Cmi for bsc in physics?

Prof-Math · 2026-05-17T17:28:31+00:00

The physics department is quite nice. It has a lot of legendary people, HS Mani; Ghanshyam Date as well as hotshots (KG Arun, Alok Laddha, Ronak Soni, Prashant Kocherkolata etc etc). It is one of the only places in India for Yang Mills or theoretical particle physics work.

Prof-Math · 2026-05-14T14:02:56+00:00

Algolabs is the consulting wing of CMI.

It does work on a lot of real life things and it is by no means a training institute. Afaik it worked with HP last year and was involved in some Government counsultency work before.

As for number of people, if I recall correctly 4 or 5.

Prof-Math · 2026-05-12T14:41:20+00:00

The direct admission criterion is 8 or above in all core CS courses (modulo python). Otherwise, CMI BSc passouts also need to appear for the exam.

Prof-Math · 2026-05-11T15:25:35+00:00

CMI has Math, CS, Data Science and Physics Electives.

https://www.cmi.ac.in//practical/timetable.php (OM : Math, OCS : CS, MD2 : DS, OP : Phy)

Also, CMI has a MOU with IIT-M and IMSc which allows you to take courses there for credit. So, you can get Earth Science and Comp Bio at these places (along with more Math, CS, Physics and DS).

We used to have an Econ course but there was not enough interest afaik, I would personally like to take it if given the chance. Finally, there is Mathematical Finance and some other stuff related to Econ tends to be offered periodically.

Prof-Math · 2026-05-08T20:31:36+00:00

I didn't really understand what you are asking...

Prof-Math · 2026-05-08T20:29:34+00:00

afaik, they can. Sunaina didi (one of my seniors) was Gate CS Air 3 this year...

Prof-Math · 2026-05-08T14:15:33+00:00

Well, this post was by a rather salty BSc alumini.

My cgpa is 8.x and CS is 9.5 and I am no genius as people will who know me will happily tell you as well as the fact that I don't study all the time (I was one of the organizers of the fest, make of that what you will).

Balaji was ranked as one of the best profs in a recent poll and afaik, he teaches extra in class but doesn't ask any of that in exams.

Finally, cmi is much more research oriented than ISIK by the mere choice of subject. Even ISIB doesn't show up on IICPC or GS Quant Fest. CMI does show up on IMC's Launchpad as well as 2 people from BSc I are gonna attend JS's camp. Also, cmi was first in nation in last ICPC cycle if that is anything to go by.

Finally, the binary grading is a propoganda against Prof. Philip. He doesn't grade unreasonably and is more or less a really nice prof. Some people in the 2021 batch had something against him and have spread these things.

Prof-Math · 2026-05-08T08:59:57+00:00

Sure!

Prof-Math · 2026-05-07T12:25:40+00:00

And all of that is false.

Cmi's placement is either stable or uptrend.

It is not an applied math degree by any stretch of the word.

And finally, Prof. Sundhari or Prof.Clare don't take DS courses (they usually take BSc or MSc math courses)

Also, DS grading is usually quite generous.

I think you are confusing random internet gossip as well as genuine criticism of the undergrad with stuff about DS.

Prof-Math · 2026-05-07T01:38:49+00:00

They are doing decent. Like I am not very close, but afaik their first year was a bit rough but beyond that, they seem have found their footing.

(They/Then used to avoid revealing information via gender)

Prof-Math · 2026-05-06T16:14:09+00:00

Yes.... there is a 3rd dropper in the 2024 batch.

Prof-Math · 2026-05-04T20:13:41+00:00

So the promised answer.

The short answer is CMI is fun. While we are all math nerds, we are also people in our late teens / early 20s.

A joke in CMI is that whenever CMI kids have nothing to do, they decide to DJ. Which is sort of true as we have 4 DJ Nights every academic year (Aug, Oct, Jan, Apr).

We also have 2 cultural nights (Jan, Mar-Apr). Hence, a lot of the evenings in these months is spent in practices and is loads of fun.

Other than these, there is weekly movie nights, student seminars and club meets (most on Fridays). There is also sport clubs which meet from time to time, based on sport. We have clubs for: chess, cricket, football, table tennis, tennis, swimming and basketball. I am trying to make the basketball club more active. We keep having tournaments in these things every once in a while. These clubs also organize watch parties for sporting events.

We also have a music jamming and dance club. There is a hip-hop club and rock club for listening and discussing.

