IITM BS Diploma PYQ practice works best when you know which topics IITM asks most. BTechi has 76 Diploma level papers from 15 courses: 55 End Term papers, 10 Quiz 2 papers and 11 Quiz 1 papers. Every paper has its official answer key, and you can download any paper as a free Diploma PYQ PDF. We tagged each question by topic, so for every course we can show you the topics with the most questions and the question types that repeat. This guide lists them course by course, with direct links to each paper, topic sheet and most repeated sheet.
The short version: in most Diploma courses, two or three topics carry a large share of past questions. In Tools in Data Science, one topic (Apache log analysis) alone gives 30% of all tagged questions.
New to the Diploma level? Read the complete guide to the IIT Madras BS degree for how levels and exits work. Still finishing Foundation? Start with our Foundation End Term PYQ guide.
How the Diploma level is organised#
In the BS in Data Science, the Diploma level has two diplomas. You can do either one or both:
- Diploma in Programming: Database Management Systems (DBMS), Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms using Python (PDSA), Modern Application Development I and II (MAD 1, MAD 2), Programming Concepts using Java, and System Commands.
- Diploma in Data Science: Machine Learning Foundations (MLF), Machine Learning Techniques (MLT), Machine Learning Practice (MLP), Business Data Management (BDM), Business Analytics (BA), and Tools in Data Science (TDS). BTechi also has a Quiz 1 paper for Introduction to Deep Learning and Generative AI.
The BS in Management and Data Science shares many of these exams. It also has its own Diploma courses, such as Corporate Finance and Managerial Economics. The official course lists and rules are on the IIT Madras BS academics page. Always check them there, because course lists change between batches.
IITM BS Diploma PYQ at a glance#
You can browse them all from the Diploma PYQ page.
Diploma in Data Science PYQ: important topics#
Machine Learning Foundations (MLF)#
MLF is the maths course of the Diploma. Optimisation dominates: Lagrange multipliers and KKT has 23 questions, and 22 of them are from End Terms. Next come functions of random variables and Gaussians (11) and SVD and PCA (10).
Most repeated types: decide which functions are convex (5 times), optimise profit or cost under a linear constraint with Lagrange (5), check if a complex matrix is Hermitian or unitary (5), and find a joint pdf with a Jacobian (4). Practise them in the MLF most repeated sheet. Latest paper: MLF End Term Aug 2025 forenoon.
Machine Learning Techniques (MLT)#
MLT has the most Diploma papers on BTechi (8). Support vector machines lead with 26 questions, all from End Terms. Then come PCA and kernels (17) and Naive Bayes and generative models (14).
Many MLT questions ask you to run an algorithm by hand: a neural network forward pass with ReLU or sigmoid (4 times), the perceptron on a small dataset (3), one round of AdaBoost (3), and Lloyd's k-means from given centres (3). The MLT most repeated sheet collects them. Latest paper: MLT End Term Aug 2025 forenoon.
Machine Learning Practice (MLP)#
MLP is scikit-learn and pandas in practice. BTechi has 3 End Term papers. The questions spread evenly: cross-validation and hyperparameter search (12), pandas data loading and cleaning (11), and preprocessing and pipelines (10).
Repeated types: compute values in a recommender data table (4), how learning_rate behaves in SGDRegressor (3), drop rows with missing values in given columns (3), and valid scoring strings for cross-validation (3). Know the exact parameter names. Use the MLP most repeated sheet and the MLP End Term Aug 2025 forenoon paper.
Business Data Management (BDM)#
BDM questions are case-based calculations. The top topics are Excel tools and charts (15), inventory and supply chain (15) and manufacturing and OEE (14). Repeats: market share from a sales table (5), total revenue (4), and OEE (4).
Solved example 1 (BDM End Term, Aug 2025 FN). Planned production time is 480 hours and 48 hours are lost. Design speed is 200 units per hour and actual speed is 180. The plant made 77,760 units, of which 74,772 are good. Find OEE.
- Availability = (480 − 48) / 480 = 432 / 480 = 90%.
- Performance = actual speed / design speed = 180 / 200 = 90%.
- Quality = good units / total units = 74,772 / 77,760 = 96.16%.
- OEE = 0.90 × 0.90 × 0.9616 = 77.9%. The official key accepts 77 to 78.
Check: 432 hours × 180 units per hour = 77,760 units, which matches. Try the full BDM End Term Aug 2025 forenoon paper and the BDM most repeated sheet.
