IIMC GD/PI Experience

[philiptj]

Hi All,
Had my IIMC GD/PI today. Dint go all that well. GD was "Wish there were no boundaries for countries". Started immediately, discussion for 15 minutes and 1 minute per persom for summarizing. Seating order, interview order was based on scores and summary was in random order. Did not do all that well in GD, but was not that bad also.

Interview didn't go well. I somehow missed to write my name in my app form and the interview started there. I dont know how I managed to do that even after revieving the form. Anyway 10 minutes was spent on repairing the damage. And immediately after that the next guy came up with problems in my work ex document. I submitted my appoinment letter and last months payslip. As my appointment letter did not have a joining date they were not ready for accepting it. Tried my best to convince them, but at the end of another 10-15 minutes the decision was I submit some other document in the coming 3-4 days or my work ex would be considered as null. After that they asked me abt kerala, but it was just for 1-2 mins.

Overall not a good experience. Spending abt 25 mins there and out of that 23 minutes in damage control. Anyway hoping for the best...
Philip
PS: Had waited for one more guys interview, and what was being asked was probablity, continuous function etc. I feel that the flavour of the C interview will be quant this year also. I will be going to submit my documents again, and hopefully I can give info abt some more interviews then

[sitha]

Hi ,
I am doing my IV th Yr at IIIT-Hyd. Here goes my cal interview exp.


This is about the IIM-Calcutta interview that I have had at IIM-B
yesterday 22nd at 2 o'clock. We have a GD Topic as "Ban child labour , In
the process kill children". I have given two points.
1)We need to educate the people who are giving jobs to children to
direct them to many progs like anthyodaya , free food & free edu etc.
2)We need to educate parents about these progs in budget.

and I didnot express my opinion well in the end. And Coming to
interview part.. There are 4 guys in my panel - 3.. 2 young + 2 old .

and 1 young + 1 old is keep asking my questions where as other two keep
watching me.

1) Tell me about yourself .. this form dont tell to us .. Which will
add value to you ?

Sir , I am studying my Final Year at IIIT . I have got 99.85 % in
this yr GATE. Till my 3rd year I thought I will be in a software developer
position after 5 yrs. But We are a class of 100 at IIIT. and 6 of us
thought We are different and better than many others. So We thought we
start up a company . But When we approach our professors and the
seniors who are doing the same .They said doing the projects is not that
difficult. First you get the business perspective first. So , We
thought doing CAT & after 5 or 6 years , we come back and set up the company .

a) What is your class composition ?
I ask them by compo means local + non local .. I said its 70 + 30
..

b) how do you select there ?

Sir IIIT will have an entrance test at that point.. around 26000
people appeared for it. and almost till 200 got calls to interview and
joined there.

c) is there any discriminations to localites ?

No sir , probly localites know about the college well . So maximum
number of applicants are from AP . So maximum people are from AP in my
class. But in my juniors its not that so ..

d) What is the composition in your juniors ?

In my juniors , they are around 150 and comp is 70 + 80 ..
are you sure ? yes sir..

e) acchha when did IIIT start ?

sir it is in 1998. Sir we are second batch at IIIT..

2) So you have the chance of doing MTech .
yes sir I have applied for IISc MS. But I am not in the idea of
joining there.

3)Achha you have the course of discrete maths , probability &
statistics ?
yes sir we have those courses.

4) what did they teach in those courses.
I didnot remember the topics sir.

5) any thing ?
I dont know ..

6) Then what about probability & statistics ?
yes sir I can remember of Normal distribution, Binomial
distribution etc.

7) Then what about Testing of Hypothesis ?
I dint know about it sir.

They must teach this too you in that course ?
Then I must have forgotten about it all together sir.

9) Then you must have know about integration ?
here i gave some stupid answer. that predicting the value of
changing value over a period.

10) what prediction ?
predicting the value over a period.

11) then tell me how to do xlogx integration?
Here I said it will be useful for calculating the value of areas
of the graphs. ang gave the answer.
x^2/2 * logx - x^2/4

12) what type of graphs you mean ?
I told them about how to calculate the graph area..

13) Then What about Bush Fire ? .. It seems we are getting them in the
mainpaper ?

I think Bush is doing the wrong thing sir. He is making the
iraqi people lives even more worser.

14) Why do you think so ?
I have seen one article in Time of india which tells that
the position of women house hold in iraq before Ist gulf war was far
better comparitively other countries. And more over Iraqi people are
with
saddam. They are electing Saddam.

15) Why do you think those elections are good ?
I think people with saddam only. And is there anything to destroy
in Iraq ? Nothing but killing civilians.

