic, but it really wasn't. It was simple. I hadn't studied shit. No, literally. I had not touched my books since the boards. I went to the exam with an open mind, and hell, I thought it went okay. Not brilliant, but decent. And then the results came out. It looked something like this:Math - 120Physics - 100Chemistry - 30I was a few marks off from a low IIT rank, and honestly, it didn't even matter to me. I was never great at Chemistry, as you can clearly see, and I scored really well in Physics and Math, given the amount of the practice I had. I can look back and say that I would've easily got a 130 on Math and Physics if I had studied a little. To put that in perspective, if I had got a 130 in all three subjects, my AIR would've been under 10.But then again, I don't want to be a sore loser. In all honesty, it was my decision, and I blew it. From here on forth, I just had to prove to myself and my parents that I had made the right. For the record, most my co-coaching class friends had decent ranks, all below 2000. Either way, it was college - time to shine.College: America -America wasn't new to me. It wasn't foreign, and the culture didn't really shock me, frankly. I knew what I was getting into, but that's a whole different story. I realized that college was my time to do what I wanted. My friends at IIT back in India tell me that a large part of the IIT experience is placements and grades. I don't know whether that's the uniform consensus, but I do know that the IITs are incredibly academically oriented. It was different in America. I had the opportunity to join clubs, be on teams that make Autonomous Underwater Submarines, a team that makes a full fledged car, do research with some CS legends, and more. I pushed myself as much as I could. My course load was about twice as much as the minimum and 1.5x the average. I was a 3rd year (Junior) by my 2nd year (Sophomore). I had a near perfect GPA. And I was having tons of fun. High school taught me to never let that go. I'd make sure I'd grab a beer or two and go out to a party every week. Life was good.Meanwhile, most my friends in IIT seemed to busy comparing AIRs with each other and having their egos aired by their relatives (Note: this is a broad generalization). By the end of my second year, I had an incredible internship with a great Tech company - that paid nearly $7k a month for a 3 month summer. By Sophomore year, I was doing what I thought was pretty ground breaking research in multiple fields, taking Graduate level courses, and (in the words of my also Indian roommate doing much the same thing), being bossish.The Aftermath:Before I knew it, I had companies paying for my flights from and to India, in exchange for some hackathon or the other. I was winning hackathons. Each course would have a competition or the other - and I was winning consistently. I was doing exceptionally in some of the hardest CS courses the college has to offer, and maintaining a social life most CS majors can't brag of. I was really, really proud of myself for it too. Come Junior year, all the companies I had applied to internships for had said yes. All of them. I had 2 papers published as well, in my fields of research. My professors were asking me to come back for a PhD so I could work with them. I got a similar internship lined up for next year as well. What's more? With all this hype about the great IIT "packages" that comes up at about this time of year, I'm inclined to also add that the average base salary (barring perks/benefits/health plans/bonuses/relocation) for CS majors in my college is about $100k (55 lakh), the amount the top 5-10 IITians all over India get. What's more? Your salary is not proportional to your grade at all! In IIT, I know it's all about the 9 pointers. In America, about everything above a 3.5 is treated fairly equally. What matters (and what should matter) is your experience and how you code, and for most jobs, what kind of person you are. I think that's the best part.What I've learnt:Simply put, you don't need the IIT tag to be successful. What's more? You can be more successful without it. I'm not just talking career-wise. With the contacts and the experiences I've built through college, not only have I set myself up for a great corporate career, but the confidence and skill to go into entrepreneurship - something few IITians explore. Whenever you speak to an IITian about entrepreneurship, they will, without fail, bring up outdated examples of (very awesome people) like Vinod Khosla, but I really don't see much of it in recent times. I feel like I, as well as all my Indian friends in college with me in America, have secured our career as much as the best IITians would have. I'm claiming that, along with that, there are certain soft skills I've picked up that I don't see from my IITian counterparts (again, broad generalization):1. The realization of the need for leisure. Most my 9-pointer friends in IIT don't even drink. I'm not saying that that makes inferior in any way. What I am saying is that they don't know how to socialize. Often, I see company around becoming increasingly irritable when IITians bring up topics like 'the IIT' and their rank in weird ways. They're not comfortable with socializing in general, I've noticed.2. Women. It's terribly unfortunate that most of these great minds end up with girlfriends that trample all over them or date them for their IIT status. It's almost undeniable. IITians struggle on a large scale, to speak and interact with women as a large number of Quora posts also suggest. Most of them have never not been single.3. Cliched goals. Most IITians I've spoken to have but one major life goal - get a placement abroad straight out of college, or get into a good college abroad for a Masters and then get placed into a high paying job. It's very different from the scene in America. Here, the interests and future goals are so different. Even amongst CS majors, very few people want to work at big companies, and the ones that do leave to make their own startup very soon. More and more people are involved in open source development. Most couldn't give a rat's a** about their career because they're more interested in how to make a multithreaded web crawler or a