From Bangalore my mother and I caught shadabdi to chennai... It was raining... Well, i felt like the place was welcoming me :)
So we reached chennai on march 14, 9.30pm... My gd/pi process for iit-m was on march 17th morning...
I was so tired by 14t that i was even telling my mum that we will return home straight frm bgl without going to chennai...
The last time i visited chennai was when i was in the 10th std... But the place has changed so rapidly...
The culture there is very different... complete contrast to the other metros... It has got its pros and cons... You get everything now in chennai... from food courts, to ccds to pizza huts... Now these r the main things which bother me ( food outlets)..
We stayed at my mum's friend's place... We went to the city centre, spancer plaza and t nagar... It was more like a holiday for me... shopping all the way..
On march 17th morning we left for iit-madras.... The campus is so huge... But the department of management studies was near the gajendra circle... So we just had to take the straight road from the entrance...
There was a presentation after the registration.
The group task was conducted shortly. We were divided into groups. The panel was the same for the gt and pi.
The topic for group task was about choosing a political party and how to bring about professionalism in it. We were given 5 minutes to write our points on 1 sheet. Then there was open discussion for about 15 min. There was not much co-ordination. Everyone was adopting diplomatic stands not criticizing any party as such. The prof gave the feedback that no one was assertive and that none of us were straight.
PI was by the prof frm doms and another frm civil engg department.The questions asked were:
Explain the main project.
Whether there is a problem in engineers choosing mba after their engg?
Since I had written interest in hr in my sop, I was asked to explain how much I knew about it.
Compare the hr in a small office to that undertaken by the human resource development in India.
How to eradicate poverty?
Why funds are going wasted even though it has been properly planned?
Which all books do you read?
I was asked the story line of one of the books.
There was a brief discussion on my extra curricular activities.
The interview lasted for 20-25 min. The whole process was very well conducted. The seniors were managing everything very well. They were all very helpful..
After the process, one of the seniors frm kerala took me to her hostel and gave me a tour..
I also met my school mates doing there B.Tech there...
On the whole it was good... But then there is the wait till april 7th...
Friday, March 21, 2008
3rd one of the season
The third one of the season.... Being the superstitious and optimistic person I am I believe in numerology... Superstitious coz i want my lucky numbers to be my panel numbers... Coz i am optimistic, almost every digit turns out to be my lucky number...
1,5 - coz i have read somewhere that its my sun sign's lucky numbers
3,6,9- multiples of 3 are lucky for most people
2- its my roll number at college... so far it has been lucky for me by God's grace
4- my personal lucky number.... thats my birth date (sept 4), my dads birth date, my parent's wedding anniversary date and my dad considers it lucky to the extent that every car we buy will have the digits adding to 4...
The others are ok ... I used to consider 8 as my unlucky number but then my mother reminded me that its her birth date and its my birth date *2 (yea, my mother has her unique way of convincing people)... Neverthless now 7 and 8 are my neutral numbers :D
At IISc i was 2 nd person in the 4th panel and at IIT-Kgp interview i was 2nd person in the C panel ... ok i do look into such small stuffs... anyone reading it may think i have completely lost it.... But no.. i am still sane...
So back to IIT-Kgp gd/pi at iisc bangalore... on march 14th. Reporting time : 7.30 am...
I skipped my breakfast as the long walk to the restaurant took up our time and we had to run back to make it to the department of management studies, iisc at 7.30 am. I get there to find that more than 30 people in suits standing outside. I found 3 other girls there, all in suit. I asked someone who said that there was iisc interview also going on... So it will not be in that building..
We all waited till 8.15 am. There was no clue of any volunteers frm kharagpur. One guy called iit kharagpur... They told him to move to gate no. 2 where there was an sbi atm.. So we all, perfectly dressed, walked to this place... When we reached there still no clue of anyone from iit kgp... The security shooed us from the entrance as some people were filing the campus. So we were all standing on the road side, most of us sitting on the pavement side in full suits ( it was a wonderful sight). It was 8.30 am and then we again called iit kgp... they said to go to choksy hall ( yea, that was the name of the hall... i mentioned it here coz then i found it absolutely funny... A place very serious... trust me the atmosphere at iisc is very serious..... having such a name for their hall) .... This hall was a walk for almost 10 min... But we had to walk thru a path which had climbers all over the shade .. i felt like naming it hanging gardens of IISc...
