Is competitive coding the only key to survive in IIIT Hyderabad?

The preconceived notion that competitive programming or CP is the only way you can survive in a coding-driven institute like IIIT Hyderabad is actually not true. The reason most people believe this is because the media covers only the achievements of CP and ICPC. There isn’t much publicity about the research culture here which is a big reason research enthusiasts consider this institute a good option.

You will be surprised to know that on average, only 5% of UG students do CP regularly, outside of the regular CP-type programming assignments in the first year. If by survival you mean getting noticed then yes, not doing CP may not get you famous here. But that does not mean you cannot survive here. 

The ones who aren’t into CP, are busy maintaining systems that actually help in making our lives easier. They work on open-source libraries from all around the world and conduct qualitative research. They publish papers in diverse fields like security, linguistics, vision, robotics, etc

If you are a student here who isn’t interested in either academics or research, you can still survive through minimal efforts.