superefficient mapreduce. It's very very different. Most IITians seem to think it's all for the pay.To end off, I think the choices I made, or destiny, if you want to put it that way, has put me in a position better than my IIT counterparts - happier, more stress free, more open minded, and more prepared for life. I think that's what an education is supposed to give you. I can safely say that clearing the IIT exam means nothing.EDIT:By request, in the comments, I wanted to add to my answer what I specifically think the Advantages of an US Undergraduate Education were.The Advantages of the US Undergraduate Education:1. The Freedom to study what you wantThe IITs dont let you study what you want. I find this utterly preposterous. How in the world does it make sense to give certain "better test takers" a better choice at what they want to do for their entire lives. What if I'm exclusively interested in Computer Science and I can't do Chemistry? What then. The system is appalling. In the US, not only can you obviously choose what you want to do, but you can study anything else on the side, or a multitude of things - Psychology, English, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering - ANY of the more than 100 subjects offered. I cannot imagine not having that freedom.2. The Promotion of Privacy, especially with respect to your GPAIn the IIT, 9 pointers are looked up towards like they've actually achieved something. Whether or not they say it out loud, most of them think they actually have. Grades are thrown around in public, making the bad feel worse and airing the "good test takers' " ego. It's a mess. Face it: It means more to an IITian to keep his 9 pointer than to to write a research paper on something he actually finds interesting. I know several IITians who would categorically refuse to exchange their 9 pointer for a great research opportunity. I know grades become ingrained in Indian culture, and it's a habit even I struggle to get rid of. What surprised me in America was this - when I pulled out a near perfect 4.0 GPA in college - nobody cared. Nobody discusses grades. Everyone keeps it to themselves. It is about as private as your personal life. What's more? Even the companies who come to recruit don't care. I kid you not, one of the top companies that came to recruit at our college said this: "We don't really care about your GPA. Anything between a 3.0 and a 3.5 will do. Honestly, we like to see project teams, former experience, research and interest. Usually people with higher GPAs are too conceited about their grades to open their mind up and do good work." This was a Fortune 500 company. Such words would have appalled your average IITian.3. The Contacts you make/People you meetYou meet so many people , with so many different goals. People who want to cook for a living, people who want to study art, people who want to do human development - it really opens up your mind about a lot of thing. You cease to live in your little bubble of "engineering is the only thing that matters" just because growing up in India kinda makes you that way. You meet people who'll come back to help you later in life, from all aspects of life.4. Personal DevelopmentBy far the most important aspect of getting an American education. It truly makes you a better person. It gives you a good idea of what's important in life - not your grades or your job - it's the people around you. In America, you're forced to socialize - to start conversations with people you don't know. In three years of college, I cannot even begin to tell you how many presentations I've given in front of the whole class of 100, or in front of teams of 10. It's a very engaging atmosphere where the premium is not on your marks, but what you learn. You can live a college life. As an International Student, you learn to live on your own - you learn how to take care of yourself. Every weekend, you learn to have a good time. You realize that habits that your average Indian would call 'bad' aren't bad - they're normal. Your professors will understand if you run into them drunk one night. They won't punish you or judge you. Hell, I've seen one of my professors smoking weed once. I'm not encouraging anyone to drink or saying its necessary. Not trying it even once in your life, is a decision at least I think is stupid. My point is, though, that the US makes you more social. It makes you a person - not an academic beast.5. Compared to a Graduate EducationLet's face it - undergrad is what develops you most as a person. You're finally free from your parents vicegrips. This is what defines who you'll grow up to be. I see countless of IITians coming to college for grad school. They essentially come, with no intention of learning whatsoever, and flock in massive hordes to every career event they can find. They want a job. That's it. They might even get a great high paying job, but would I don't get it - is that the point of your life? To get a high paying job? Do you want your life's achievement to be the ability to go back to your neighborhood back home and have your parents brag about how successful you are? I know that that is an extremely Indian to do, and as time goes on, it frustrates me to no end. I know my parents do it, and it annoys me. I even went on to tell my mother."Mom, when people talk about Sachin Tendulkar, they don't talk about how much he makes or how big he is in the industry. They talk about his passion, his genius, and his love for the game. I am nothing close to the best in my league. There are developers who could double my efficiency and think at five times the speed that I do. If you really have to boast about me though, boast about my passion, (my genius), and the love for what I do. Not how successful I am"Had I been in India for college, I would never have said that. I was changed.EDIT II:If you want to read more about this topic and see my feedback to the points people brought up, I encourage you to go through the comments. In addition, if you are an IITian or anybody else who disagrees vehemently or otherwise with anything I have said, I've elaborated on my stance on certain issues in the comments.Read the comments in full.Mohit Agarwal's response in particular is quite brilliant.