16) One young guy in four of them aggressively saying this way ..
Bush will destroy all the things . And reconstruct whole the
things again.

sir I dont think this was the way to make the things good.

17) why not it is the only way we need to destroy Babri maseed to build
our Ram Temple?

Sir I dont think we are doing right things there. Muslims are
equal to us. Whatever hindu people did to Babri Maseed is the wrong
thing.
We should maintain a status quo in that area.


1 It seems you are from Telugu Medium in your 10th . You have
Sanskrit
in 12th and 10th. Do you know sanskrit ?

Yes sir. But I cant speak Sanskrit. In my 10th and 12 th,
lecturers said its a scoring subject. So I have taken it.

19) Dont you remember any slokas in sanskrit like "Yedha Yedha hi
Dharmasya " , Can you tell it for me?

No Sir , I dont know .. If I dont know it fully, There is no point
in speaking out something.

20) Ok What else do you know it well ?

I think I am good at maths.

21) At this point all 4 of their faces are delighted. And that same
young
guy suddenly ask me the value of
125 ^ (log 3 base 5 )

I gave the answer to them .

22) Prove it ?

Proving sir , I think there is a theorem which states this way ..

23) Which theorem you can tell us ?

When I started speaking he ask me to write on the paper.

24) Ok Right.. Hey you seems you are Teaching Assistant for
Cryptography &
Network security.

Yes sir..

25) Do you know , about RSA algorithm .. Do you know full abbrv ?

Yes sir.. I dont know the names of the algorithm inventors.. That
need public key encryption algorithm.

26) explain the RSA to me .

WHile explaining to him. I said I will encrypt whole message into
encrypted message.

27) Do we encrypt whole the message in Encryption (Asking Seriously) ?
I said yes ..

2 Are you sure ? If yes , What is the problem with this system ?

I dont recall any probs ..

29) acchha.. it has two probs. 1) it will take too much time ..

sir , that is the cost we have to incur.. to make our messages
safer ..

30) and then he is saying .. do you know it will give message of
high length..

I am silent at this point . with the face of I dont knnow.

31) So you are just an attendant there ?

Sir We have a projects by students that I have to monitor
projects..

32) What are other subjects you are good at Data Structures , DBMS ?

Sir dAtastructures are used to model real life situations into
computer representationable forms. like stacks , queues , trees and
others.

33) Do you know about Rank of the matrix..

Yes sir I do .

34) It is from Discrete Matheamatics hi na ?
I said yes sir. ( but here I dont know .. why I bluffed )

35) ok tell me the definition of the rank of matrix ?
Sir I dont know the definition . But I do know how to calculate
it.

36) So you are like "Nishkama" knows how to do things, but dont know
where
to apply ?

Sir I have not seen the use of Rank in my Com. Science.

37) accha .. Do you know Graph Theorey ? & Adjascency matrix ..

yes I do sir .. I can see your point. But I can do the problem
with other representations too.

3 ok.. tell me how to calculate no of binary trees in a graph ?

Sir I do it iteratively . Each node corresponds to a tree. and I
grow the trees iteratively.

39) Ok.. The old guy who is stern with me from the beginning asked me
"sitharamaraju" prononced twice. dont you remember any thing ?

Yes sir . There is a freedom fighter in West Godavari district
in my state. He is a good leader who make all the tribals there to
stand
on his view point.

40) what about you ? are you a good leader are not ?

sir , Right now I cant say I am a leader . But I can say that
I will definitely become one in the long run .


41) Do you know any other things other than this ?

I do sir , Cricket ..

42) all of them are laughing . and tell me some productive thing ?

I am good at programming.. I won many prizes in programming. sir ,
you have not seen my file .. I tried to give it to them..

43) We dont need too see it.. keep it with you ..

I said ok sir , yes sir.

44) Here the young guy is saying Programming is your strength and your
weakness too...

Question Mark face from side why sir..

45) you are not anlyzing the things properly.. If you come to IIM-C or
not
, you will face problem with this . ( Two guys are nodding with him ) .
and said thank you ...

Sir I dont feel necessity in analyzing that things.

then they said If you analyze theorey , It will be easy to develop
things.
You need to develop things here at IIM-C .

ok sir .

46) Sir , Can I have feed back so that I can improve ?

old guy who is stern with me . saying we cant give feed back to
each one.. and more over chairman of IIM-C admissions will definitely
give
his feedback to you ..

thank you .. you can go ..

Ok sir Thank you to all you sir ..


---------------------------------------------
Here I have gut feeling that kee I wont made it too IIM-C . as I
am not good at communication skills and they said in the end.. I am bad
at
Analytical skills. Ok Lets see what will happen ?











