`Appeared: 9000-9500 (approx)

`Short listed after apti on 10th sept: 515 (Including the one's whose interviews
r "to be scheduled")
`Short listed after technical: around 150 (Doesn't include the one's whose inter
views r "to be scheduled")
`Short listed after HR/Managerial: 101
The"Appeared" fig is approx. One of my friends got the form at around 8.30 am on
10th sept. & his form no. was series D-660. Considering at least 4 more series
with a thousand candidates in each as the process was on up till the noon, the a
ppeared candidates were approx around the figure I mentioned. At last the mgmt h
ad to close the main gate after 2 pm as a big crowd was still waiting outside.
The crowd had started pouring in from around 4 am in the morning, not caring eve
n for the torrential rains in Mumbai. I myself reached the venue in Kandivali at
around 5 am wading my way thru Knee deep water on the road & drenched in heavy
rains. The process started at around 7 AM with the distribution of forms and aft
er all the formalities, we were taken for the apti. The TCS volunteers were frie
ndly & efficient & there was no chaos at all despite there being such a large cr
owd.

Apti pattern:
There were 5 series of papers : v,w,x,y,z. The paper had the usual 3 sections:
1. Verbal :
10 antonyms,10 synonyms, passage,fill in the blank with sentences. The synonyms
were really tough (& were not a repeat of earlier ones except 1/2) & so was the
fill in the sentences passage.The passage was on a vague topic. It took lots of
my time but finally I solved it.
Tip to everyone: Plz prepare this section the most & allot it a bit more time to
o. It is even harder than the CAT verbal section actually. Go thru Barrons 13th
repeatedly.

2. Quanti & Logical :

This was easier. Around 50% questions were repeated. There were the problems of
the latitude & longitude, temperature, probability, highest std deviation amongs
t the given, etc.
Some questions which I remember:
1. If a student scores GPA in his semester & year as given below then calculate
his GPA for 3 year:
Sem: 2.4,3.14 .
Year: 1.3,1.9
(the figures r not exact.)

2.Match the following: Cow 1. a type of

Mammal 2. a superset of
2 more cases given

3. In a mixture, R is 2 parts and S is 1 part. In order to make S to 25% of the

mixture, how much of R is to be added?
Ans.One part of R

4. With a 4/5 full tank a vehicle can travel 12 miles, how far can it travel wit
h a 1/3 full tank Ans. 5 miles
5. A moves 3 kms east from his starting point . He then travels 5 kms north. Fro
m that point he moves 8 kms to the east.How far is A from his starting point? An
s. 13 kms
6. 3 angles or 3 sides r given.Which will form a triangle?
7. units of basic quantities :
(energy * time * time )/(mass * dist) = distance
8."$" is for doubling the value "%" is for change of sign then what is the value
$%5-%%$3+$6 .A long expression similar to this one.
9. R-rounding off, M-modulus, T-truncate M(893,10)+r( )+t( ) is asked
10.vertices edges and surfaces of a cube Ans-8,12,6
11.Questions on General computer awareness
Pick the odd one ..
1.http 2.arp 3.snmp 4.baan Ans-baan
1.linux 2.windows NT 3.sql server 4.Unix Ans-Sql server
( 2 more)
12.how many Y's r followed by F and not preceded by Z
13. largest prime no. in 8 bit computer. Ans: 251
14.e power x curves : note that the values were changed.
15. Coding decoding of words like if something is coded as this then how will u
code this(like that)
16. In the word organizational, if the first and second ,
third and forth ,forth and fifth, fifth and sixth
words are interchanged up to the last letter, what
would be the tenth letter from right?
17. In a two-dimensional array, X(9,7), with each
element occupying 4 bytes of memory, with the address
of the first element X(1,1) is 3000, find the address
of X(8,5).
18. A FILE IS TRANSFERRED FROM A PLACE TO ADESTINATION CAPABLE OF 10 KB. THEY GI
VEN SOME RATE OF TRANSFER. U HAVE FIND A EQUATION THAT BEST SUIT THIS- there wer
e a lotsa twists given in this question unlike in the previous question papers.
Tip: Keep Ur cool.
19. G (0) =1 G (1)= -1 IF G (N)=G (N-1) + G(N-2) THEN WHAT IS THE VALUE OF G (6)
?
20. WHICH ONE WILL BE THE EXACT POWER OF 2? Ans: 2048
21 .A power unit is there by the bank of the river 750 mts. A cable is made from
power unit to power a plant opposite to that of the river at 1500mts. The cost
of the cable below water is Rs. 15/- per meter ansd cost of cable on the bank is
 Rs. 12/- per meter. Then where they will cut ?

22. There were 2 series as well.

23. A Venn diagram & questions on it were asked in %. Some students just went fo
r simple figures given but actually we have to take out % of it in almost all qu
estions. SO read the quests carefully.

