Entries Tagged 'Success Stories' ↓

Aditya Biyani
Batch of 2000-02.
IIM-Ahmedabad.

I took the CAT 99 only for the 6 IIMs. I didn’t want to go to any 2nd rung B-School. Further , I believe in “Burning your Bridges”- if you have only 6 schools, you are bound to work extra hard. I got calls from all the six IIMs and converted all 6, and here I am in IIM-Ahmedabad. My preparation was gradual and steady. I worked for about 1.5-2 hours for about 2-3 months till Aug. and then for about 3-4 hours till Oct. In Nov. I took a number of Mock CATs to fine tune my strategy.

TIPS

Be REGULAR. This is most important.

Join a coaching class, but make sure it is not a shady one.

Read a lot, specially abstract topics, like sociology, psychology… Ideally your reading speed should be around 400 words and above (depending on the type of passage) by the mid-Nov.

Pace your preparation steadily. Ensure that you “peak” around 1st week of Dec.
Practice mental maths, like 2 by 2 and 3 by 3 digit divisions. This would give you the requisite speed in Data Interpretation.

Practice Maths regularly. After taking Mock CATs , ANALYSE your mistakes, as to where you could have done better. Also make sure that you read the whole paper and not leave out any “sitters”. These are generally placed after a “toughie”.Find out your strength areas, where you need to maximise your marks.Also spend a separate 1 hour on your weak area DAILY.

All the best!

Anuj Sehgal
Batch of 1999-01
IIM-Ahmedabad.

I think there are 2 parts to preparing for CAT. Let us assume that one has to take the exam in December of year 2. The first part is to prepare and do the ground work for the more rigorous second part.

The first part of the preparation which includes improving reading speed, building ones vocabulary and increasing mental calculation speed one needs to start in say the June of year 1.

Reading speed could be increased by reading newspapers, good books on various subjects and not only fast reading but one should be able to comprehend what one reads.

Mental calculation can be increased by doing simple maths WITHOUT THE USE OF CALCULATOR. Getting rid of the calculator which becomes a habit in college is very important.

Vocabulary can be improved my seeing the meaning of difficult words while reading in a dictionary and then using these words.

Part 2

This is where u join a professional coaching and take practice tests. This can be started in June of year 2. Practice is the key to success and most importantly continuous practice. For instance if u take regular tests for a month and practice all four sections (Quanti, DI, Verbal and RC) and then do nothing for the next 15 days then all your practice goes down the drain.

So one needs to build the tempo and maintain it and be continuous in practice. Ideally one should take practice tests for 2-3 months continuously which should culminate in the exam in December so that one is at his/her peak just before the exam.Also it is very important to score qualifying marks in each section and so pay attention to each section during the exam and try and attempt say 20-25 questions in each section first and then go for the section in which u feel u can do better.

Ideally one should take practice tests for 2-3 months continuously which should culminate in the exam in December so that one is at his/her peak just before the exam.

“I wish to share my GD / Interview experience at IIMB. The views expressed here are my own and should not be generalized.”

Regards,
Apoorv Iyer,
PGPM (2001-2003),
IIM Bangalore.

The GD / Interview was held on the 19th of March and it was my best bet, as I did not get a call from IIM-A. IIM Bangalore has a very peculiar and unique methodology for selection after the written stage…

When you get a call from IIMB, they send you a form, which has to be filled-up, and sent to them for their perusal.

The details asked in the form include:

1. Your past academic record…
2. Work experience…
3. Typical questions like: -

a) Why do you want to join IIMB?
b) Briefly describe your job responsibilities.
c) Statement of Purpose.
d) Why do you want a career in management?

The interview panel may/may not refer to your form…

From my experience, I can say it is best to be honest and straightforward while writing the answers to these questions… Also one should be very clear… The one thing about IIM interviews especially IIM A, B, C are that really expert people come to take these interviews.

So answers should NOT be framed in the engineering viva style. Be very honest with your answers, and if you don’t know something, accept it with grace.

The GD at IIMB consists of 6-8 people (not more) and they give you ample time, about 18-20 minutes. The topic for my GD was - “A good business school graduate does not necessarily make a good manager”.

The topic was a general one and this time at all the IIMs the topics have been pretty general except for IIMA and IIMK where they had case studies.

The point to note in a GD is: -

1. Do NOT make it a fish market. AND if it goes beyond control then at least you do not become the perpetrator…
2. State your points in a laconic and clear manner with authority.
3. Listen to others and appreciate his/her point of view.
4. Do NOT have a confrontational view of things.

My performance in the GD was pretty good and on a scale of 1-10, I would rate it to be 7.5. (FMS’s was better).

The IIMB interview was an experience in itself.

Interview Panel: 2 person: One was a Professor at IIMB and I have no idea who the other person was.

