Atul Karmarkar.Com» Education http://www.atulkarmarkar.com Around Pune, Technology, Investing, Living it Up Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:27:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Techniche ’09 at IIT Guwahati http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/techniche-09-at-iit-guwahati/ http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/techniche-09-at-iit-guwahati/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:20:08 +0000 Atul Karmarkar http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/?p=1128 Guys, here’s the eleventh edition of Techniche, the annual techno-management bonanza at IIT Guwahati.

Techniche

Techniche is a platform which allows you to interact with the best minds in the world, pits you against the fiercest of competitors, and displays to the youth the marvels of modern technology. 

From intelligent robots to high soaring gliders, from coding to hacking, from innovations to carefully designed B-Plans, from lectures by nobel laureates to online games ….. they have a wide plethora of events to cater to every need.

Hop over to see what is on offer as well as how you can participate and make a difference !!

 

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]]> http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/techniche-09-at-iit-guwahati/feed/ 0 Delhi High Court permits CFA June 2009 exams in India http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/delhi-high-court-permits-cfa-june-2009-exams-in-india/ http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/delhi-high-court-permits-cfa-june-2009-exams-in-india/#comments Sat, 04 Apr 2009 14:20:23 +0000 Atul Karmarkar http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/?p=975 The Delhi High Court has allowed the US based CFA Institute to conduct it’s June 2009 exams in India. The exam is to be held on June 07th, and according to the institute, close to 8,400 Indian students have registered. The Court has not passed any ruling with regard to the December 2009 exam though.

After all the furore a couple of years ago about the validity of it’s CFA degree in India, the institute had stopped accepting fresh registrations in India. However, this process was restarted with the option of appearing for these exams outside India. They also plan to open a test centre in Mumbai for their students in India, though the location is yet to be finalised. 

Some of my colleagues are planning to appear for the June exams, and I guess they can do so in India itself now. Last December, another colleague gave the exams in Singapore. The institute had sent a mail to candidates on April 02, asking if they would like a change of centre for the June exams, and I’m sure candidates will be only too happy to take up the offer. :D

 

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]]> http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/delhi-high-court-permits-cfa-june-2009-exams-in-india/feed/ 2 Campus Radio at IIT Bombay http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/campus-radio-at-iit-bombay/ http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/campus-radio-at-iit-bombay/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:38:03 +0000 Atul Karmarkar http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/?p=954 Wow, it was nice to hear the students at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB), have rolled out Campus Radio. This is a web based LAN radio station along the same lines as Harvard, MIT and Yale, and which has stuff like travelogues, book reviews, campus life, city, national and international news, music, gadget reviews, movie reviews and even a kavi sammelan !! :D

Started by five students and hosted three days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday), the show is mainly in Hindi with some English as well… mainly to cater to those coming from rural areas.

The total setup cost was also not too much (around Rs.8,000), which was used to purchase the microphones, laptop mixer, cords and headphones.

Pretty neat huh… :)

 

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]]> http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/campus-radio-at-iit-bombay/feed/ 0 Pan-IIT 2008 Global Conference http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/pan-iit-2008-global-conference/ http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/pan-iit-2008-global-conference/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:12:27 +0000 Atul Karmarkar http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/?p=591 The Pan-IIT 2008 Global Conference is to be held between December 19 and 21 this year, and around 3,000 IIT alumni, 2000 students and 200 delegates are expected to attend the event at IIT Madras. You can register at http://www.paniit2008.org.

PanIIT 2008 Presentation – IIT Alumni Global Conference

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: conference alumni)

They aim to kick off with an inaugual address by the PM via a live feed.  Some other speakers are Dr.Raghuram Rajan, Dr. Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institute, Bob McDonald, COO of P & G, three Tata CEOs -  B. Muthuraman (Tata Steel), S. Ramadorai (TCS) and Ravi Kant (Tata Motors), in dialog with Prof. C.K. Prahlad.

Orkut Buyukkokten (Product Manager, Google), the creator of the social networking site Orkut will also interact with students via live feed, and the valedictory keynote will be delivered by Nobel Laureate Prof. Amartya Sen.

Among other items on the agenda, they plan to release The IIT Alumni Impact Study 2008 (pdf), a joint exercise by Pan-IIT, India Brand Equity Fund (IBEF), Zinnov Management Consulting, and sponsored by Vodafone. Some of the findings are probably debatable, and I’m not entirely convinced, but I’ll share my thoughts on that later. :)

 

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]]> http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/pan-iit-2008-global-conference/feed/ 2 Financial crisis casts shadow over IIM placements http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/financial-crisis-causes-problems-iim-placements/ http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/financial-crisis-causes-problems-iim-placements/#comments Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:30:10 +0000 Atul Karmarkar http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/?p=508 The financial meltdown that led to the collapse of institutions like Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs is now giving sleepless nights to placement coordinators in premier institutes like the IIMs.

This time of the year usually sees a flurry of activity as these institutes disclose data regarding the pre-placement offers made to 2nd year students. However, it’s all “quiet on the western front” for now. Recruiters like Lehman Brothers used to be the top cats on campus, grabbing available talent on Day Zero, offering mind-numbing salaries. All that is history now, and we’re likely to see traditional firms back in the swing of things. Given the scenario in the US, most students are also likely to take up offers from companies in India with rupee salaries. 

This has also affected those already employed with these leading lights of yore, as, faced with a bleak future (either be pink slipped or sign tough contracts), these employees have started looking out for more stable jobs, and are willing to consider a cut in their CTC.

 

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]]> http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/financial-crisis-causes-problems-iim-placements/feed/ 0 Get admission to IIT Kharagpur with 5% in JEE Physics http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/get-admission-to-iit-kharagpur-with-5-in-jee-physics/ http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/get-admission-to-iit-kharagpur-with-5-in-jee-physics/#comments Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:27:06 +0000 Atul Karmarkar http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/?p=500 Yes, that’s true, but I guess you’re not shocked, since you already knew that last year, cut off marks for the IIT JEE plunged to single digits.

