Placement Assistance Question:

It had 4 sections(2 1/2 hrs)
1. Analytical Aptitude: 15 mins 15 Qs
2. Quantitative Aptitude: 30 mins 30 Qs
3. Engineering Test :13 Qs, 1 hr
4. C/Java Test 15-20 Qs, 45 mins

The first 2 are ultra-cool, no probs at all.
The fun starts with the third one:
Those thirteen questions are completely based on your problem solving capacity:
There are questions based on data-structures like
-height of a tree,
-finding second largest number in an array
-questions using finite automata
- write a pgm to find whether a m/c is little endian or big endian
- lots on bit-wise manipulation
i could answer 8 out of 13 qs very well.
The 4th test on C/Java(i took C): is almost the same as the third one with questions like
- print a number in hexadecimal format without using sprintf
- optimise the computations in the recursive "nth fibonacci number" algo without using iteration(fairly simple)
"Instead of using return(fib(n-2)+fib(n-1)), use init lofib=0,hifib=1, start with n=2,lofib=hifib;hifib=fib;fib=lofib+hifib"
-given any number say 12, find the next multiple of 8 eg 16 using bit-wise manipulations.
-exchange the integers in a matrix across the secondary diagonal(or non-major diagonal)
i tried hard but couldn't get a common formula for all cases.
and many more. No data structures book can directly help.
one should have very good capacity to solve problems in a very efficient manners.
One drawback about the test is that it is very lengthy.
They could have kept some qs for the interview. Nobody can attempt 28 programs in 1 hr 45 mins