One of my friends is currently in his first year of M.tech CS at ISI Kolkata. Here are some crucial insights regarding the academics and placements according to his experience.

Academics: 

• If you have a CS background in your under graduation too, then all subjects in the first year will be mostly repetition for you. You can also check the exact list on the ISI website. However, many people with a CS background say that they have learned things in a much-refined way.
• In the second year, you finally get to choose subjects based on your interest which will help you in your final thesis.
• ISI is quite famous for cryptography but you can also find good thesis projects in prestigious fields like Machine learning, Image processing, Algorithms, VLSI, cognitive science, etc. Also, you get good guidance in all of these.

Placements:

ISI is particularly famous for statistics. So, most companies coming for placements offer Data science profiles. Very few companies would be offering developer job roles. So regarding the placements, it’s the best place to grab data scientist roles with lucrative packages. In the recent placement highlights, the average and highest CTC offered was 19.80 LPA and 42 LPA. 

Overall, ISI Kolkata is an amazing place to pursue your M.Tech in CS. The great academics and placement record indeed make it a haven for students associated with CS, mathematics, and statistics fields.