Indore was the interview I was really looking forward to primarily because it was the only old IIM call I had thanks to a staggering blooper by Kozhikode and unfathomable reasons for no Lucknow call. Well @99.04 those were best calls i expected. So in every sense this was one of the biggest day of My Interview season so far. 20th March,2012, the I-day, was a very early start to the day as the reporting time was as early as 8.30.00 AM! (yes when it comes to IIMs every second is important) The famous cliche 'First Day First Show' suited perfectly to my slot as it was Ist day of Indore Interviews all over India. After grooming up as well as I could, headed towards Institute of Hotel Management at Dadar for the Interview. Reached venue atleast 40 mins before reporting time. By the time I reached there 10-12 candidates were already waiting in the room which was chalk and cheese when compared to the one I had for New IIM's Interview.
Now this is the thing about IIM interview, the moment you see other candidates, you start a mental sizing up game. “Oh this guy looks like a stud”, “Why is that guy not wearing formals?", "This girl surely looks to be a tough contender" and the likes. Precisely at 8.25.00 AM 2 gentlemen came with the list of students for our slot and briefed us about the process for the day. After the administrative formalities of attendance and document verification, the actual process begun at 8.46.00. It had 2 components Written Ability Test (WAT) and Personal Interview(PI).
WAT Experience:
It had 2 components : Summary Writing, Essay Writing
Marks : 25 for each
WAT started at 8.46.00 AM and we were given exactly 40 mins for the same.
Summary Writing :
Word Limit : 130
It was about painless heart attacks increasing day-by-day. A survey was conducted by some website and an organisation about heart attacks without chest pains and some figures were quoted.. Indian cardiologist too agreed and listed down reasons for such heart attacks and ways to avoid them. Also facts about women mortality rate and deaths due to heart diseases. Length was about 80% of the page.
A very easy read passage. And wrote a decent summary including all important issues addressed in the passage.. Completed it in about 15 mins and took 2-3 mins to read once and roughly counted the number of words. Wrote about 7 words in 1 line with 18 lines, so roughly 126 words well within the limit.
Essay Writing :
Word Limit : 200
Topic : India has prominent place in global markets. In meeting global standards is it necessary for public sector to be privatized?
A very known and a common topic.. Quoted various facts and figures about Indian economy and its progress and issues hampering growth.. Gave examples of implementing PPP in various sectors like infrastructure,power,education and many more. All in all wrote a decent essay and good enough content.. Again was done in about 15 mins and used last 5 mins to check for grammatical errors and word count. Again average 7 words in one line and about 29-30 lines. Again well within word limit.
PI Experience :
After WAT we were divided into 4 different groups with 6 in each. And interviews begin at around 9.40.00AM.. I was panel 1 initially but was interviewed by panel 2 which i came to know just 10 mins before the interview. The significance of this little piece of info was because out of 6 in panel 1, here is the description of 5 of them.
Engg + Electronics and Telecommunication + Fresher + Mumbai University. Worst possible combination you can think of with the knowledge that Indore interviews tend to be technical at times.
Anyways i was the 3rd to be interviewed in my (new) panel.. And the person just before had his interview for more than 40 mins with lots of random and technical questions.
My interview begun at 11.05.00 AM and was called in by one of the panelists.
3 panelists (2 Male + 1 Female)
Male 1- Technical Guy as he asked me only tech in the interview (TG)
Male 2 - asked me lots of Q and counter Q on various topics, all-round interviewer (ARI)
Female - Asked me only Economics and current affairs (ECA)
Yours Truly (YT)
After initial exchange of wishes, ARI starts the interview
ARI : Okay Poojan, so what are you doing currently
YT : Sir my currently studying in my final year engineering, pursuing my engg in EXTC..
ARI - Which college are you from, how old is it, who runs it?
YT - Told
ARI - Not a very a old college (its about 10 years old), didnt you do well in Engg CET to get into a better college, why so?
YT - Sir was preparing for IIT-JEE got in Extended Merit List and coz of this was not able to do that well in CET...
now TG comes in
TG - You had an elective Neural Networks and Fuzzy Logic in 6th semester, do you remember anything about it
YT - Yes sir I very much remember it and more so because thats my area of work for final year project.
TG - Okay can you define Neural Networks(NN) for us?