So we finally reach this choksy hall... I didnt even have breakfast and most of us were in the same condition... Then the co-ordinators of iit kgp took another 5 min to get the hall opened...
We all went inside and sat down...
The next thing what happened is the funniest of all.... My mother was with me... We walk almost half of the whole campus without food and most of us had our stomachs growling.... My mother was really bothered with me skipping breakfast and going to attend this process.... The process once it starts can go upto noon... And we cant have a break once it starts... She teamed with another candidate and went to the director who was present there. They told the director that most of us are there without having food and the co-ordinators have delayed us so much... The director came and announced that we all can have breakfast and come in 15 min...
So i got in after having food for the presentation. The presentation started at 9.15 am. But after that everything went on very smoothly. The presentation was pretty impressive.
Then they put the list of the panels... Mine was at instrumentation dept... That was another walk from the hall.... By now i knew the whole campus and was practically leading the others too...
GD:
It was a business case study. The strength of the group was 12 of which 2 were absent in mine. I was the only girl in my panel. About a loss making company which had to cut down the employees’ benefits. Everyone was given around 10 min to think. After that everyone had to speak their points for 1 minute separately. After that it was open discussion for 10 min. Even though there was a fight for the air time in the beginning, towards the end there was not much left to speak as the case was very much restricted.
Over all it was good... 2 of the candidates were helping the others by not speaking at all.... I understood by then that i love case studies...
PI: My panel had a prof and a madam. The same panel was there for the gd as well.
The questions asked were:
Introduce yourself
Explain the main project
There were some basic questions asked about the main project.
Why do you want to pursue management right after engineering?
What are the problems faced by the women managers?
Who is your role model?
Which all colleges have you got call from?
They asked me why I prefer to go north and not IIT-M
Then there was a brief discussion on my extra curricular activities.
The whole interview lasted for 15 to 20 min. The panel was very friendly so i didnt have much stress or anything.
After that we roamed around the campus and returned... I wasnt able to spot any mallus for this process
1,5 - coz i have read somewhere that its my sun sign's lucky numbers
3,6,9- multiples of 3 are lucky for most people
2- its my roll number at college... so far it has been lucky for me by God's grace
4- my personal lucky number.... thats my birth date (sept 4), my dads birth date, my parent's wedding anniversary date and my dad considers it lucky to the extent that every car we buy will have the digits adding to 4...
The others are ok ... I used to consider 8 as my unlucky number but then my mother reminded me that its her birth date and its my birth date *2 (yea, my mother has her unique way of convincing people)... Neverthless now 7 and 8 are my neutral numbers :D
At IISc i was 2 nd person in the 4th panel and at IIT-Kgp interview i was 2nd person in the C panel ... ok i do look into such small stuffs... anyone reading it may think i have completely lost it.... But no.. i am still sane...
So back to IIT-Kgp gd/pi at iisc bangalore... on march 14th. Reporting time : 7.30 am...
I skipped my breakfast as the long walk to the restaurant took up our time and we had to run back to make it to the department of management studies, iisc at 7.30 am. I get there to find that more than 30 people in suits standing outside. I found 3 other girls there, all in suit. I asked someone who said that there was iisc interview also going on... So it will not be in that building..
We all waited till 8.15 am. There was no clue of any volunteers frm kharagpur. One guy called iit kharagpur... They told him to move to gate no. 2 where there was an sbi atm.. So we all, perfectly dressed, walked to this place... When we reached there still no clue of anyone from iit kgp... The security shooed us from the entrance as some people were filing the campus. So we were all standing on the road side, most of us sitting on the pavement side in full suits ( it was a wonderful sight). It was 8.30 am and then we again called iit kgp... they said to go to choksy hall ( yea, that was the name of the hall... i mentioned it here coz then i found it absolutely funny... A place very serious... trust me the atmosphere at iisc is very serious..... having such a name for their hall) .... This hall was a walk for almost 10 min... But we had to walk thru a path which had climbers all over the shade .. i felt like naming it hanging gardens of IISc...
