How I got selected for the DESIS Ascend Educare Program

A blog by Anu Sharma

Hi everyone, 👋

This is my first blog in the series where I’ll be sharing my experiences of being a part of the most coveted programs in India, and in this blog, I’ll be talking about the DESIS Ascend Educare Program, the applications for which have opened up recently.

What is this program?

DESIS Ascend Educare is a six-month mentorship program for women in tech. DESIS Ascend Educare is an effort to bring together talented and intellectually curious students and provide them with exposure to the DE Shaw Group.

In the 2021 edition, a total of 75 students (35 from the second year and 40 from the third year) were selected out of over 7000+ applicants. This time the number of applicants will be bigger because MCA and MTech are also allowed which is different from last year

Why should you apply?

1. Learning, coaching, and mentoring from top minds in the software engineering domain
2. Tech courses in areas such as data structures and algorithms, problem-solving and coding skills, design thinking, programming languages, automation testing, and other core computer science topics
3. Holistic development with sessions on professional presence, communication skills, presentation skills, and more
4. Opportunities to work on projects related to tech courses under the guidance of top mentors from DESIS
5. Unparalleled first-hand industry exposure Direct interaction with DESIS leadership and opportunities to learn from their experiences
6. A chance to network with a diverse group of women from different colleges who share a passion for technology
7. A stipend of INR 50,000 for the duration of the program Strengthened readiness for interview processes conducted by top technology companies
8. Amazing goodies, books, and meal allowances as well
9. A chance to build an amazing project for your resume

Eligibility:

The program is open to women students who are enrolled in a full-time course and meet one of the following eligibility criteria:

1. Students must have demonstrated excellence in academic or professional pursuits, have a keen interest in the intersection of finance and technology and should be curious to learn more about the firm.
2. Second/third-year student in a BTech/BE program Third/fourth-year student in a five-year dual degree program (BTech + MTech, BE + ME) First-year student in a two-year MTech/MS/MCA program; or Second-year student in a three-year MCA program

How did I apply?

I came across the link for the program while scrolling through LinkedIn, and I knew instantly that I was going to give my best to get into this program. I always had a keen interest in finance as well, and DE Shaw as a firm always piqued my curiosity about the work they do.

TimeLine

1. Resume — Essays: Around August End
2. Online Challenge — Around Mid September
3. 2 Rounds of Interviews — Around September End

Each round was eliminatory in nature, so you have to give your best in every round, around 5000 students were shortlisted for the test, and then 150 were selected for interviews, in the end, 75 were selected for the program

Preparation Tips:

Resume:

1. As second-year students might not have much experience, so feel free to add any scholastic achievements from your school, add the ranks secured in entrance exams like JEE
2. Adding coding achievements will be a huge plus, as it helps you stand out from the crowd
3. Leadership experience from your clubs and societies might also help
4. Major weightage is given to your academic achievements

Essay:

1. Write your personal story, talk about how this program will benefit you and your future goals
2. Talk about why you should be chosen among all the applicants
3. Highlight the traits that make you a deserving candidate who will also work hard during the program
4. Feel free to add any links or videos, to support that — you can also refer to the video I made for my selection
5. Please don’t copy or paste from the internet

Test

• This test was taken on Hackerrank with proctoring. It comprised of three sections:
• Section 1: Aptitude: Questions included were mostly from probability, profit, and loss, and covered most of the syllabus of quantitative aptitude. the questions in this round were of medium-hard difficulty level,
• Section 2: Computer Science Fundamentals: This section comprised of questions on time complexity, DBMS, and OOPs and also some bug-finding questions
• Section 3: Coding: This section consisted of three coding questions which were of medium to hard difficulty level. One of the questions in this section was very tough, and only a few candidates were able to solve it. Hence, students who completed even half of this question were invited for further rounds.

Preparation Strategy

1. Since I had been doing competitive programming and DSA from my first year, I was able to nail the test
2. For aptitude, revise concepts of probability, permutations, and combinations, percentages, profit/loss, ratios

Technical Interview Round:

• The majority of candidates were eliminated from the previous round, and only a few reached the interview round.
• The technical interview was conducted on Hackerrank’s CodePair platform. It was an approx 45-minute round that started off with an introduction followed by the following questions.
• The interviewer first asked me about all the data structures that I was comfortable with, and I was completely honest with him and told him that I was familiar with all the basics as well as some advanced data structures. He then asked me the following questions.
• Given a number, delete that number from a linked list,: This question seems easy at first, however it was quite tricky as we are not given the head of the LinkedList. I got confused at first because I thought that I had to delete that node, however on reading the question repeatedly I realized that we only have to delete the number.
• After figuring out what the question asked of me, I explained my approach to the interviewer. He was quite satisfied with it and then asked me to code up the solution and I did.
• Design a data structure with O(1) delete, insert, get random(): This was a tough question for which I required some hints, and after that, I was able to come up with a solution. This question was then modified by the interviewer with duplicates allowed as well.
• Internal implementations of the heap, Binary Search Tree: D E Shaw is a company that focuses a lot on in-depth questions from your language. Since my language was Java, I was also asked Java-specific questions such as: Why is the Java platform independent? Declaration of arrays in Java? Memory allocation of arrays in Java
• Questions on searching algorithms. I was asked to list the searching algorithms that I was familiar with and was asked questions about binary search and ternary search.
• This marked the end of my technical interview after which I got a call that I had cleared the technical interview and was scheduled for an HR interview.

Behavioral Interview Round:

Rather than an interview, this was more like a conversation with an employee from DE Shaw, they were trying to gauge your genuine interest in the program, and whether you’ll be able to commit to them completely.

This marks the end of the application process .

Experience

My experience in the program was pretty amazing, we had a dedicated mentor with whom we had weekly sync-ups, and along with this we had various courses as well, both tech and non—tech

We also had regular assignments and tests, which helped strengthen the concepts that we learned.

And last but not the least, we got some amazing goodies throughout the program

So, give your best shot, because this is an amazing program!

All the best 🚀 !

Feel free to connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anu-sharma-2002/

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More to come, stay tuned!