IIM CALCUTA GD/PI EXPERIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE

PERSONAL DETAILS: Name: Saurabh Pande Education: B.E., Computer Science Engineering N.S.I.T. (Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology), New Delhi. Year of passing out: June 2003. WORK EXPERIENCE: Duration of Total work experience: 23 months Company last worked for: Sapient Corporation, Gurgaon. Position: Associate technology L2; responsible for design, development, testing and maintenance of IT solution for client. CAT PERCENTILES: Overall: 99.77 Verbal: 98.60 Quantitative: 98.8 DI/Reasoning: 99.0 IIM C calls: PGDM/PGDCM/BOTH Final calls: B,C,L,I,K GD/PI venue: Delhi. GROUP DISCUSSION: Topic of the GD: Cats are better than dogs No. of participants in the GD: 9 Time Limit and any other instructions: 12-15 minutes Whether asked to summarize the GD: Yes, each and everyone was asked to do the same in some random order Whether a written summary of the GD was asked: No THE GD EXPERIENCE: (please provide at least 5 lines of description) The topic as you can see is really abstract. People started out comparing cats and dogs in terms of femininity and masculinity and the male vs female discussion sparked off. Someone gave the point of view that dogs signify loyalty while cats being from the clever family signify astuteness. It also went into a discussion of cat vs other management entrance exams. So, all in all, the discussion was all about bringing new facets of the topic into the discussion and changing the flow of the GD.

How would you rate the Chaos level in the GD (on a scale of 1-10, 1 being most peaceful 10 being most chaotic): 5/10. Any observations on mistakes you committed in the GD: Any observations of what you could have done better in the GD: Any tips for GD preparation: It pays to be well read. But being well read is not absolutely necessary. I think its very important to be able to think on the feet and bring out new facets of the topic which give a lead to the group members to discuss. If your point is well accepted, I feel that you have scored well. PERSONAL INTERVIEW: No of interviewers in the Panel: 3 List of the questions asked and your responses: (Intro questions/acad based questions/work experience based/general awareness/personal questions) The interview started off with the standard opening question Tell me something about yourself. The panel then asked me if I was aware of how many people from my college have got IIMC calls (I had passed out 2 years back) and the reason for such large numbers. Then, one of the panelists asked me about Sapient (the company where I as working), the kind of model it follows, its competitors, why do you think it will succeed in the short run and the long run. They then asked me about my favorite topic and I told them football. So, one of the panelists asked me to give me names of 3 nations effected by drugs in football. I told them the names of 3 South-American countries namely Chile, Columbia and Venezuela. He asked me to give me the name of the player who was shot down during the 1994 World Cup after he mistakenly scored an own goal. I told them about Andreas Escobar. They then asked me about the GD and how it went, what was good about it and what was bad. They finally moved on to a bit of academics. One of the panelists started asking me about turing machine and automata. I was not well versed with it, so I refused. He then moved to graphs and asked me what a minimum cost spanning tree was. I was able to answer this pretty satisfactorily. Any observations on mistakes you committed in the PI: I was not well versed with the computer science subjects which I had done at college. I think, being well versed with those could have made my life much easier although I must say that after 2 years of work-experience, you are not expected to know much about the academic subjects. But yes, be thorough with your work-experience stuff. Any observations of what you could have done better in the PI: Any tips for Personal Interview preparation: For guys with work-ex, be thorough with your work-ex, the industry you are working in, about the companies you have worked in, and their competitors. For academics, pick out your 3 favorite subjects in graduation and prepare them well. If you are asked about a particular subject, then its absolutely fine in saying that you would like to be quizzed in these 3 particular subjects. Also, be very well versed with one topic of interest (could be anything under the sun) and try to take your interview towards it. It really makes life very easy from there on.