So we finally reach this choksy hall... I didnt even have breakfast and most of us were in the same condition... Then the co-ordinators of iit kgp took another 5 min to get the hall opened...
We all went inside and sat down...
The next thing what happened is the funniest of all.... My mother was with me... We walk almost half of the whole campus without food and most of us had our stomachs growling.... My mother was really bothered with me skipping breakfast and going to attend this process.... The process once it starts can go upto noon... And we cant have a break once it starts... She teamed with another candidate and went to the director who was present there. They told the director that most of us are there without having food and the co-ordinators have delayed us so much... The director came and announced that we all can have breakfast and come in 15 min...
So i got in after having food for the presentation. The presentation started at 9.15 am. But after that everything went on very smoothly. The presentation was pretty impressive.
Then they put the list of the panels... Mine was at instrumentation dept... That was another walk from the hall.... By now i knew the whole campus and was practically leading the others too...
GD:
It was a business case study. The strength of the group was 12 of which 2 were absent in mine. I was the only girl in my panel. About a loss making company which had to cut down the employees’ benefits. Everyone was given around 10 min to think. After that everyone had to speak their points for 1 minute separately. After that it was open discussion for 10 min. Even though there was a fight for the air time in the beginning, towards the end there was not much left to speak as the case was very much restricted.
Over all it was good... 2 of the candidates were helping the others by not speaking at all.... I understood by then that i love case studies...
PI: My panel had a prof and a madam. The same panel was there for the gd as well.
The questions asked were:
Introduce yourself
Explain the main project
There were some basic questions asked about the main project.
Why do you want to pursue management right after engineering?
What are the problems faced by the women managers?
Who is your role model?
Which all colleges have you got call from?
They asked me why I prefer to go north and not IIT-M
Then there was a brief discussion on my extra curricular activities.
The whole interview lasted for 15 to 20 min. The panel was very friendly so i didnt have much stress or anything.
After that we roamed around the campus and returned... I wasnt able to spot any mallus for this process
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
I went to one of the most beautiful campus in India... That was IISc, Bangalore... The campus is unique in its own way... Nuthing like the other IITs i have seen....
We reached bangalore on march 11. We were staying in an apartment (which itself was very cozy) which was just 2km frm the central railway station and iisc.
I reached the campus at 7.30 am on march 12th though the reporting time was 9 am. We had breakfast from a good restaurant inside the campus and had a long walk back to the Department of Management Studies. There was even an underground subway inside the campus (which is the same size as the one you can find in Trivandrum).
We were supposed to register before the presentation and I found many absent. Here there were 6 girls including me. Around 60 or so people were present.
During the presentation, the prof gave a statistics... Total of 30000 were supposed to write Jmet. A total of 28000 odd took the exam. Of the students who qualified, IISc got 650 odd application and they chose 250 for the process. After the gd/pi they will select 20. The unique thing about IISc is that they have no waitlist.... So those 20 to whom they give the call are the only students who join there. If they happen to not join for any reason then they will leave that seat vacant wasting another student's chance...
I met 3 mallus during the process of which 2 were frm MEC, 2006 batch and 1 a pass out frm CET. There was no active participation of the students like what I saw in Bombay. The seniors there were mostly interacting with us and very willing to help us out for anything..
Everyone was split into groups. There were a total of 5 groups each with around 10 people.
GD:
Since mine was the 4th group we had to wait till the 1st 3 finished their gd.
The gd topic was ‘Bollywood heroes are poor role models’.
