I spent 3 wonderful years in ISI from August 2002 to May 2005 doing a maths degree, and have made some fantastic friends for life there.
The degree prepared us extremely well for preoblem solving, not necessarily mathematical. The course work was very flexible, and teachers were teaching as much as the class could take. This meant the course almost always ended at a higher note than what the teacher was expecting when the course started. Writing exams was very exciting; mainly because of the uncertaintly involved. There was no fixed exam pattern and hence solving past papers meant close to nothing because of the flexible coursework and the flexible exam. Plus the exams were never designed to test the memory. So we really had to solve unseen problems during exams. They actually tested our understanding, not our memory. In the final year, we even had a couple of open book exams and a couple of take home exams. There was no way one could have hoped to pass those exams by picking up some text book and mugging up from the front cover to the back cover. In hindsight, it sounds scary to face an exam without any prior knowledge about the exam pattern (as in lots of short questions or just 2-3 really testing questions or a combination of the two and etc.), but it was an absolute fun while we were at it.
What made exams even more exciting was the way we prepared for them. We, the whole batch, mostly prepared together, and had so much fun at it that an outsider looking would get confused if we were preparing for an exam or celebrating India’s win in cricket. There was never any competition between us. The main reason being we were motivated to understand maths and there was almost zero motivation coming from the future high-salary jobs. The togetherness was developed through the years via the loads of time spent together in sports, reading books, watching movies and afternoon walks. We played TT, badminton, cricket, football, volley-ball, carrom and had a very good collection of books and movie discs in the library.
ISI to me was a perfect combination of a joyful extra-curricular big bash and building mathematical knowledge.