Critical Reasoning:
The passages were written repeatedly before asking each question. I think that w
as a trap to waste some time of the examinees before they realize the actual thi
ng.
A) One syllogisms kinda passage:
All reds r greens
All blues r white
No yellow is a white.
Some blues r reds
Etc.
& then questions were asked like: which of the following is true: a red can be a
blue but not yellow. And like that
B) The red & brown marriage passage:
There are 2 groups named Brown and red. They can't marry in the same group. If t
he husband or wife dies then the person will convert to their own group. If a pe
rson is married then the husband will have to change his group to his wife's gro
up. The child will own the mothers group.
From these a set of 4 questions were given like:
1.If the person doesn't change his group even after he is a widower or divorcee
then which of the following is necessarily true? Some sentences for checking her
e.
2.Brown's daughter is red (False)
3. If a person is red. Then his/her mother's brother belong to which group if he
is married

There was no psychometric.

After the apti they declared the results for all the batches together after arou
nd 4 hours. They put the students in 3 parts according to their apti scores. The
group of students with higher apti scores were called for technical on the next
day itself, while the ones with lower scores were told that their schedules for
interviews will be declared afterwards (the "to be scheduled candidates").The p
eople with still lower scores were told to check www.recruitment.tcs.com so that
if requirements exist they will be called in further batches.

About Technical interview:

My technical was scheduled on the next day (11 September) at 9 am. But I had to
wait until around 4.30 pm when I was called in for it My panel consisted of two p
eople. They were very friendly & cheerful & made me comfortable. Questions were:
1. So abhay, tell us something about urself excluding the things mentioned in th
e CV ( I spoke at length about myself)
2. Which r Ur fav subjects?
I: told 2/3 subjects. But they wanted more. They don't consider c & c++ as diffe
rent subs. So u have to tell 3 more subjects besides c, c++ & OOP (everyone of u
s loves these 3, right? But they too know it very well .. & hence do prepare more
subs)
3. then there were some drilling questions on OS,DS,SE etc
4. demand paging,mem allocation
5. virtual mem
6. virtual functions
7. various sorting methods
8. explain bubble sort. (gave me an array to sort) .What is it's efficiency
9. "O(n)" notation
10. explain bucket sort
11. Proxmap
12. polymorphism
13. software lifecycle
14. some questions on TOC
15. Some more questions on OS which I can't remember now.
16. Explain Ur project. (He also suggested me some improvements I could have don
e in my project. Since my project was about language translation, he asked me ab
out NLP (natural Lang processing), Artificial Intelligence, Google's foray into
NLP research etc. I think he was strong in that area. But I managed to give him
pretty satisfactory answers.)

The technical lasted for around 35 mins. Then I was told to wait outside. After
2 minutes a volunteer came & informed me that I was short listed for the HR & wa
s taken to a room for waiting. My turn for the HR round came at around 8 pm.

About HR/MR round:

It was a combined HR/MR round & was the toughest .. (Surprised? So was I We genera
lly tend to take the HR/MR round less seriously, but beware friends It's not any r
ule that they wont ask u technical questions here.)
There was a panel of 3 members for taking my HR. They were very knowledgeable an
d friendly- but u r subjected to lots of pressure during the whole interview. So
be prepared to handle REAL pressure. U can be subjected to pressure thru small
gestures & even a nod of head can make u pretty nervous at such times .When I say R
EAL PRESSURE, I mean it .
Questions were:
1. How was Ur day today (I said: a bit tough.)
2. Why tough? ( I said: I had to wait since morning .oops,I realized I shouldn't h
ave told this)
3. So u don't like waiting? (No sir, it's not like that I did the cover up in an h
onest manner.)
4. meaning of ur name: Abhay
5. So Abhay, Ur hairstyle is inspired by which actor? ( since I have got long ha
ir) This quest was really a bouncer & at this point of time, in my mind, I had b
id adieu to my chances ..obviously cursing my long locks
6. So when r u cutting ur hair short? (I: at the earliest possible date )
7. What is keeping u busy these days? ( Preparations etc)
8. Why TCS?
9. Have u applied to any companies earlier?
10. Apart from tcs, which companies will u like to work for?
11. Then they started asking technical quests. A completely grueling session of
questions on OS, memory allocation, runtime changes in the source code, SE, s/w
process mgmt,dirty page, thrashing, address translation etc
(My tip to everyone: Friends, Be thoroughly prepared. It's not easy at all. But
most importantly "be EXTREMELY confident", composed & have a smiling face almost
always.)
12. R u ready to sign a service agreement for 2 years? Do u think it's not OK fo
r a company to get the service agreements signed considering the globalization e
tc etc...
13. What if we send u for a posting at Assam? Will u be prepared to go to some r
emote place?
The HR round lasted for around 25-30 minutes. & I have successfully made it to T
CS
Hope this is useful to all the TCS aspirants.
Best wishes & get cracking .