Interview Experience
After clearing the written exam, I along with my friend appeared for the TIFR CAM(https://www.math.tifrbng.res.in/) interviews. Our interviews were held in April 4th, 2023 in the morning session. We reached Bangalore the day before our interviews, and after a two-day-long journey by train from Varanasi, we were dead tired. Anyway, I booked a hotel room in the Yehalanka area, from where our center was a walking distance away. After doing traditional South Indian vendors in the streets of Bangalore, we checked in the center, where after some formalities we were let in. The TIFR CAM is a big building with a faculty quarter, student rooms, library, and classroom all in one single building. Anyways, there were two panels for the interview, I was the first to be interviewed and my interview panel was headed by Agnid Banerjee.
After some brief introductions, I was asked to go to the board. The first question I was asked was to state the Bolzano Weierstrass theorem and use it to prove that a continuous function in [0,1] is bounded. After getting a lot of hints from the panel, I was somehow able to prove the theorem, it took about 30 minutes to prove which ideally should be solved in less than 5 minutes. Anyway, the next question I was asked was to prove that Gl(n,r) is a non-compact topological group, which I had no clue about whatsoever. The interview panel tried to give me hints, but I politely accepted that I could not prove the statement, and then they asked me to leave. I was heartbroken because I knew I would not be able to clear the interview. My friend who had accompanied me also had a similar interview experience to me. Both of us explored the city, visited places, and returned to our university after a week-long trip.