We had been given 5 minutes to think, 15 min for discussion and 3 minutes to summarize. The panel will just give the topic and ask you to start. You will have to time yourself and carry thru the different stages of the gd. The gd didn’t go too good as people were practically shouting without showing any lenience to anyone. Even though some people tried to bring some useful points there were mostly repetition of points by the same person or irrelevant points. All together it was not a good one.
I tried my best to be an active participant thru out but in vain... People were practically cutting you and speaking... so it was more like a war of voice... The person with the loudest booming voice can survive there.... Just like any other field... Survival of the fittest !!
PI:
I had the PI only by 3.30pm even though my gd got over at 11.45 am. So we had a relaxed lunch... There were 2 panels for the PI. I was in the non statistics panel.
The panel had 6 members including a lady panelist. ( 2 of them were mallus). The panelists of the gds need not be the ones for the pi. But for me they were also present.
Some of the questions asked to me were:
Introduce yourself.
Why mba?
What is the sum of the first 100 natural numbers?
What is the sum of the cube of first 100 natural numbers?
What is fourier transform? Why do we need it?
Rank the IITs according to your preference.
Compare IIT B with IISc. (Most of the candidates were asked this)
What role should the management assume to deal with the union problems?
Why is the industrial growth very low in Kerala?
Overall it went ok
... the other panels were even asking basic mathematics like fourier series, differential equations and integration 
There were people who went in the beginning who were asked to explain CMOS manufacturing
... Hearing this question me, Iyas and Anand (both 2006 batch EC, MEC) were running to meet a batch mate of their's who was doing his M.Tech there ( after quitting Nvidia)... yea you can find all sorts of people at IISc... He was explaining the whole process of manufacturing over lunch....
The campus is really beautiful and anyone interested in research will find IISc the best place. One will find plenty of options there....
We reached bangalore on march 11. We were staying in an apartment (which itself was very cozy) which was just 2km frm the central railway station and iisc.
I reached the campus at 7.30 am on march 12th though the reporting time was 9 am. We had breakfast from a good restaurant inside the campus and had a long walk back to the Department of Management Studies. There was even an underground subway inside the campus (which is the same size as the one you can find in Trivandrum).
We were supposed to register before the presentation and I found many absent. Here there were 6 girls including me. Around 60 or so people were present.
During the presentation, the prof gave a statistics... Total of 30000 were supposed to write Jmet. A total of 28000 odd took the exam. Of the students who qualified, IISc got 650 odd application and they chose 250 for the process. After the gd/pi they will select 20. The unique thing about IISc is that they have no waitlist.... So those 20 to whom they give the call are the only students who join there. If they happen to not join for any reason then they will leave that seat vacant wasting another student's chance...
I met 3 mallus during the process of which 2 were frm MEC, 2006 batch and 1 a pass out frm CET. There was no active participation of the students like what I saw in Bombay. The seniors there were mostly interacting with us and very willing to help us out for anything..
Everyone was split into groups. There were a total of 5 groups each with around 10 people.
GD:
Since mine was the 4th group we had to wait till the 1st 3 finished their gd.
The gd topic was ‘Bollywood heroes are poor role models’.
We had been given 5 minutes to think, 15 min for discussion and 3 minutes to summarize. The panel will just give the topic and ask you to start. You will have to time yourself and carry thru the different stages of the gd. The gd didn’t go too good as people were practically shouting without showing any lenience to anyone. Even though some people tried to bring some useful points there were mostly repetition of points by the same person or irrelevant points. All together it was not a good one.
I tried my best to be an active participant thru out but in vain... People were practically cutting you and speaking... so it was more like a war of voice... The person with the loudest booming voice can survive there.... Just like any other field... Survival of the fittest !!PI:
I had the PI only by 3.30pm even though my gd got over at 11.45 am. So we had a relaxed lunch... There were 2 panels for the PI. I was in the non statistics panel.
The panel had 6 members including a lady panelist. ( 2 of them were mallus). The panelists of the gds need not be the ones for the pi. But for me they were also present.
Some of the questions asked to me were:
Introduce yourself.
Why mba?
What is the sum of the first 100 natural numbers?
What is the sum of the cube of first 100 natural numbers?
