Beginning: how

BITS has been one of the favorite DLP for a lot of Indian organizations. When I was in Wipro, I regularly saw particular type of people at their particular juncture in life opting for BITS.

In my current org, Microsoft India, a good chunk of employees are (or at least in the beginning were) expats most of them are MS (or MS+) from reputed US universities. So a post grad course, that too a correspondence course does not have the same ring as it had in wipro. But then there is not point in not doing something just to be "in". And at my current financial, family condition this is the thing that is most optimal for me to do.

So here is how one starts with BITS DLP. It needs definite commitment from your employer which is most of the times your immediate boss. It also needs a good mentor, preferably from the same org, and you are all set to go. Most of the orgs are ready to pay the full/partial cost of the 

You should monitor  BITS Admission notice page in the month of September/October for new applications. The application procedure works in two steps where we first apply for admissions with a demand draft of 800 rs (900 if not payable at Pilani), definitely this may change with time. Around mid/end November they go through all the applications. If you are coming in from a good-to-ok org and have good mentor and fill the forms completely, I think you are good to go.

I manged to screw up the DD, but BITS DLP was good enough to contact me and allow me to ratify my mistake.

Once your application is accepted you are given around a month to pay the admission and first semester fee. It is 20000 rs per semester. The admission fee is 10000 rs. Most of the companies reimburse this as mentioned earlier.

BITS DLP home page contains most of the info and updates and is one window of contact and update. I tried to go through other channels to contact BITS (phone/email/online query) and the response was not optimal. But I would rather give BITS benefit of doubt here as the problem was with me and BITS took care by contacting me on their own. So maybe it is part of their streamlined process.

In the mid of December once your admission procedure is complete you are given choices to choose between different courses distributed over four semesters. Some of the courses are mandatory for each semester, whether as others can be distributed over the three semesters (forth semester is for the paper writing). These courses cover a gamut of subjects generally covered by any respectable degree/post grad course. So no surprises here.

I just had a look at subjects I chose for first semester and the reference books etc. The books look familiar and builds on whatever was studied for the degree course. So the syllabi look achievable with 6 hours of work per week. 

I had a peek at one of the previous year's question paper and the questions look descriptive and I think you should reply like a person with a degree and industrial experience to get good grades.

I will discuss my first semester subjects, their syllabi, reference books, my plan of studies etc in my next few blogs.

28/12

P.S. One addition/clarification to the comments I already made. The syllabus as well as the choices have been decided with a lot of thought. The issue, if any, is that the decisions are generic and conservative. So do not catch the eye immediately.

Some of the courses are divided in two parts: for CS students and for students who are taking it for the first time. You can even decide the direction though not very pointed selections as they need to be generic.