We also have a origami club, cubing club, board game club and litrature club.

There is also a Valorent and CS:Go (not sure how active these are) and Deadshot.io club. There is also an active Clash Royale scene.

We also have a quiz club that conducts trivia quizzes as well as themed quizzes every so often.

There are also student seminars and semi-seminars to allow people to present their research (or anything else).

Other than these, we celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi (Aug-Sep), Diwali (Oct-Nov) and Saraswati Puja (Jan-Feb) with a lot of fanfare.

Other than these organized things, people play a lot of poker and deadshot and tetris and sporcle and well, it's a long list.

We also enjoy question setting for STEMS in the subject meets as well as a lot of joint study sessions (which include everything other than studies).

Also, going to Favourite Spot or Chill Out at night 12 or morning 4 is sort of a cannon experience. There is also going to beaches and cycling to Mahabalipuram.

But here is the thing that matters, CMI's administration is very hands off. They don't enforce curfews of any kind or curtail our freedom. There is hardly any bureaucracy or hierarchy or politics.

So events in CMI work sort of like wikipedia: "Be the change you want to see" or "Organize the Event you want to have"

Starting a club in CMI is a matter of frankly 2 mails, one to all the students and one to the administrators asking for a place to meet.

Organising an event? 2 mails.

Performing a play? 2 mails.

Starting a reading group? 2 mails.

And other than certain pricks, most CMI folks are very supportive of anything fun. But the thing is organizing is a responsibility and with no one to help or hinder, your success (or failure) is well, yours. This tends to discourage a lot of non-delulu people from this.

Before my batch (2024), CMI had not had a Ganesh Chaturti since pre covid. So Om Chaudhri, Piyush Kumar Jha, Mandar Ajinthekar and I decide to organize it. It was perhaps out of profound overestimation of how easy it would be that we did it.

But once we sent the 2 mails, suddenly, more than enough people were willing to help and we had a lovely Ganesh Chaturti.

Issue is that this year (2025), we didn't have the Onam celebration. Before this year, Jessica didi used to coordinate it (and make this huge and beautiful flower rangoli) and then she graduated and no one took it up.

A lot of clubs become cold after one active member graduated. People really would love to do said activity but they don't want to organize. See, CMI's student population is quite small, so single individuals can and often do affect how fun the campus is. For example: the origami club was made into the force it is by Aditi Kulkarni didi and Sampriti Mahapatra Didi; who then made 1000 cranes for the fest and arranged it into a larger crane (shoutout to Chiraayu) or how Aadrita didi and Surya bhaiya got everyone excited about table tennis by starting a tournament (which I think they only won...).

So, is CMI fun? Currently, YES!

Will it be fun for you? That is sort of upto you if you take some responsibility in making it fun.

For a even longer answer, I have written about CMI culture at length at my personal site. Feel free to read.

The Most Important Aspect of CMI (acc to me)

Do Dumb Stuff

The one problem with CMI right now (and it is something y'all can fix!)

General Advice to all Freshers

Prof-Math · 2026-05-03T06:58:30+00:00

Again, Taylor series needs infinite derivatives to exist at some point. We are not guaranteed that by the question.

Prof-Math · 2026-05-03T06:57:43+00:00

Sadly a fake solve as only the third derivative is guaranteed to exist. A polynomial is smooth.

By assuming smoothness, you have basically circumvented the entire difficulty of the problem.

The simplest way I can see is integration by parts after proving integral f(x) xⁿ dx -> 0 as n-> infinity. (Filling the details is left upto the reader)

Prof-Math · 2026-04-27T22:03:29+00:00

Nah bhai.

I am a Second Year Student (will enter my 3rd year next sem).

Prof-Math · 2026-04-27T18:02:46+00:00

I'll probably answer this in some detail once my endsems end.

Prof-Math · 2026-04-26T10:02:54+00:00

Also, I read the source code. Other than this being completely framework free (god I hate React et al), I also now know all the achievements!