I’m not a professor, but I was one of those students in 1984. I can’t read the mind of the professor who witnessed my sleeping up close and personal, and he never confronted me or my partner in crime. But he did recognize and scowl at me every time he saw me the rest of my days at MIT, and even once or twice on visits to campus after I graduated.And here’s where the sleeping came in: at MIT, every freshman must take three standard 90-minute classes each of the first two semesters: two semesters each of physics, chemistry, and calculus, plus electives. As luck would have it, my friend Craig and I were given course schedules with two 90 minute classes, back-to-back in the same large old lecture hall: the dreaded room 26–100 with hard wooden seats and not a lot of legroom between rows. Physics from 8:00–9:30 and chemistry from 9:40–11:10 twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.Neither of us were morning people, but we dutifully showed up for the physics class at 8:00 AM. Since we both had long legs, we soon learned to sit in the front row so we wouldn’t be cramped. Our legs just reached the edge of the 12 inch high “stage” (30 cm) at the front of the lecture hall when we stretched out. (The picture below is probably more recent than 1984, but the seats and stage set-up are identical. They may have upgraded the lighting at some point before this picture was taken. Since then the room has been more thoroughly remodeled with more comfortable chairs — better to sleep in, no doubt.)During the first class, the physics professor and subject matter were slightly interesting and kept our attention. Unfortunately, the chemistry professor’s presentation style was rather dry and regardless of how interesting the chemistry topics might have been, after 90 minutes sitting in those hard wooden seats for the physics class, and having probably not gotten a full 8 hours of sleep the night before, both Craig and I invariably fell asleep soon into the 90 minute chemistry lecture — sitting in the front row, center, with our legs stretched out resting on the edge of the lecture hall’s short stage. We slept through virtually every chemistry class for a whole semester, right in front of that poor chemistry professor’s nose. It’s not like we planned to sleep, it just happened. And I’m sure the chemistry professor knew that more than a handful of students in his lecture had already sat through 90 minutes of physics, probably in the same seats. He knew we were two of those students because when he entered the lecture hall, he saw that we had clearly settled in from the previous lecture.I don’t know if that chemistry professor ever learned our names — there were probably 150 students in the class. But he certainly remembered my face, I assume Craig’s face, too. For the next 3.5 years, every time he saw me in the corridor, he gave me a slight glare with a sour-looking frown on his face. Toward my senior year, he may even have forgotten why he was frowning at me, but frown he did.You might wonder how Craig and I did with our grades in that chemistry class. The answer is I don’t know or don’t remember. MIT began a policy long before we arrived in 1984 of making freshman year classes “pass/fail”. Actually it was even better — it was “pass/no-credit”. You couldn’t even *fail* a freshman class. If you got a failing score at the end of the semester, the class just wouldn’t show up on your transcript and you had to repeat it.The reason they instituted this pass/no-credit system was that freshman year at one of the hardest engineering schools in the country was a real pressure cooker for students, most of whom had been at the top of their class in high school. By definition, half of the students at any college in any course are above the median and half are below it. Former valedictorians and straight-A students were now finding themselves “below average.” Many couldn’t deal with it and suicide was common. The university solved the problem for freshman by making all the classes officially pass/no-credit on the school transcript. However, each student was told their grade, so they could calibrate their study methods, or whatever they needed to do if they were unsatisfied with their performance. But knowing that a B or a C or a D or an F would never show up on their transcript kept them from throwing themselves off tall buildings (the most popular suicide method at the time).So Craig and I passed chemistry. I was a good student, I kept up with my reading and problem sets, and I utilized sessions with teaching assistants when needed. I believe I got a B. I was satisfied with that, especially considering that I slept through virtually every lecture!I had every intention of staying awake for each chemistry class, but the monotone delivery, the ability to stretch out, and having to sit in the same uncomfortable seat for what would be just over 3 hours was no match for my desire to stay awake. I felt bad for that professor, but not bad enough to sit further back where my snoozing would be less noticeable, but I would get cramps sleeping in some odd position!As a side note, I worked hard that first semester of my freshman year and got As and Bs (which of course were recorded as “passes” on my transcript). I had proven to myself that I could handle coursework at MIT. When the second semester of freshman year came, with more 90-minute physics, chemistry, and calculus courses, plus electives, I worked as diligently as I had the first semester. But then spring came, along with spring fever. I wanted to be outside. Some of my classrooms had huge windows looking out onto sunny, fresh, green lawns with trees, squirrels, and crocuses; students lounging in the sun, riding their bikes, playing frisbee, or kicking around a soccer ball.At the beginning of the semester, the professors had told us how each course would be graded — what final score would be needed for each grade. When that spring fever hit, I quickly calculated how many “points” I had earned to date, and how many points I would need from each future problem set, and what scores I would need on my semi-final and final exams in order to get a low C grade, or C-minus. In one class (Pascal programming), I realized I could do virtually no more work, get a zero on my final exam, and still pass with a C. (I did some work and took the final exam anyway.) When I reached the threshold of a guaranteed C-minus in the other classes, I dialed my work way back, went out into the sun, played frisbee, and enjoyed the spring weather knowing two things: 1) my experience during first semester showed that I could hack it at MIT, getting As and Bs when I worked diligently, and 2) that I would get passing grades for each of my second semester classes, even if the un-official grade reported to me would be a C. My friends thought I was nuts, but it worked. In the end I received two Cs, two Bs, and one A in my music elective. I could live with that, and I returned as a sophomore with the same strong diligent work ethic that I knew would get me through the next three years with solid grades.Despite my cleverness, the chemistry professor continued to glare and scowl at me for those three years. I could live with that, too.