--
Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you
will be a Buddha.
It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without
which no amount of
intellectual activity can reach God.

you cannot plan for tomorrow; if you do not know what your dreams are
today.

"Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use."

[uRmad]

hey...sitha.....thats a damn good first post pal........u've given all a real good xp of how it goes....all the very best to u.....keep postin......

Cheers

[pagalguy]

Great post there. Excellent recollection there pal. Its so nice to hear such a complete experience and it seems that you should be in.

I esp. like the part, when you said you like maths and they tried to stump you with a tough question. Now that surely was something.

Way to go and best of luck.

[ravi]

Hi Sitha,

Grt post ! And welcome abroad ! BTW, do u have any othe calls or was C ur only call ?
I liked ur replies to the "Y MBA" sort of Qn and ur answers abt that freedom fighter and most of the math. And everybody feels that they could have done better, in hindsight Best of luck and kep ur fingers crossed !

And if u have other calls, please post those experiences too.

Ravi

[bharathram_s]

Hi All,

First of all, that was a great post by Sitha. Appreciate ur patience.

My GD/Interview was also at the same time (2:00 PM on 22nd March). But I was in Panel-4. GD topic was the same viz., 'Ban child labour and in the process kill them'.
I was quite repetitive during the GD and there were some moments where no one was talking and I had to step in just to break the silence. At the end of it, everyone was given a minute to verbally summarize and I did it in 20 seconds flat and I was asked to continue Luckily I was able to recollect some more points

Interview was a pretty long affair. It lasted for about 30 minutes. I was asked Qs on a wide range of areas. I will just summarize them below :

Acads :
--------
- What is Amplitude Modulation? What is Frequency Modulation and how is it different from AM? In India, what percentage of Radio broadcating networks use AM/FM? Which results in better noise reduction? Can you draw the circuit diagram?Blah Blah...

- Handled the first few Qs without much of a problem. But when it came to the later Qs, I didn't know them and said so. They then asked me whether I didn't come across them during my graduate studies. I replied by saying that I did study but could not recall at that point of time.

Maths:
-------
- Give us a fucntion which has a dicontinuity at x=2 and another function which has infinite discontinuities.

-Didn't have too many problems initially with this too but they kept probing deeper and deeper and at one point I had to give up

Career Goals:
----------------
- Asked me about my medium term goals (Since I had mentioned my short-term and long-term ones in the form). Told them that it would depend on how my short-term goals take shape. Then they asked me how I could then come up with my long-term goals. Somehow managed to stave off a difficult period by saying that it was more of a dream than a goal

General:
----------
Qs ranged from famous personalities from my home town (Coimbatore) to how the economic situation in Coimbatore would affect the Indian economy!!! Came up with some bullshit here Luckily they didn't probe me further.

Absolutely no Qs were asked on my work-ex. Overall, it was a pretty exhaustive (and exhausting ) interview. From my side, I'm not too unhappy with the way I went about it, but just keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best

Regards,
Bharath

[ravi]

Hi.

My IIM-C intw was last saturday (the 22nd). The topic for the GD was "The United Nations is dead.Long live the united nations". I thought that there would be very few points to discuss so that i might as well get in ASAP! So jumped in and started the GD by saying how this reminds me of "The king is dead. Long live the king" that comes at the death ofa king and the sucession of a new one. Similarly this could mean the death of the UNin its present form and the rise of it in a different form. And then said that I think that the UN in its present form is dead bcoz of the way it has handled the iraq crisis. With this i stopped my opening statement and everybody jumped in with their views on the iraq crisis. For the next 3-4 mins everybody spoke of how the US was wrong in doing this and how unilateral action has destroyed the UN and all that. I kept mum during this, but was carefully listening. Actually only one guy had something new. He spoke of the UN not as a political organisation, but also as one with many humanitarian organisations under its umbrealla - like the UNICEF etc. We agreed that this was important. Then the discussion turned to why the conflict occurred at all and y the US chose to go it alone. I saw an oppurtunity and jumped in with how France's statement abt vetoing any resolution that authorizes force 'no matter what the circumstances'. Spoke of how this is in direct contradiction of 1441 and said that when France said "no matter ..." they were ruling out force even if evidence was found abt weapons of mass destrucction. And this is what prompted the US to go alone. Spoke twice more. Once when i asked if everybody did agree that the UN in its present form was dead and then something else too (forgot what it was !) Then each of us were called to speak for a few seconds. I said a couple of sentences and stopped. One guy tried to speak a lot and was cut off abruptly.