I will give a chronological order of the Q/A here:

IIMB: Please sit down.
AP: Thank you, sir.

IIMB: What were you trying to say in the GD?
AP: Sir, the topic of the G.D was - “A good business school graduate need not be a good business manager” - and according to me, it is true. Being a good manager entails applying the methodologies you have learnt and implement them. The key words here are learnability and implementation. If you don’t apply what you have learnt, then there is no point in being from a good business school.

IIMB: You have written in your form about quality? What do you think is a quality life?
AP: A quality life to me is a life in which you constantly learn from your mistakes. Every one makes mistakes but to accept them with grace and learn from them takes a lot of courage and honesty. To tell yourself that you were wrong is very difficult. So in simple words a life in which you learn constantly is a quality life to me.

IIMB: You have also written that you have made mistakes in your life? What is the biggest mistake you have made till now?
AP: The biggest mistake I have made is not getting into IIT in the first attempt.

IIMB: Do you think it was a mistake?
AP: Sir, I believe that I had the ability to get into IIT but I was not sincere enough with my studies. That does not mean that other engineering institutions are not good but yes institutions like IITs and IIMs require a certain degree of sincerity and dedication and I did not show it.

IIMB: But you still think it was a MISTAKE!
AP: Yes sir, I still think it was a mistake. But the point here is that I learnt form that. My engineering scores prove that.

IIMB: What was your position in the class?
AP: Around 5th - 8th.

IIMB: Out of how many students?
AP: 70 - 75.

IIMB: Out of a class of 70-75 students, you were in the top ten.
AP: Yes sir.

IIMB: OK Apoorv, can you tell me the laws of thermodynamics?
AP: (I started with the first law…)

IIMB: How many laws are there… three or four?
AP: Sir, there are four but I’m not able to recollect the zeroth law… (I tell him all the 3 laws)

IIMB: What is entropy?
AP: I defined…

IIMB: Can we measure it?
AP: No sir…

IIMB: What can we measure?
AP: Change in entropy.

IIMB: What is the difference between heat and temperature?
AP: I said…

IIMB: Any units of measuring heat?
AP: Joules…

IIMB: How would you rate HCL as an Employer?
AP: HCL is a pretty open organization with no hierarchal bottlenecks. As an account executive and the little experience I have had, I believe that HCL gives a lot of freedom to it’s employees… There are no strict rules or dictum to follow. Again this is my perception and may not be true for somebody else.

IIMB: So HCL is a good company?
AP: Yes sir…

IIMB: What were your job responsibilities.
AP: I said…

IIMB: What have you learnt form your job?
AP: I said…

IIMB: How do you measure the speed of a computer?
AP: In hertz…(Clock speed)

IIMB: What is MIPS?
AP: Million of instructions per second.

IIMB: Where do the components come from… motherboard, chipset, etc?
AP: I said…

IIMB: Briefly give the configuration of a computer.
AP: I said…

IIMB: How do you decide what to offer to a customer?
AP: I said…

IIMB: O.K. Apoorv, have you participated in any co-curriculars?
AP: Do you want to see the certificates?

IIMB: No, just tell us, we believe you…
AP: Quizzes, Matches, etc.

IIMB: Sports?
AP: State level cricket and hockey.

IIMB: If a batsman hits a ball and the ball splits into two with one half being caught by a fielder and the other going for a six… what would it be?
AP: (The other panel member laughs and I also laugh)… Sir, it would be a dead ball… The bowler will have to bowl again.

IIMB: Thank you Apoorv… It was nice talking to you…

The interview lasted for 20-25 minutes.

On a scale of 1-10, I would give it 8 (FMS’s was again better)

Note: IIMB also gives you another form after the GD is over. It is not known whether these answers are also taken into account.

The questions asked were: -

1. Give your point of view of the GD
2. Who is your role model? (My answer was Stephen Hawking.)
3. What one thing has influenced you the most till now in your life?
4. What are the qualities of a good manager?
5. Have you taken any professional coaching for the GD / Interview?

On the whole I would say IIMB stresses a lot on the interview performance and GD.

The ratio should be: -

50% Cat Score
15% GD
25% Interview
10% Academics, work-experience, co-curriculars, extraordinary talents…

That was My Road to IIMB…

Concluded.

Arun Rao
Batch of ‘93.
IIM-Ahmedabad.

I started studying for my MBA exams just as I entered into my third year in college. I started by taking an assessment test to identify the areas where I would need to concentrate most. I realized that I was very weak in Mathematics and that would pull me down. I took up to revising the math’s syllabus from standard 5th to 12th and this kept me busy for three months. Once I was sure of my fundamentals, I started with the study materials from IMS that helped me prepare the basics and also gave me enough practice on multiple-choice questions.Through all this study on theory, I continued to keep up with current events and started reading the editorials of the major news papers and magazines. This helped me put the news in perspective and trained me to cultivate opinions and understand trends. This multi pronged training helped me prepare for the test ahead of the CAT and do well in the Group discussions and Interviews.