YT - yes sir, NN is a processing device......... (stopped in between)
TG - What kind of processing device, hardware or software?
YT - Sir NN that am using is a software based and hardware too is possible.. (i soon realised have to weigh before i say any word)
YT - It is modeled on the way our brains operates and has synaptic interconnections between neurons just like the way we have in our brain.. And it is based on 'learning from experience' fundamentals, so though it has algorithms it has various parameters which make it very useful tool in processing non-linear inputs..
TG - Okay can you tell me NN Algorithm?
YT - Told about Back Propagation algorithm I had used in my project
TG - What is the middle layer called?
YT - Hidden layer
TG - Why is the name back propagation?
YT - Gave good enough reasons with proper explanation..
TG - Okay tell me about transfer functions in NN
YT - Sir there aren't any transfer functions in NN
TG - Okay you told about non-linearity(told you he picked up each and every word) what is it?
YT - Told about its efficiency on processing of non-linear data and changing various parameters like learning rate, weights and biases..
TG - All that is fine, but how does it get this non-linear property.. there has to be some transfer function..
YT - (Ab samjha) Sir its called Activation Function
TG - (smiled) yes tell me about that
YT - told 1 of them and its equation
TG - wat are the parameters in the equation and wats the maximum value of the function?
YT - told..
TG - there is a another one to operate on negative input data as well?
YT - bipolar function
TG - wats the expression of function
YT - told
TG - Now we know 1 part of the subject, tell me other part.. Whats fuzzy logic?
YT - Told and gave a general definition of fuzzy logic
TG - How is fuzzy logic different?
YT - told about values from 0 to 1 unlike binary logic which have fixed values 0 and 1..
TG - so if we have a system of %ages where we have 65%,80%,85% how will fuzzy be different from other logics?
YT - explained
TG - Have you heard about fuzzy controller with bell shaped curves
YT - No sir am not aware of this..
TG - You had a course of uPuC.. What all did you learn? which uP?
YT - 8085,8086,8088...
TG - 8085 is how many bit processor?
YT - 8 bit.. ALU operates on 8 bit data..
TG - What about 8086?
YT - 16-bit
TG - Which was the first 32-bit uP?
YT - I can't recollect but some Intel uP..
TG - Any idea which one?
YT - Pentium series but not 100% sure..
TG - 80386 it is.. Which company apart from Intel manufactures processors?
YT - AMD is one of them..
TG - What does AMD stand for??
YT - I don't know the what does it stand for..
Technical done and handled well.
Now the current affairs ma'am comes in
ECA - Do you read newspaper, tell me any news on past days
YT - Told Union Budget 2012, Trivedi Fiasco
ECA- Anything else
YT - Today's news about people under poverty line in India has come down from 37% to 30% and revised limits of per day spending's by Planning Commission, India.
ECA - Define poverty line
YT - did but not a precise one but included key points
ECA - Do you agree with those numbers? Why is govt doing such surveys? Can someone live for a day with 28 rupees?
YT - No ma'am in a city its not possible to live with just 28 rupees in a day and these figures aren't quite helpful in knowing the exact picture but they do help us in getting an idea about how many can't even a meal a day
ECA - Define inflation
YT - did, 2 indices CPI,WPI
ECA - any news regarding that
YT - yes, CPI launched recently by Indian govt..
ECA - Explain CPI, WPI
YT - did
ECA - why need of CPI?
YT - told about CPI giving info on consumer and retail products and WPI about wholesale.. some discussions on it..
ECA - How is inflation calculated
YT - told
ECA - this month its 10%, next month its 9% explain what does it mean?
YT - told about it being calculated on year-to-year basis and stuff related to that.. some discussions with ARI on exact calculations.. in the end they told me exact way of calculating and its precise definition...
ARI - Who is the Governor of Maharashtra?
YT - remembering for few secs said Narayanan Katikala (read that during placements thankfully i recollected in time due to the weird name)
ARI - Who is the Home Minister of Maharashtra?
YT - R R Patil
ARI - Who is the Chief Minister of Maharashtra?
YT - Prithviraj Chavan
TG - How did he come into power?? He was no where in the picture and suddenly became CM
ECA - With no basis they seemed to have made him CM.. Do you know his political background? And how and why did he became CM?
