What Dual Degree has meant for me

When I first read about the dual degree course at IIIT-H i thought they were referring to a B.tech + M.Tech combo just like you have in the IIT's. What I didn't know was that It was B.Tech + MS/R. The following was a sequence of events that led to the dual degree students slowly, but surely drifting away from the rest of the people.

• Special lunches for dual degree students in our 4th semester. These lunches acted as a medium for formal exposure to the various research centers. I remember some CSE/ECE students also joining us (illegally of course :D ) for these lunches. I remember Sumeet Joon telling me that we were lambs being fed before a slaughter. I now agree
• Then came 5th semester. All DD students were to pursue honors. Even people like me whose CGPA's were barely holding onto 7 mark were plunged into the abyss of research. Honors means extra projects(real projects and not messengers/firewalls) and extra IT electives.
• No BTP. I don't know if this was good or bad, but seeing the kind of arbit grading that was done, I'm sure a BTP would have been a saga of frustration.
• And now finally when everybody has left, here we are spending days in research centers with most people sifting through papers and trying to XoR two papers to get a new one. Further screwed are those people in centers like CSTAR . My guide has made it abundantly clear that the lab has no funds. Boohooo :(

What DD has meant for me personally

I have been a rather ordinary student if CGPA is a good measure. But what CSD did make me do was help put all the mediocrity of my first two years behind me. Here was a new challenge of picking up a stream of CS and excelling in it. I was in my second year amazed by the technology behind video. So I promptly went to Jawahar and expressed my interest in working with video and more specifically with video compression/encryption. The Big 'J' told me to register for DIP and PR. I had no interest in these courses and I made that clear to Jawahar. For those who do not know Jawahar, he has a "It's either my way or the highway" attitude. I left CVIT as fast as I had rushed in. I then thought of approaching stuff from the encryption side of things. In IIIT(unfortunately) crypto == Venkaiah, but(fortunately) as fate would have it, Prashant Jaikumar suggested with a rather grim tone that I should work with K.Srinathan as opposed to Venkaiah. 2 years of work with K.Srinathan have enabled me to excel at crypto and information security, in my own small way. The stuff that I picked up from K.Srinathan helped open a lot of doors for me, including an 6 month internship at RSA labs, the home of cryptography. I would most certainly not have had the urge to study like the way I did, had I not been in dual degree. In a way, if I ever make anything out of myself in the technical sphere in my life, I would say that the pressure of being in CSD was the single most important thing that turned my academic life around in college.

But having said all that, Dual degree should be an M.Tech with an option to go for Ms/R if you want to. The most important thing is that Ms/R has to be driven by self motivation and passion. You can't do Ms/R by default. You can still go through the motions and complete your courses to receive an M.Tech. Dr.Sangal argues that students who have joined the Dual degree program must complete their MS as they have given that commitment while joining the DD course. Anybody with an ounce of intelligence and common sense would agree that it is ludicrous to expect a 12th student to properly understand the concept of MS/R and be committed to it. It is only after 3 semesters that the reality of MS/R starts to sink in. This is not a good arrangement. And how this could escape the scrutiny of the experienced faculty we have, baffles me!

The coming year will be a great challenge for IIIT on many fronts. There will be about 150 Ms/R students all people put together (DD + PG) This is going to stretch resources to the limit. I wonder how defences will be carried out and students will be payed. I sincerely hope for the best.