TIPS

->Know your weaknesses
->Work to rectify your weakness from the fundamentals
->Try to get as much mock test practice as possible
->Break your work into schedules through out the day allowing you some time for enjoyment
->Have a strong desire to get into the best school and back it up with hard work.

All the best!

Manish Singhal
1st Year PGP Student
IIM Ahmedabad
2003-2005

THIS IS JUST AN APPROXIMATE TRANSCRIPT OF WHAT HAPPENED.
APPROXIMATE AND ALMOST

IIM AHMEDABAD
Venue
IIFT , New Delhi

3.10 - 3.25 pm
GD Case Study

boy,me,boy,boy,boy,boy,boy,boy,boy
overall satisfactory performance

3.42 4.09 pm
Interview

m= me
panelist1 = young man = p1
panelist2 = man = p2
panelist3 = old man = p3

p1 was technical expert with long face covered by beard . p2 was a man with plain glasses and wide face . p3 was an old man with white hair . All the questioning was done in a cyclic order of p2p3p1p2p3p1….

Last time my grinning caused my plan to go haywire as I was grilled on marriage . So this time I thought of not smiling during the interview which was a blunder . Again I had some particular strong points which I wanted to tell at any cost , like magazine , mathemagic , tennis , movies and my memory.

m: may I come in sir

p1: yeah come in manish
m: thank you sir . good afternoon to you all

p2: good afternoon manish . See there is a lizard at that upper extreme corner of the wall and an insect at this point on the ground . Whats the shortest distance the lizard has to cover to get the insect ?
( ok so cud there be a worse start than this . I was midway thru sitting on the chair and paused right there only to search for these creatures from the lost world , the lost world because they were not there . So while I was hanging in the air , I didn’t have a seat under me, I didn’t have any creatures before me and I didn’t have an answer with me . I had to imagine them to be there . I first seated myself and then tried to visualize the answer . The walls of that room were not meeting like the normal 90 degrees but at about 60 degree. The room wasn’t a 4 walled either)

p2: did you get the question ?
m: yes sir , it will be square root of …..

p2: arre bhai , its a lizard . It can’t do these mathematics .
m: In that case sir , its going to fall down and rush to its prey .

p2: fall down ? and get itself killed ?
m: but sir its a lizard ? lizard doesn’t gets hurt on falling . Moreover , the time taken during fall will be much less than than during sliding on the walls .

p2: so thats what you think
m: yeah (a moment of silence. I got the impresion that may be I was going totally wrong. They didn’t want a logical answer at all, but instead a mathematical one)

p2: don’t you think this wud be the shortest path ?
(draws a path on the paper . Its from the lizard to the opposite point of the wall touching the ground . then straight to the insect)

m: sir in that way , this shud be the shortest path
(I gave my interpretation with a straight path from the lizard to the insect passing thru the centre of the inbetween wall)

p2: you say that will be the shortest path
m: yeah (another moment of silence)

p3: ok manish why is APJ Abul Kalam so famous ?
m: well sir apart from being the current president of our country , he was one of the few people involved in the nuclear tests carried out by India on may 11th , 1998 , monday . The operation with the code name ‘ buddha has smiled ‘ made him famous throughout the country because even I didn’t know him before that date . Afterwards he was in news for being rejected a post of teacher at IIS due to some unavailability of degrees .

p3: you may have seen this xavier institute , xavier school etc . Who was this xavier ?
m: Sir I don’t have the exact idea but I suppose he may have been some great person in the Christian field .

p1: ok manish what are you currently studying ?
m: Computer Engineering , final year

p1: how many bytes in a kilobyte ?
m: 1024

p1: 1024 ok whats the latest speed in the desktop equipment ?
m: p4 1.9 ghz (fluke, this was as per my latest information)

p1: whats this hz in this 1.9 ghz (oops I didn’t knew that)
m: this hz is the frequency . number of instructions executed per second

p1: number of instructions executed per second ?? you are a computer scientist ! you are supposed to know this.(this comment broke my heart .I didn’t have anything good to cheer about in this interview till now and that mistake seemed to be like the final blow. I thought its a gone case now)

m: actually what happens is when an instruction is executed, data flows thru the data bus and its fetched from the memory (pin drop silence)

p2: ok manish lets say we got a nth order polynomial . you know how thats written
m: yea sir a0+a1*x+a2*x^2+………an*x^n

p2: yeah suppose all the a’s are known and I want to find the value of this polynomial for a particular value of x . in such a way that I have to do minimum multiplication. (as disappointed I was at that moment, I heard all a’s are UNKNOWN)
m: first we need n-1 equations to find these a’s (another stupid mistake I did)

p2: no no but all a’s are known
m: all a’s are known ? well then it can be simplified as
a0+x(a1+x(a2+x(…..))))))