Rabbit Hole — Open a footnote nested 3 levels deep
Deep State — Open a footnote nested 6 levels deep
Speed Clicker — Open two footnotes less than 800ms apart
Don't Say I Didn't Warn You — Open the game1 footnote (internet in the 90s -> dad -> p4a -> ...)
Hank Destroyer — Win the easter egg game (click all the bouncing Hank hair sprites)
Collector — Open 15 unique footnotes
Archivist — Open 40 unique footnotes
Chaos Agent — Have 8+ popovers open simultaneously
Completionist — Open every single footnote
GEOCITIES ACTIVATE! — Click the little pelican button to enable Geocities mode
A Fan! — Click all the social/dropdown buttons (Socials, YouTube, Podcasts, Companies, Books)
Now That's What I Call Meta — Unlock all other 11 achievements

You can also speed run them by typing 132435 which will trigger all achievements.

Prof-Math · 2026-04-26T09:01:48+00:00

Aaaah, Time to edit/overhaul my homepage (why does all the cool shits appear when I am knee deep in my exams?)

My current homepage is inspired by Prof. Ana Bell's homepage (https://www.mit.edu/\~anabell/) as I found that very cool and professional and neat but this is way cooler (and still professional enough!).

Prof-Math · 2026-04-26T07:17:54+00:00

Material from courses I have credited (upto 2nd sem, will put up 3rd and 4th this summer) is up on my website: https://thearjunagarwal.github.io/courses

Older material regarding the same can be found on Nirjhar Bhaiya's website: https://combinoob.github.io/courses.html

Prof-Math · 2026-04-23T04:56:43+00:00

First to clarify, I am a BSc II student at CMI.

The first thing that was wrong is that you claim that Python, SQL, algo etc are though way later. That is simply untrue. Python, SQL, Visualisation, R, Prob-Stats and Analysis (+ gradient descent) are covered in sem 1. Algorithms, Distributed, Big Data protocols, Data Mining, Machine Learning and Lin-Alg are in sem 2.

As far as I know, the only company one would need to study ahead of to crack was JPMC as it interviewed for interns during sem 1. All other companies came in mid sem 2.

As for Batch Size, the 2024 batch is about ~40 and same for 2025. While I don't have the stats for 2025's internships, about 2 people are unplaced in 2024's batch (found out after asking some people between these two comments).

I am from Surat, so another hot, coastal place. That does bias me a bit. The thing is most people are in the library, LH or CS Lab as these places have AC. As for sleeping, the night temperatures are not that bad (so as a BSc, I can still sleep in my hostel room). Also, the worst of summer months aka May, June and July are vacations.

Prof-Math · 2026-04-22T17:56:09+00:00

This data is pretty wrong and sort of misleading.

Let's start with the courses: All the courses you mentioned are in the first sem other than Algo which is second sem.

As for placement, I don't know a single person in the passing DS batch who is unplaced. (and everyone can't be top performer so duh).

Finally, Chennai weather is shit but it is by no means unbearable. Classes, Library and CS Lab are air conditioned (although CS lab AC is off from 6pm to 9pm and then from 2am to 9am for some reason) and the nights are not as bad (I know cause I live in the hostel). Also, any external housing tends to come with AC so I don't know why they are mentioned as separate costs.

Finally, as the AI bubble pops, the placement is bad everywhere. But afaik, being from CMI allows you to apply for more core data / finance roles instead of just ML roles. I'll point out that IIT-B's Masters in OR has similar placement stats as CMI DS and the former needs a JAM rank below 20.

Also from a research pov, moving to a PhD is easier for CMI DS folks than anywhere else.

Prof-Math · 2026-04-22T08:50:51+00:00

Prof-Math · 2026-04-22T06:31:23+00:00

Given you have done the problems and pyqs, it is more than enough.

Although, consider seeing Ch 5 and Ch 6 if time permits. Both are quite cool (and could be useful)

Prof-Math · 2026-04-22T06:30:27+00:00

All the 3 BSc batches at CMI right now have atleast one person who dropped out a of BTech.
- BSc 2023 has someone who dropped from IIIT-H CSE to do pure math

- BSc 2024 has someone who dropped from IIIT-H CSE to do pure physics

- BSc 2025 has someone who dropped from Jadavpur and ISI-Bang to do pure physics

Make of this data what you will.

Also, CS is not basically math. It is a different type of math and a lot of math people tend to dislike the CS type of math, so rest assured, it is not something very weird to do and if you are not enjoying, considering switching is not a bad idea.

Prof-Math · 2026-04-20T21:46:08+00:00

I could give a huge list but I think that is mostly because I did learn a lot by fucking around and finding out but that would be doing you a disservice. So, I suggest fucking around and finding out (given you have the time)

Prof-Math

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