YT - No sir am not aware about his political background (knew about him being engg and some abroad degree but didnt say as it wasn't relevant and not asked)
ARI - Whats your CAT%le, did u do well in both sections? if 99 than why not calls from ABC
YT - told about admission policies of each of them and told why i didnt fit in..
TG - other calls, why IIM Indore
YT - told..
TG - which one would you choose IITB or New IIM's?
YT - a very diplomatic answer.. (he seemed pleased)
ARI - what do you other than academics, any hobbies
YT - told.. mentioned about Harsha Bhogle in hobbies
ARI - Whats his background?
YT - Chem Engg from Osmaniabad University, MBA from IIMA and loved marketing and advertising field.. he seemed to be pretty pleased with that detailed piece of information.
ARI - any ECA activities you have done?
YT - told and told about being related to NSS..
ARI - What is NGO? What does it do?
YT - told, social work and upliftment..
ARI - What is child labour?
YT - told, was not sure about age limit (13 or 15) and mentioned about importance of school and education at early age..
ARI - So whats imp age or schooling?
YT - Sir it can't be taken objectively and both are imp..
ARI - 20 yr-old studying in school and working, child labour?
YT - caught at this point but told something..
ARI - What RTE?
YT- told and mentioned about not failing student from 1st to 8th i.e from 6-14 years..
ARI - is that the main criteria? (just forgot the term compulsory education)
Some unfruitful discussion on that about why it not being success where he was not pleased with my lack of knowledge)
ARI - heard of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan?
YT - heard of it but dunno details of it..
ARI - okay
Some more discussions of RTE and why is it not that great a success, i told about it affecting students, teachers lose zeal to teach and all those stuff but he didn't seem convince...
ARI - So you say you are involved in social activities and you dont know stuff about RTE, child labour, poverty line (pehle do thik hi, poverty line explain kiya thik se)
YT - Yes NSS was a extra currics and am not involved with any NGO as such and we did activities on small scale and in and around premises of college and it was done so as to enhance the understanding the importance social values and social responsibility, nothing on massive scale.. (dunno whether he was pleased or not but a wryish smile)
ARI - Thank You , we are done!
YT thank you to all 3 of them and left the room carefully closing the door to avoid it from banging..
And after 35 mins was finally done with the interview. I felt i was a good interview but with IIM Interview's you are never the best judge as it completely depends on the panel perception about you rather than your expected perception in front of the panel. Considering the results were supposed to be out by 10th May it surely is going to be a long wait to know my actual verdict..
Now this is the thing about IIM interview, the moment you see other candidates, you start a mental sizing up game. “Oh this guy looks like a stud”, “Why is that guy not wearing formals?", "This girl surely looks to be a tough contender" and the likes. Precisely at 8.25.00 AM 2 gentlemen came with the list of students for our slot and briefed us about the process for the day. After the administrative formalities of attendance and document verification, the actual process begun at 8.46.00. It had 2 components Written Ability Test (WAT) and Personal Interview(PI).
WAT Experience:
It had 2 components : Summary Writing, Essay Writing
Marks : 25 for each
WAT started at 8.46.00 AM and we were given exactly 40 mins for the same.
Summary Writing :
Word Limit : 130
It was about painless heart attacks increasing day-by-day. A survey was conducted by some website and an organisation about heart attacks without chest pains and some figures were quoted.. Indian cardiologist too agreed and listed down reasons for such heart attacks and ways to avoid them. Also facts about women mortality rate and deaths due to heart diseases. Length was about 80% of the page.
A very easy read passage. And wrote a decent summary including all important issues addressed in the passage.. Completed it in about 15 mins and took 2-3 mins to read once and roughly counted the number of words. Wrote about 7 words in 1 line with 18 lines, so roughly 126 words well within the limit.
Essay Writing :
Word Limit : 200
Topic : India has prominent place in global markets. In meeting global standards is it necessary for public sector to be privatized?
A very known and a common topic.. Quoted various facts and figures about Indian economy and its progress and issues hampering growth.. Gave examples of implementing PPP in various sectors like infrastructure,power,education and many more. All in all wrote a decent essay and good enough content.. Again was done in about 15 mins and used last 5 mins to check for grammatical errors and word count. Again average 7 words in one line and about 29-30 lines. Again well within word limit.