What is fourier transform? Why do we need it?
Rank the IITs according to your preference.
Compare IIT B with IISc. (Most of the candidates were asked this)
What role should the management assume to deal with the union problems?
Why is the industrial growth very low in Kerala?
Overall it went ok
... the other panels were even asking basic mathematics like fourier series, differential equations and integration There were people who went in the beginning who were asked to explain CMOS manufacturing
... Hearing this question me, Iyas and Anand (both 2006 batch EC, MEC) were running to meet a batch mate of their's who was doing his M.Tech there ( after quitting Nvidia)... yea you can find all sorts of people at IISc... He was explaining the whole process of manufacturing over lunch....The campus is really beautiful and anyone interested in research will find IISc the best place. One will find plenty of options there....
My first ever B school interview!!!
Shailesh J Mehta School Of Management (SJMSOM), IIT-Bombay... This was the first B school from which I got a call from and where I attended the interview. I got the call on february 9th. I remember the date well as its just one day after my mother's b'day and the day i got my new laptop!!
My dad accompanied me to Bombay. That was my first visit to Mumbai, the city which i have heard so much about and which is my father's fav city. So my dad had to take leave and come with me. These are the one of the very few situations were I wish I was a boy... I could have gone alone without disturbing anyone. The slot allotted for me was february 29th, afternoon slot.
We reached there on feb 28 by 6.30pm. The campus was well kept... everything in order with sign boards at every nook and corner. We stayed in the staff hostel as we were late to get the guest house... The guest house over looks the lake.... There is a small pond in front where we can find the gaggle of geese.
We had an early dinner and slept off.... I woke up early to luk thru my main, mini proj and seminar.... did a thorough revision. Had lunch, got dressed and went to SJMSOM.
I had the fright of my life wen i got into the seminar hall. About 55 candidates were sitting inside and just 4 gals including me. About 85% of them were in full suit. About 90% of them having work ex of 2yrs +.
There was a presentation by one of the students at SOM, which i found out was an ex-MECian, Prasanth Narayanan :)... I had also contacted another ex-MECian, Joe, who was studying there. But since he didn't have duty that day, he didnt come over. After the presentation, we were asked to assemble according to our panels. My number was A4. It means I am the 4th person in panel A.I had reasons to feel intimidated.... when i was there i knew that they will chick me out, if at all they do only coz of 2 things ... my jmet rank ( which was the last rank to be called) and coz i am a fresher.
The whole process was very well conducted and bang on time. So at 2 pm we were send in for the group discussion.
GD:
As some have discussed, it was a case study. A group of hourly based workers were not motivated and hence they have poor productivity.So what will you do if you were the personnel manager?
The gd was ok. I started first. Then i found it difficult to get in for the next 5-10 min. After that i got in with 2-3 more valid points. (valid .. for me ;)) It was not exactly a fish market but there were at least 2 ppl trying to put forth their point at any point of time. So it was hard unless you had a good voice to fight your way into it.
After the gd we were taken back to the seminar hall.... we were supposed to fill up a form. We have to enter each sem's marks... just engg marks.. The extra curricular column has to be filled only if you have certificates and that too no school level achievements... only those starting from college... The certificate shud also state clearly whether it is state, national or college. Each entry is thoroughly verified by the students in charge.
We were provided snacks (samosa) and tea.... My father was also allowed to sit thru the presentation and all the students were very friendly and helpful.
PI:
There was a professor and an alumnus.(the same panel as the gd) ... one was the hr head of deloitte and the other was the prof who takes international business and ipr for the students ..
Some of the questions asked were:
Introduce yourself.
Seeing that I was electronics and communication engineering student, one of the panellists asked me to start by explaining mobile communication.
I left it half way as I haven’t learned it till last sem.
Which all papers have you studied last sem?
What did you study in electronic product design?
Explain aesthetics and ergonomics.
Tell me how to design the room aesthetically.
What are the different types of layers? Explain physical layer.
How does google come up with the search results so fast?
What is the basic features differentiating linux and windows.
