Posts tagged sunclub

We organized the Inductions for Sun Club of NIT Trichy recently.  The induction procedure was a two-level one, an online test followed by personal interviews.

We conducted the online test on 24th August. The response for the inductions was overwhelming. I expected a turnaround of about 40 students, but we had about 100 students in the lab. In fact, we could not accommodate all of them, and we had to make special arrangements. The students were tested on their logical and analytical skills, computer knowledge, basics of programming and Java.

We faced various technical challenges before the start of the test. We were trying out the quiz module of the Pragyan CMS for the first time. We had no clue about how it actually functioned, whether the cookies would time out before the students submitted their test and whether the database would be properly updated with the correct scores.

Many students did not know their login passwords, and we had to modify their passwords and activate their accounts manually – and we had to do this really fast, since we had very less time. But my friends helped me out in getting things done in time.

Here are some of the questions asked in the online test:

1. What is the first program that executes after you power on your computer?
2. main() { int *a, *s, i; s = a = (int *) malloc( 4 * sizeof(int)); for (i=0; i<4; i++) *(a+i) = i * 10; printf(“%d\n”, *s++); printf(“%d\n”, (*s)++); printf(“%d\n”, *s); printf(“%d\n”, *++s); printf(“%d\n”, ++*s); }
   What is the output?
3. Pavi wrote a program Test.java. It compiled successfully. All it does is read a file and print its contents. During execution, where does the program reside?
4. What is the name of Google’s operating system?
5. What is the biggest threat to Free and Open Source Software aka FOSS?

About 30 students were shortlisted based on the online test and interviews were held in the weekend. After two days of interview sessions, 8 students were finally selected as members of the Sun Club.

It was a great experience for me too. Going ahead with organizing an online test, hoping that everything goes on smooth and making sure that the most enthusiastic minds find the doors open to the Sun Club was a mammoth task. And it all ended well ….