Business Analytics (BA)#
BA has 159 tagged questions. Logistic regression and classification leads with 34. Then data envelopment analysis (DEA) has 25, linear regression 22 and chi-square goodness-of-fit 20.
BA repeats more than most courses. Precision from a confusion matrix (8 times), recall or specificity (8), output targets for an inefficient DEA unit (8), interpreting a logistic coefficient as log-odds (6), and conjoint attribute importance (6). Learn the confusion matrix formulas until they are automatic. Practise with the BA most repeated sheet and the BA End Term Aug 2025 forenoon paper.
Tools in Data Science (TDS)#
TDS is the most concentrated course in our data. Apache log parsing and filtering gives 42 of 138 questions (30%). LLM prompting, cost and system prompts gives 22 and dev tools (IDEs, uv, Git, DevTools) gives 16.
Repeated types: which Chrome DevTools tab shows network requests (5), Python libraries for geospatial work (4), the role of a system prompt (4), what drives LLM cost and speed (4), and the order of steps in a RAG system (4). See the TDS most repeated sheet and the TDS End Term Aug 2025 forenoon paper.
Diploma in Programming PYQ: important topics#
PDSA#
PDSA questions are spread across many topics, but six lead: trees, BST and AVL (18), graphs, BFS, DFS and topological sort (18), dynamic programming (14), greedy algorithms (14), complexity (14) and sorting (14).
Repeats: relate edges and vertices with n(n − 1)/2 (6), Huffman code lengths (6), Dijkstra's visit order (5), valid LP constraints for a word problem (5), and the possible quicksort pivot (4).
Solved example 2 (PDSA End Term, Aug 2025 FN). An undirected graph has 300 edges. What is the minimum number of vertices it must have?
- A simple undirected graph with n vertices has at most n(n − 1)/2 edges.
- We need n(n − 1)/2 ≥ 300, so n(n − 1) ≥ 600.
- n = 24 gives 24 × 23 = 552, too small. n = 25 gives 25 × 24 = 600. So the answer is 25.
Practise more in the PDSA most repeated sheet and the PDSA End Term Aug 2025 forenoon paper.
DBMS#
The top DBMS topics are SQL queries and their output (16), recovery, logs and backup (15, all from End Terms), B+ trees and index (13) and storage, disks and buffers (13).
Repeats: how many backup sets to load for full recovery (5), which functional dependencies hold in a relation instance (5), reading cardinality from an ER diagram (5), data values on disk after a crash (4), and block nested-loop join cost (4). The recovery questions are pure procedure, so they are easy marks after practice. Use the DBMS most repeated sheet and the DBMS End Term Aug 2025 forenoon paper.
Modern Application Development I (MAD 1)#
MAD 1 is Flask-heavy. Requests, forms and HTTP errors has 23 questions, Flask routes 20, templates and Jinja2 19 and models and databases 19.
Repeats: predict a route's output for given query strings (6), output of a function wrapped by a decorator (5), Jinja2 for-loop output (4), child templates with extends and block (4), and CSS specificity (4). See the MAD 1 most repeated sheet and the MAD 1 End Term Aug 2025 forenoon paper.
Modern Application Development II (MAD 2)#
MAD 2 tests JavaScript and Vue. The top topics are Celery, queues, webhooks and SSE (19), promises, async/await and the event loop (19) and Vue reactivity, computed and watchers (16).
The most repeated type is ordering console output of an async function that uses await (5 times). Then: tracing a promise chain with throw and catch (4), and data changes in beforeCreate and created hooks (4). Practise event-loop order until you can do it on paper. Use the MAD 2 most repeated sheet and the MAD 2 End Term Aug 2025 forenoon paper.
System Commands#
System Commands is about the Linux shell. Top topics: regular expressions and grep (16), awk, sort and text filters (15), Bash scripting (14) and shell expansion and redirection (14). The most repeated type is reading a crontab entry (4 times).
Solved example 3 (System Commands End Term, Aug 2025 AN). For the crontab entry */12 * * * *, how many times will the job run in a day?
- The five fields are minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week.
*/12in the minute field means every 12 minutes, starting at 0: minutes 0, 12, 24, 36 and 48. That is 5 runs per hour.- The hour field is
*, so this happens every hour: 5 × 24 = 120 runs a day.