And now, students can join IIT-Kharagpur inspite of scoring 5% in the Physics paper of the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) this year. According to information revealed by IIT Roorkee thanks to an RTI application from a computer sciences professor in IIT Kharagpur, the lowest marks in individual subjects this year are 6% in Maths, 5% in Physics and 9% in Chemistry.

This is all due to a stupid system introduced last year, which dictates that the cutoff marks for each subject are 20 percentile, meaning the highest marks obtained by the bottom 20% of the candidates in each subject, as opposed to a more meaningful system where they could have taken the least marks of the top 20%.

As IIT JEE awards negative marks, single digit cutoffs are the norm now, and a candidate can perform badly in one subject and scrape through on the basis of performance in the other two, beating out those who perform consistently well in all three papers but lose out on aggregate.

Unfair? You bet it is, especially in the job market, when these guys command a premium simply due to the ”IIT” tag.

 

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]]> http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/get-admission-to-iit-kharagpur-with-5-in-jee-physics/feed/ 0 Get your IIM CAT score by SMS and email http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/iim-cat-score-by-sms-and-email/ http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/iim-cat-score-by-sms-and-email/#comments Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:26:40 +0000 Atul Karmarkar http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/?p=416 Yup, according to an article in the TOI, it seems the results of the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2008, to be conducted by the IIMs on November 16, will be available on SMS and e-mail. The results will be declared on January 9, 2009.

According to Satish Deodhar, Faculty in charge of Post Graduate Programme Admissions,

“We realised that the candidates had to wait for hours before they could get through their roll numbers to see the scores. We had put this on a trial run in CAT 2007 as well and got a very good response. So we decided to introduce this in the CAT bulletin.”

He also said they have millions of people logging on to their site to check their own results as well as those of their friends, relatives and students, so this move would hopefully ease the strain on their official website.

 

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]]> http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/iim-cat-score-by-sms-and-email/feed/ 2 And now, quotas for IIT faculty http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/quotas-for-iit-faculty/ http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/quotas-for-iit-faculty/#comments Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:07:39 +0000 Atul Karmarkar http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/?p=338 The Government is now seeking to push through a quota system for even faculty at the prestigious IITs !! These quotas, for the SC/ST/OBCs, are to be introduced with immediate effect, and the government order gives the desired breakup of the quota as follows; SC - 15%, ST-7.5% and OBC - 27%.

For those teaching subjects in science and technology, posts will be reserved for Lecturers and Asst. Professors, and for subjects in management, social sciences and humanities, reservations will be applicable up to the professor level.

One IIT Director had this to say,

Some of the finest people have given up top positions and fat cheques that were offered to them in other parts of the world to come and teach in the IITs, despite the low pay scale that the government offers. With reservation in faculty positions, I see a day, not far from now, when the IITs will crumble.

Personally, I’m against reservation and quotas of any sort, especially in the education system, not because I have anything against a class or community, but simply because it is not fair to anybody. Those from the general category are left with that many less seats, and even among those from the SC/ST/OBC category, there are several who are brilliant and detest this kind of separatist treatment. I wonder why it is so tough for merit to be the deciding factor, rather than a person’s caste. 

To top it all, the HRD Ministry very graciously allows IITs to dereserve the posts after a year, if they do not get filled, which means only one thing - pre-election jingoism. It stinks !!

 

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]]> http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/quotas-for-iit-faculty/feed/ 2 Get an MBA-CFA dual degree from ICFAI http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/get-an-mba-cfa-dual-degree-from-icfai/ http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/get-an-mba-cfa-dual-degree-from-icfai/#comments Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:52:12 +0000 Atul Karmarkar http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/?p=335 You can now get an MBA-CFA, courtesy the dual degree programme from ICFAI. The duration of the course would be twenty seven months instead of a total of four years needed to complete both programmes.Graduates with 55 per cent aggregate are eligible for the dual degree programme. CA/CWAs are eligible for waivers in four subjects. The course would have 32 subjects including 20 for MBA and 12 for CFA.

Students can get waivers in the MBA stream subject to passing certain papers in the CFA stream, though the reverse is not possible. The entire programme is based on self-study and examinations.

Chartered Accountants became eligible to pursure the CFA course after a Supreme Court decision in May last year. Post course completion, they are also allowed to use the CFA designation.

There is also an exit option which students can exercise after successful completion of Stage I, meaning that they can choose to exit from Stage II of MBA and continue with Stage II of CFA or vice versa, paying reduced fees for the same.

 

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]]> http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/get-an-mba-cfa-dual-degree-from-icfai/feed/ 2 Contract cheating being outsourced to India http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/contract-cheating-being-outsourced-to-india/ http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/contract-cheating-being-outsourced-to-india/#comments Sat, 21 Jun 2008 03:29:35 +0000 Atul Karmarkar http://www.atulkarmarkar.com/?p=333 Happened to read an article in the newspaper about ‘contract cheating’ !!

Apparently, Indian brains are now very much in demand for this kind of work. British students are enlisting services of Indians on freelancer sites to help complete their course assignments in return for a fee, which could vary from £5 to £50 depending on the nature of the output, which is then passed of as their own.

It seems India is not the only such hub, with Romanians also providing these services on a lowest bid basis. This came to light due to efforts by a couple of lecturers at the Birmingham City University’s Department of Computing, who between 2004-06, found over 1000 such cases.

Now that I think of it, I do recall seeing something of this sort on craiglist, but didn’t really pay much attention to the ‘exact’ nature of the work to be done ! :)

 

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