p2: ok thats right . but whats this principle called ?
m: I don’t know the name of this principle sir but this is the same principle used in nuclear fision , nuclear fission i mean . 1+3(1+3(1+…….)))). I read it in my 10th class

p3: you are in final year
m: yes

p3: what are you doing in your final year project ?
m: we are implementing a proxy server

p3: its a group project
m: yes its a group project with me and 2 other people

p3: so what exactly are you making
m: then I started the longest stretch of my speech. I made a thorough description of my project. whatever I knew. even though irrelevant, I just went on and on and on. (after finally I stopped)

p1: whats the fastest sorting method you know ? ( i wasn’t sure )
m: quicksort

p1: and the slowest ( this time I was sure that i wasn’t sure )
m: in the worst case bubble sort .

p1: quicksort and bubblesort , are you sure ?
m: yes sure

p1: can you explain quicksort ?
m: in quicksort we divide the array in half , and continue to do so till we are left with single elements , then we reverse the process and keep on joining them while sorting the individual elements ( totally wrong answer but I explained all this using my hands , so he was more looking at my hands rather than listening to me )

p1: can you write the algo of quicksort ?
m: since I don’t remember it , I’ll have to make it .

p1: okay

p2: where are you from manish ?
m: we are basically from an agricultural rural family in village lala district rewari. but I’ve been here in delhi through out my life and the credit goes to my father . Even though from being a agricultural family , he had the foresightedness to visualise the importance of education . He got himself educated , his brothers educated and today if my uncles are earning their livelihood they owe it to my father only.

p2: what are the various problems people face in a village ?
m: the most important one is lack of literacy

p2: and ..
m: and those people aren’t aware of whats happening around the world.

p2: but that is because they aren’t literate
m: oh yeah

p3: what % of India’s population is beyond the poverty line ?
m: I don’t know the exact number sir

p3: whats the literacy rate of India
m: its above 50 but I am not aware of the exact figure

p3: whats the literacy rate of Rajasthan ? ( oh yeah well sure , I don’t know rate of India , I will sure know that of Rajasthan )
m: I don’t know

p1: you have been doing programming
m: yeah

p1: what happens to the code you write
m: this source code is converted to the object code and then its compiled and linked to form the exe file

p1: this exe file is in which language ( i didn’t knew )
m: asembly language

p1: asembly language ? who understands assembly language ? ( obviously assembler )
m: compiler ??

p1: you are doing computer engineering ? you are way distant from accuracy ( that was it . I had lost it , I didn’t have the fuel left )
p2: whats this magazine all about ? you have written it quite many times
m: so finally something which was one of my strong points , something which I was totally sure of . I just went on and on in full detail

p2: anything else

p1: no

p3: no

p2: ok manish, best of luck

p1: nice attempt with the magazine

p3: why are you looking so pensive

m: thank you sir

I left the room , dejected. Nothing to cheer about . I did’t have any hope in this one. If first impression is the last impression then I was doomed. I didn’t do anything in my academics. Magazine was discussed but other strengths were not touched. but still Its the result and not the performance which matters !!

Manish Singhal
1st Year PGP Student
IIM Ahmedabad
2003-2005
manishsinghalmanishsinghal@hotmail.com

Baskar Vembu
Batch of 94.
IIM-Ahmedabad.

Take all tests timed. i.e. even if you’re doing one section of half hour say verbal. Time it and take it UNDISTURBED.

Analysis of the test is more important than the test taking itself. for example a 2 hour test taken should be analysed : All questions including those which have been attempted right. This would introduce one to more elegant solutions etc.

Maintain section wise data across tests on parameters like No. of questions, no. attempted, right, wrong and net score.

Analyse this trend to arrive at the areas or sections where one needs to spend available time in the most optimum manner.

Flash cards for Verbal (Dont know whether they are still part of CAT, but anyways…)

Guys who are diffident in quant need loads of practise so buy up GMAT/GRE stuff but reduce the time provided to a maximum of half of the time specified in those books.

Group interaction keeps oneself motivated hence keep the networking on : make sure they’re serious guys too…

Dhruva Banerjee
Batch of 94.
IIM-Ahmedabad.

TIPS

In Entrance Exam…
When in difficulty, if the value of the mutliple choices are not very close, use “short cut mental” calculations to arrive at approximate answers. The number closest to the approximate answer is likely to be the correct one.

When constraint of time, focus on ansering questions CORRECTLY rather than answering MORE questions.

In an interview…

a) be straight (don’t bullshit if you don’t know)
b) use plain and simple language (avoid jargons) and
c) be aware of current affairs (review of newspapers, current affairs magazines help).