PI Experience :
After WAT we were divided into 4 different groups with 6 in each. And interviews begin at around 9.40.00AM.. I was panel 1 initially but was interviewed by panel 2 which i came to know just 10 mins before the interview. The significance of this little piece of info was because out of 6 in panel 1, here is the description of 5 of them.
Engg + Electronics and Telecommunication + Fresher + Mumbai University. Worst possible combination you can think of with the knowledge that Indore interviews tend to be technical at times.
Anyways i was the 3rd to be interviewed in my (new) panel.. And the person just before had his interview for more than 40 mins with lots of random and technical questions.
My interview begun at 11.05.00 AM and was called in by one of the panelists.
3 panelists (2 Male + 1 Female)
Male 1- Technical Guy as he asked me only tech in the interview (TG)
Male 2 - asked me lots of Q and counter Q on various topics, all-round interviewer (ARI)
Female - Asked me only Economics and current affairs (ECA)
Yours Truly (YT)
After initial exchange of wishes, ARI starts the interview
ARI : Okay Poojan, so what are you doing currently
YT : Sir my currently studying in my final year engineering, pursuing my engg in EXTC..
ARI - Which college are you from, how old is it, who runs it?
YT - Told
ARI - Not a very a old college (its about 10 years old), didnt you do well in Engg CET to get into a better college, why so?
YT - Sir was preparing for IIT-JEE got in Extended Merit List and coz of this was not able to do that well in CET...
now TG comes in
TG - You had an elective Neural Networks and Fuzzy Logic in 6th semester, do you remember anything about it
YT - Yes sir I very much remember it and more so because thats my area of work for final year project.
TG - Okay can you define Neural Networks(NN) for us?
YT - yes sir, NN is a processing device......... (stopped in between)
TG - What kind of processing device, hardware or software?
YT - Sir NN that am using is a software based and hardware too is possible.. (i soon realised have to weigh before i say any word)
YT - It is modeled on the way our brains operates and has synaptic interconnections between neurons just like the way we have in our brain.. And it is based on 'learning from experience' fundamentals, so though it has algorithms it has various parameters which make it very useful tool in processing non-linear inputs..
TG - Okay can you tell me NN Algorithm?
YT - Told about Back Propagation algorithm I had used in my project
TG - What is the middle layer called?
YT - Hidden layer
TG - Why is the name back propagation?
YT - Gave good enough reasons with proper explanation..
TG - Okay tell me about transfer functions in NN
YT - Sir there aren't any transfer functions in NN
TG - Okay you told about non-linearity(told you he picked up each and every word) what is it?
YT - Told about its efficiency on processing of non-linear data and changing various parameters like learning rate, weights and biases..
TG - All that is fine, but how does it get this non-linear property.. there has to be some transfer function..
YT - (Ab samjha) Sir its called Activation Function
TG - (smiled) yes tell me about that
YT - told 1 of them and its equation
TG - wat are the parameters in the equation and wats the maximum value of the function?
YT - told..
TG - there is a another one to operate on negative input data as well?
YT - bipolar function
TG - wats the expression of function
YT - told
TG - Now we know 1 part of the subject, tell me other part.. Whats fuzzy logic?
YT - Told and gave a general definition of fuzzy logic
TG - How is fuzzy logic different?
YT - told about values from 0 to 1 unlike binary logic which have fixed values 0 and 1..
TG - so if we have a system of %ages where we have 65%,80%,85% how will fuzzy be different from other logics?
YT - explained
TG - Have you heard about fuzzy controller with bell shaped curves
YT - No sir am not aware of this..
TG - You had a course of uPuC.. What all did you learn? which uP?
YT - 8085,8086,8088...
TG - 8085 is how many bit processor?
YT - 8 bit.. ALU operates on 8 bit data..
TG - What about 8086?
YT - 16-bit
TG - Which was the first 32-bit uP?
YT - I can't recollect but some Intel uP..
TG - Any idea which one?
YT - Pentium series but not 100% sure..
TG - 80386 it is.. Which company apart from Intel manufactures processors?
YT - AMD is one of them..
TG - What does AMD stand for??
YT - I don't know the what does it stand for..
Technical done and handled well.