The interview was weird. Started off with "tell us a lil abt urself". I spoke a few sentences abt where i was working and what my job entailed. Then they asked me about my engineering and i told them abt my college, specialization and University. They asked me abt my parents and I told them abt my family. Then came some qns abt Kerala - when did it become a state, was it ruled by the brits b4 that and y does it have high literacy and stuff like that. Handled this pretty OK. Didn't know exact date - said it was sometime in the 50s. Kerala had been ruled by Maharajahs b4 it became a state and had been Travancore-Cochin and Malabar. When asked about the diwans i couldn't name them. Abt literacy i said that the reasons could be that the people in kerala saw education as being very important and there were also geographic factors like how there were very few truly rural areas. Then i was asked about my caste and y r Nairs generally very proud. I had no clue y, but made sthng up out of facts i knew - like how most nairs were generally well educated, belong to the middle and upper middle class and how in the caste system that used to exist, theirs was a position in the middle to upper position in the heirarchy. Then a prof asked me abt the matriarchal system that the nairs follow and whether that shouldn't count as a thing to be proud of. I was puzzled and said that i saw no reason to b proud of that and that it was just a different system and not necesarily better. He said that while all the world wonders abt how to give women equality, u r giving them a place of pride. I said that the matriarchal system had, instead of discriminating agnst female children had discriminated agnst males instead and how discrimination was just agnst a different set of people. He said again that it was something to be proud of and then moved on to other Qns. I was then asked abt Mayawati. Spoke abt the recent allegations of corruption agnst her. And was asked "Don't u think she has improved the lot of dalits". I said how buiding a lot of statues and memorials didn't really improve their lot. Was then asked abt Jayalalitha and then we launched into a debate on the relative merits of Jayalalitha, Rabri Devi, Sonia Gandhi and Mayawati. When asked abt Rabri i spoke of her not having any qualification to becoming chief minister other than being the last CM's wife and how she was not even educated. they shot back with "What makes Jayalaitha better than Rabri". I said that she was at least educated. They said that Jayalalitha had studied only till 10th and Rabri had studied till 8th. I said that J. had been a good student. We got out of that and suddenly the debate swung to Sonia Gandhi. I said that it reflects pretty badly on India if as a nation of a billion we had to get a foreigner to rule us. They said "Y are u cribbing abt it. that is the reality - nothing can be done abt it". I said that the only thing i could do was to vote agnst her which i did. They asked me if i would have opposed Mother Teresa as PM. I had to admit that i wouldn't have.
They then stopped all of that and moved on to quant. Asked me abt how i must have hrd from the other guys b4 me (i was 7th in a grp of 8 ) that they were quizzed on quant. Asked abt what Qns i heard. Then they asked me if i knew what an asymptote was. I didn't know. So they asked me - 2 hrs and u haven't found out yet. I said that i had asked other guys there, but nobody seemed to know. It had been asked to one of the 1st guys in. Nobody had a clue what it was. Then they showed me a couple of Price-Demand graphs and i was asked to explain y in 1 graph the relationship stabilised arnd a pt while in the other it spiralled out of control. As soon as 1 prof gave it 2 me the other 2 said abt it being unfair and how i couldn't b expected 2 know it. The prof who gave me the qn also seemed to agree. Anyway they asked me to try. I looked at the graph very carefully for abt 10 secs and then said there was sthng in 1 graph that was self-reinforcing that caused it 2 spiral out of control. Said that the only difference i saw was the steeper slope in that graph. They seemed satisfied and said that though that was a partial answer, i was on the right track. I asked them tentatively if i may know the answer. They took abt 3-4 mins to explain the whole thing to me. Was then given another math Qn. While adding the no of pages in a book one page got added twice. The total came to 1000. which page was counted twice and how many pages were there. I started off with the formula for sum to n no.s and then added a variable a 2 represent the page that was added twice. Then i said that i had an eqn with two variables and wondered how it could be solved. The prof saisd that there was a trick. I took abt 5 secs and then came up with n(n+1)/2 <1000 and then started solving the inequality. They said "don't bother solving it. just put integers and try". I did and came up with an answer. But i still missed the logic on how that extra page was handled. So i asked them "But, sir, aren't we making an assumtion abt the page no. being small". They said that it had to be lss than n in my soln for the inequality and that is when i saw that ! Damn, that was slow thinking on my part. They then quizzed me abt my CAT scores (starting this yr we have been given sectional and overall percentage and percentile scores) and which IIMs i got calls from. They were particularly interested in the section i scored lower and my % score in that. That was all and it had taken abt 30 mins. All of us had intws b/w 25-40 mins each. Think this could go either way