How is linux maintained free from virus attacks?
I answered wat ever I could. It didn’t go too good as the questions were way beyond my comfortable zone. ... But i tried my best to make an attempt to wat ever i cud...
The interview lasted around 15 min. The other 3 who went in had it for about 20-25 min... i guess the prof had made up his mind in the 1st 5 min he saw me.... Have to wait till april 7th for the results...
The whole process was so conducted so well that everything went right on time... Just Perfect...
We left the campus next day m'ing (me looking longingly to come back )
My dad accompanied me to Bombay. That was my first visit to Mumbai, the city which i have heard so much about and which is my father's fav city. So my dad had to take leave and come with me. These are the one of the very few situations were I wish I was a boy... I could have gone alone without disturbing anyone. The slot allotted for me was february 29th, afternoon slot.
We reached there on feb 28 by 6.30pm. The campus was well kept... everything in order with sign boards at every nook and corner. We stayed in the staff hostel as we were late to get the guest house... The guest house over looks the lake.... There is a small pond in front where we can find the gaggle of geese.
We had an early dinner and slept off.... I woke up early to luk thru my main, mini proj and seminar.... did a thorough revision. Had lunch, got dressed and went to SJMSOM.
I had the fright of my life wen i got into the seminar hall. About 55 candidates were sitting inside and just 4 gals including me. About 85% of them were in full suit. About 90% of them having work ex of 2yrs +.
There was a presentation by one of the students at SOM, which i found out was an ex-MECian, Prasanth Narayanan :)... I had also contacted another ex-MECian, Joe, who was studying there. But since he didn't have duty that day, he didnt come over. After the presentation, we were asked to assemble according to our panels. My number was A4. It means I am the 4th person in panel A.I had reasons to feel intimidated.... when i was there i knew that they will chick me out, if at all they do only coz of 2 things ... my jmet rank ( which was the last rank to be called) and coz i am a fresher.
The whole process was very well conducted and bang on time. So at 2 pm we were send in for the group discussion.
GD:
As some have discussed, it was a case study. A group of hourly based workers were not motivated and hence they have poor productivity.So what will you do if you were the personnel manager?
The gd was ok. I started first. Then i found it difficult to get in for the next 5-10 min. After that i got in with 2-3 more valid points. (valid .. for me ;)) It was not exactly a fish market but there were at least 2 ppl trying to put forth their point at any point of time. So it was hard unless you had a good voice to fight your way into it.
After the gd we were taken back to the seminar hall.... we were supposed to fill up a form. We have to enter each sem's marks... just engg marks.. The extra curricular column has to be filled only if you have certificates and that too no school level achievements... only those starting from college... The certificate shud also state clearly whether it is state, national or college. Each entry is thoroughly verified by the students in charge.
We were provided snacks (samosa) and tea.... My father was also allowed to sit thru the presentation and all the students were very friendly and helpful.
PI:
There was a professor and an alumnus.(the same panel as the gd) ... one was the hr head of deloitte and the other was the prof who takes international business and ipr for the students ..
Some of the questions asked were:
Introduce yourself.
Seeing that I was electronics and communication engineering student, one of the panellists asked me to start by explaining mobile communication.
I left it half way as I haven’t learned it till last sem.
Which all papers have you studied last sem?
What did you study in electronic product design?
Explain aesthetics and ergonomics.
Tell me how to design the room aesthetically.
What are the different types of layers? Explain physical layer.
How does google come up with the search results so fast?
What is the basic features differentiating linux and windows.
How is linux maintained free from virus attacks?
I answered wat ever I could. It didn’t go too good as the questions were way beyond my comfortable zone.
... But i tried my best to make an attempt to wat ever i cud... The interview lasted around 15 min. The other 3 who went in had it for about 20-25 min... i guess the prof had made up his mind in the 1st 5 min he saw me.... Have to wait till april 7th for the results...
The whole process was so conducted so well that everything went right on time... Just Perfect...
We left the campus next day m'ing (me looking longingly to come back )
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