Now the current affairs ma'am comes in
ECA - Do you read newspaper, tell me any news on past days
YT - Told Union Budget 2012, Trivedi Fiasco
ECA- Anything else
YT - Today's news about people under poverty line in India has come down from 37% to 30% and revised limits of per day spending's by Planning Commission, India.
ECA - Define poverty line
YT - did but not a precise one but included key points
ECA - Do you agree with those numbers? Why is govt doing such surveys? Can someone live for a day with 28 rupees?
YT - No ma'am in a city its not possible to live with just 28 rupees in a day and these figures aren't quite helpful in knowing the exact picture but they do help us in getting an idea about how many can't even a meal a day
ECA - Define inflation
YT - did, 2 indices CPI,WPI
ECA - any news regarding that
YT - yes, CPI launched recently by Indian govt..
ECA - Explain CPI, WPI
YT - did
ECA - why need of CPI?
YT - told about CPI giving info on consumer and retail products and WPI about wholesale.. some discussions on it..
ECA - How is inflation calculated
YT - told
ECA - this month its 10%, next month its 9% explain what does it mean?
YT - told about it being calculated on year-to-year basis and stuff related to that.. some discussions with ARI on exact calculations.. in the end they told me exact way of calculating and its precise definition...
ARI - Who is the Governor of Maharashtra?
YT - remembering for few secs said Narayanan Katikala (read that during placements thankfully i recollected in time due to the weird name)
ARI - Who is the Home Minister of Maharashtra?
YT - R R Patil
ARI - Who is the Chief Minister of Maharashtra?
YT - Prithviraj Chavan
TG - How did he come into power?? He was no where in the picture and suddenly became CM
ECA - With no basis they seemed to have made him CM.. Do you know his political background? And how and why did he became CM?
YT - No sir am not aware about his political background (knew about him being engg and some abroad degree but didnt say as it wasn't relevant and not asked)
ARI - Whats your CAT%le, did u do well in both sections? if 99 than why not calls from ABC
YT - told about admission policies of each of them and told why i didnt fit in..
TG - other calls, why IIM Indore
YT - told..
TG - which one would you choose IITB or New IIM's?
YT - a very diplomatic answer.. (he seemed pleased)
ARI - what do you other than academics, any hobbies
YT - told.. mentioned about Harsha Bhogle in hobbies
ARI - Whats his background?
YT - Chem Engg from Osmaniabad University, MBA from IIMA and loved marketing and advertising field.. he seemed to be pretty pleased with that detailed piece of information.
ARI - any ECA activities you have done?
YT - told and told about being related to NSS..
ARI - What is NGO? What does it do?
YT - told, social work and upliftment..
ARI - What is child labour?
YT - told, was not sure about age limit (13 or 15) and mentioned about importance of school and education at early age..
ARI - So whats imp age or schooling?
YT - Sir it can't be taken objectively and both are imp..
ARI - 20 yr-old studying in school and working, child labour?
YT - caught at this point but told something..
ARI - What RTE?
YT- told and mentioned about not failing student from 1st to 8th i.e from 6-14 years..
ARI - is that the main criteria? (just forgot the term compulsory education)
Some unfruitful discussion on that about why it not being success where he was not pleased with my lack of knowledge)
ARI - heard of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan?
YT - heard of it but dunno details of it..
ARI - okay
Some more discussions of RTE and why is it not that great a success, i told about it affecting students, teachers lose zeal to teach and all those stuff but he didn't seem convince...
ARI - So you say you are involved in social activities and you dont know stuff about RTE, child labour, poverty line (pehle do thik hi, poverty line explain kiya thik se)
YT - Yes NSS was a extra currics and am not involved with any NGO as such and we did activities on small scale and in and around premises of college and it was done so as to enhance the understanding the importance social values and social responsibility, nothing on massive scale.. (dunno whether he was pleased or not but a wryish smile)
ARI - Thank You , we are done!
YT thank you to all 3 of them and left the room carefully closing the door to avoid it from banging..
And after 35 mins was finally done with the interview. I felt i was a good interview but with IIM Interview's you are never the best judge as it completely depends on the panel perception about you rather than your expected perception in front of the panel. Considering the results were supposed to be out by 10th May it surely is going to be a long wait to know my actual verdict..