Ravi

[kunalrana999]

hi frenz,
since i had applied for pgdcm too i had the atm yesterday
test was a horrible experience since i had been outa practice for some time
anyways,
today i had my gd/pi
my topic was "only the fitest should survive",discussion ranged from industry,markets,nature,dinosaurs,iraq war,aussie victory in wc,core competence and lots more . i dint hav a good gd and spoke very little but then most pl were very repititive .
interview was cool,lasted 25 mins approx.
first they asked me to speak on myself for 2 mins , the catch was that i shouldnt say anything already there in the form , i managed it ok.
was asked about my career goals , my strengths and weaknesses.
was asked a last year's cat question about the no. of terms in a series when sum is given and a no. is added twice to find the no.
was asked to draw graph of mod(x)/x and differentiation of mod x <<both r same>>
was asked my prefernce for pgdm or pgdcm
and some more questions which i cant recall
luv,
kunal

[amrish]

Panel: 3 (2 Prof + 1 alumni)

GD: "GD's should not be part of MBA entrance tests
Spoke 1-2 points in favor and against and proposed group activity as an alternative

Interview:

Time: ~25-30 min
The alumni (A1) and one of the Prof (P1) smiled and showed interest, the other Prof(P2) kept a stern look.

P1: Before we start, I believe I have seen you somewhere, can you help me recollect. OK give me 3 reasons why I tend to believe we have met

A1: Wat do u think about the US bombing on Iraq, then he stopped and said now the bombing has anyway started, so tell me the implications of the war, don't give me news, give me your opinion, tell me the single biggest implication

P1: Why do they call your Dept Strategic Marketing, that means there is something called tactical/non strategic Marketing, justify this

P1/A1: Why MBA, you anyway doing well, do you think you are doing well?? Why do you want to learn more
P1 gave me some shloka which meant that after a certain point knowledge is actually a curse, said you may believe in this or you can have your own opinion but this is what he believes in.

P1 said he'll give me 10 references and about books like Kotler on Marketing, Kotler in Asia and I'll become a Marketing Guru, I need not come to Cal for this. Asked when world is moving towards specifics you want to learn about general things.
Asked me , who earns more, a general practitioner or a cardiologist?

A1: Did you write CAT last year? Did you get any calls? Tell me 2 most imp changes in you in the past 1 year

A1: Saw one certificate given by my employer and said your organization is very stingy in terms of awards, so you must have done something great, tell abt it.
Read 'innovation' from certificate and asked what it means and then asked the difference between innovation and invention

P1: You have used the word 'as such' 33 times, what does it mean? Give its exact meaning? Why do you use this word?

P1/A1 passed my file to P2 and pointed at something
P2: So you have worked on QoS (Quality of Service) related project, what was it about?
Stopped me midway and said IETF (from my response) is only a body, they don't develop anything
Asked about number of bits in IP header(offshoot of my response), I answered 256 bits
Confronted if its bits or bytes and how many bits in a byte?
Finally made me calculate no of bits as 64, then asked you don't know this, what did you do in the project. I told me that I wrote Requirement specification doc and some test cases, P2 said ok.

P2: I am going to speak something, listen to it very carefully " If you perform well, you wll be selected", this is an affirmative sentence, is it? Not give the negative of the same without distorting the meaning
I gave 2 which he said were wrong, gave me one more chance, P1 jumped in and asked if I understood the problem
Finally they said if I ever get to know the answer plz inform them.


Somewhere in between offered me biscuit, said this is Tiger biscuit, you'll become a tiger in the interview after eating one.

[foundation2er]

pretty decent...had a father-son type discussion..butit was cool for all..so no real measure of comparison...so lets hope

IIMC transcript:
Gd: India needs foreign investment in education (10 people)

Interview: 2 on panel: 1 strat mgmt prof ; 1 IT prof

Gd was good..and I have given quite a lot of stats on education….so in interview they asked me:

1 are you from education field
2so what is this “social entrepreneur”
3. tell me about urself
4. what r ur hobbies? How do u spend ur time?
5. I do work for an ngo called ashray…so they asked me what I do there?.how much time I spend there?..do I still get time to play cricket?..since I represented school and college
6. name governor general of india
7.name presidents of India in chronological order
8. tell me what was saddam hussieins moral justification in attacking Kuwait in 1990….i dint know the snwer…so I asked if I could create…I came up with some …n he smiled…n then told me the real answer
9. what do u know about ayodhya?..here they really grilled me..even got a lil personal….tried to stress me out…I handled it well..but on hindsight..could have really aced it here.
10..what is fiscal deficit?
11. are you from mangalore originally?