South Asian University
A University established by SAARC Nations
Minimum Eligibility
A minimum of 17 years of regular education (12 years of regular schooling + a 3-year Bachelor's degree and a 2-year Master's degree or 4-year Bachelor's degree + a 1 year Master's degree in Computer Science or allied* disciplines) from an institution recognized by the government of any of the SAARC countries, with a minimum of 55% marks or an equivalent grade. Applicants with 12 years of regular schooling + an integrated Bachelor's and Master's degree of at least 5 years duration are also eligible.
Admission Procedure
Through an Entrance Test and an Interview. The Entrance Test will be of 70 marks and the Interview including research proposal/plan and statement of purpose will be of 30 marks. The final merit will be compiled based on the overall score, giving equal weightage (i.e., 50% weightage to the Entrance Test and 50% weightage to the Interview) to both the Entrance Test and the Interview. A minimum of 50% marks will have to be secured separately, in both the Entrance Test and the Interview, in order to be considered for admission.
Those who clear the Entrance Test and are shortlisted for Interview will have to furnish a research proposal/plan and face an interview in the second phase. The research proposal/plan, is expected to be not more than 1500 words, clearly indicating a research problem along with the methodology they propose to employ. It should also indicate the candidate’s understanding of the literature in the field and the relevance of the topic of research in dealing with real-world problems.
Format of the Entrance Test Paper
Syllabus for Entrance Test:
Discrete Mathematics: Sets, Relations, Functions, Boolean Algebra, Propositional logic, First Order Predicate Logic, Lattice.
Combinatorics: Permutations, Combinations, Counting, Summation, Recurrence Relations, Binomial Theorem, Exponential Series, Pigeonhole Principle.
Probability and Statistics: Conditional Probability, Mean, Median, Mode, Standard Deviation, Variance, Covariance, Random Variable, Distributions (Uniform, Normal, Exponential, Poisson, Binomial).
Vector Analysis: Rectangular Cartesian Co-ordinates, Equations of a Line, Mid-point, Intersections etc., Equations of a Circle, Distance Formulae, Pair of Straight Lines, Addition and Subtraction of Vectors, Scalar and Vector, Product of Two Vectors, Scalar Triple Product, Vector Triple Product.
Matrices: Basic Concepts, Types of Matrices, Determinants, Transpose, Inverse and Rank of a Matrix, Matrix Algebra, Systems of Linear Equations, Eigen Values and Eigen Vectors.
Programming in C: Data Types & Qualifiers, Identifiers, Control Structures, Array and Pointers, Array of Pointers, Pointers to Array, Ragged Array, Strings, Structure, Union, Functions, Recursion, File Handling, Macros, Enumeration.
Data & File Structures: Arrays, Sparse Matrix, Linked Lists, Doubly Linked Lists, Circular Linked Lists, Stack, Queue, Priority Queue, Postfix and Prefix Representation and Evaluation, Tree, Binary Search Tree, Heap Tree, AVL Trees, B Tree, B+ Tree, Graph Representation, Properties and Traversals, Inverted List, Multi-List, Hashing and Tables.
Design & Analysis of Algorithms: Asymptotic Notations, Asymptotic Analysis (best, worst, average cases) of Time and Space, Sorting, Searching, Recursion, Graph (Spanning tree, connected component, shortest path), Divide-and-Conquer Approach, Greedy Approach, Dynamic Programming, Complexity Classes - P, NP, NP-hard and NP-Complete.
Operating Systems: Processes, Threads, Inter-Process Communication, Concurrency, Synchronisation (Semaphores, Critical Regions, Mutual Exclusion), Deadlock Handling (Bankers Algorithm), CPU Scheduling, Memory Management and Virtual Memory (Paging and Segmentation), File Systems, I/O systems, Protection and Security, UNIX and Windows, Basic UNIX Commands, Shell Programming.
Computer Networks: Local Area Networks (LAN), Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN), Wide Area Networks (WAN), OSI Model, TCP/IP Model, Encoding and Modulation, Multiplexing, Switching, Transmission Media, Flow Control, Error Detection and Correction, Multiple Access Protocols, IP Addresses, Routing Algorithms, Multicasting, Congestion Control, QoS, TCP/UDP, Application Layer Protocols.
Database Management System: ER Model, Relational Model (Relational Algebra, Tuple and Domain Calculus), Database Design (Integrity Constraints, Normal Forms), SQL/PL-SQL, Transactions and Concurrency Control, Distributed Databases, File Organization and Indexing.
Computer Architecture and Organization: Subsystems of a Computer, Instruction Formats, Addressing Modes, Processor Datapath Design, Control Unit Design, Pipelining, Memory Organization, I/O Organization, Interrupts and DMA, Parallelism.
For a sample paper, click here.
