How are the interview questions for IIIT Hyderabad for the UGEE? How should I prepare for them? And what are the chances of clearing the interview? Here’s how my UGEE interview process went.

My friend had the opportunity to appear for the Dual Degree Programs interview. She shared her entire experience with me. Once the document verification was done, the candidates were divided into seven groups. 20 minutes before the interview, she was given a sheet with 3 questions one each from Physics, Linguistics, and Mathematics.

1. (a) Since Newton’s First Law of Motion can be derived from the second law of Motion, what do you think is the relevance of the first law? Did Newton give us three laws when two would have been adequate?

          (b) A similar Mechanics question which I don’t remember.

2. A Linguistics Question of Medium Difficulty
3. You are given an equilateral triangle of side length ‘a. Disprove or Prove: Among any five points inside the triangle, there always exists a pair at a distance not greater than a/2.

The candidates were not asked to write the answers but just ponder on the questions for 20 minutes. Soon she was ushered into the interview room where she was welcomed by several warm panelists that asked questions like

• Why IIIT and Why Research?
• Tell us about your family and school education.
• Do you like linguistics?, to which she said that she loved Tamil. He asked further, Do you find the present web applications in Tamil efficient? 
• Which field in Computer Science do you like the most?
• Do you have any experience working with Cryptography?
• Where do you see yourself in ten years?

Out of the 3 questions handed in earlier, she was able to solve the  Lingo question and even managed to write some satisfactory reasons for the Physics questions but failed to solve the Mathematics question. They further asked questions related to Friction, Work, and Energy. They did not ask the linguistic one and moved on to the mathematical question. They asked her to solve it with their help.

She told them about her extracurricular achievements and they seemed to be impressed. One of the professors ended the interview by saying that if she got selected, she should come with her extracurricular file then. The entire interview lasted for 50 minutes and she considers it to be one of the most memorable interviews.