The trap is reading */12 as "12 times an hour". It is a step, not a count. Practise the full System Commands End Term Aug 2025 afternoon paper and the System Commands most repeated sheet.
Programming Concepts using Java#
Java questions are not topic-tagged on BTechi yet, so we cannot give counts. There are 6 papers. Practise them as full papers, for example the Java End Term Aug 2025 forenoon and the Java Quiz 2 Aug 2025 paper. Printable versions are on the Java sheets page.
Other Diploma courses: economics, finance and deep learning#
Managerial Economics has 111 tagged questions. Monopoly pricing and market equilibrium, taxes and subsidies have 22 each. Asymmetric information has 19, all from End Terms. See the Managerial Economics End Term Aug 2025 forenoon paper.
Corporate Finance has one paper on BTechi, the Corporate Finance Quiz 1 Oct 2025. Its 25 questions cover interest rates (6), time value of money (6), capital budgeting (5), bonds (5) and the yield curve (3).
Introduction to Deep Learning and Generative AI also has one paper, the Quiz 1 Oct 2025. 8 of its 20 questions are on parameter counts, CNNs and Inception.
With only one paper, there is no repeat data yet for these two courses. Use the paper to learn the question style, not to predict topics.
Download IITM BS Diploma PYQ PDF#
Every IITM BS Diploma PYQ PDF on BTechi is free. To download one:
- Open the question sheet of the paper you want (links below).
- Click the Save PDF button at the top of the sheet. You can also press P on your keyboard.
- In the print window, choose Save as PDF as the destination, then save.
The PDF has every question and figure, and the official answer key at the end. It is free. Print it, or keep it on your phone or tablet.
The sheet page of each course lists every paper (by year) and every topic. The most repeated sheet is the best single PDF to print before an exam.
How to use Diploma PYQs: a 4-step method#
Diploma courses are heavier than Foundation courses, and most students take two to four at once. A fixed method saves time.
- Pick the top three topics. Use the tables above. Do the topic sheet for each one first, untimed, with notes open.
- Do the most repeated sheet. These are the question types with the best return on time. Aim to get every one right.
- Sit full papers under time. Use BTechi's exam portal. Start with Dec 2024 papers and keep the newest Aug 2025 papers for the last week.
- Review with the answer key. For each wrong answer, write the cause in one line. Then re-solve only those questions in the last two days.
For printing, each course has year-wise sheets too, for example the MLT 2025 sheet and the PDSA 2025 sheet. The PYQ sheets hub lists every sheet. To browse papers by term instead, use the May 2025 term page (Aug 2025 End Terms and Quiz 2) or the January 2025 term page (Apr 2025 End Terms).
For an overview of PYQs at every level, read IIT Madras BS data science PYQ: every paper, by level. If you are still deciding between programmes, see IITM BS Management and Data Science vs Data Science.
Frequently asked questions#
Where can I download IITM BS Diploma PYQ PDF for free?#
BTechi gives each Diploma paper as an online paper with the official answer key, plus printable question sheets. Open your course on the Diploma PYQ page. From there you can sit a paper online or open the sheets page to print.
Which Diploma course has the most previous year papers on BTechi?#
Machine Learning Techniques, with 8 papers. MLF, PDSA and DBMS have 7 each. Corporate Finance and Introduction to Deep Learning and Generative AI have 1 each.
What are the most important topics for MLT?#
In BTechi's tagged papers, support vector machines (26 questions), PCA and kernels (17), and Naive Bayes and generative models (14) lead. Hand-run algorithms like the perceptron and AdaBoost repeat often.
Are Diploma End Term questions repeated?#
Question types repeat, often with new numbers. For example, precision from a confusion matrix appears 8 times in BA papers, and the crontab question 4 times in System Commands. Practise the type, not the exact answer.
Are Diploma in Data Science and Diploma in Programming exams the same for BS in Management and Data Science students?#
Many Diploma exams are shared between the programmes, and BTechi marks those courses as having the same quizzes and End Term exams. Check your own course list on the official academics page.
How many Diploma PYQ papers should I solve per course?#
Solve every End Term paper available for your course, under time. For most courses that is 3 to 6 papers. Do the topic sheets and the most repeated sheet first.
Is there topic data for Programming Concepts using Java?#
Not yet. Java papers are on BTechi with answer keys, but the questions are not topic-tagged. Practise them as full papers.