MY A Experience!!

Welll finally the first (and most important) IIM call is behind me.. Yes I am referring to my tryst with IIMA @ IIMA on te 19th of February on a dreamy sunday afternoon. First things first...... the campus rocks!! rather bricks (get it DUH!!) It was wonderful and the place was very qiiet for a Bschol with 500 students on campus.

I had my session at 2 Pm and I reached there around 30 minutes before that. It seems A has callled people locationwise and thats why I saw a few familiar faces from the IMS workshop...there were in all 30 people and they were divided into 3 groups of 10 each... At 1.45 a professor came holding a list of all the students in his group and took away those 10 ( me being the 10th one)

In the room there was a slight difference in the seating arrangement as it was a perfet 360 degree cirlce with the 10 of us sitting all around it and the three panelists sitting on the oute ring behind the candidates. I had one panelist looking straight at me and the other two less than five feet behind me. ( I thought waht a perfect start this is.. showing my back to 2/3rd of my audience & judges) there were 3 sheets of papar in front of each of us. One had the case... the other was pink for rough work and the third was a ruled page for summary...We were told that you will think for 5 minutes think discuss for 15 - 20 minutes and finally wrute summary for 5 minutes...

That was the pre GD briefing and they also mentioned that we will take the interviews in the order of the serial numbers ad I was LAST.. HE told me i can have a look around the campus as I had a long tiem to go after the GD..

The Gd case was aas follows:
Dr Bhaskaran purchases a cellular connection ffrom the retailer of ICS cellular services in Chennai and he pays rs 1500 at that point of time. He is told that 1200 is towards security services and 300 towards cnnection charges. He however does not take an official receipt as it would cost him 3% more in taxes and instead agrees when the retialer tells him that the the company wil send him an acknowledgement alongwith the cotnract.. Later on receiving his first bill he finds that the bill is for 2400 and blah blah blah till they appoint a circle manager Ms. Rukmini to look into it..6 months after all this happens...

The GD was good and moderately peaceful as people interuppted others and also got interupted..Mine was good also as I came up witha few points and a decent number of entries including air time...On completion they asked us to write a summary in running hand pargraph stle no bullet points.
Did that well I guess with my prior experience of cases coming itno lay there.


Then came the wait and what a wait it was...imagine being at IIMA and waiting frim 2.25 pm to 5.45 Pm for your PI to start spoke to a lot of people... meditated....kept track of the match... relaxed by walking around....
Finally I stumbled upon a trend which I want otehrs at PG to verify.... In all the three groups made fro us 30 the last person to be interviewed was a non engineer and all the groups had other 9 engineers.. please let me know if anyone else spots such a trend in their GDPI sessions..

Then finally it dawned upon me like a hunting eagle and the panelist came out to call me into the room...
Let em introduce you to my panel:
2 Males one plump guy (PG) the other grey haired guy (GG)
1 Female prof who was very polite (FP)


They started off theinterview asking abt my company...which was very good as the comapny was one of my main selling points and we spoke for 7 mintues on all topics ranging from revenue, idea and setup, faculty, working, batch size, subjects taught, rent paid, profit margins, learning.....
Then the lady wasked me if I was happy with what I was doing?
Moi: definitely
FP: then y do u want to do an Mba
Moi: gave gyaan on how I already had a BMS (BBA) and then 2 years of business experience...future plans etc etc.
GG: tell me about your specialisattion in graduation
Moi: Sir, finance
PG (jumps on): then i will not ask you about Fiance I will ask you abt Quantitative Techniques..
Moi: (okies this is the subject I had least marks in my last semester exams) Yes sir
PG: what all have u learnt
Moi: Sir.. Linear Programming, Assignment Problem(AP),. Transportation Problem (TP)and a few other topics
PG: okies tell me what is connection between AP & TP
Moi: SIr... Gave the answerr abt what they are and the similarities betweeen them
Some more abt it and I answered satisfactorily
PG: Tell me abt Goal Prgramming
Moi: Gave a good structured reply and also talked abt the weights that can be assigned if equal priority is ot there.
Now PG was satisfiesd with this and asked me do you know statistics
Moi: Yes Sir (tentativelY)
PG: tell me what is skewness?
Moi: Sir it is a lop sided distribution...
Pg: How do you express it ?
Moi: Sir as eith right side or left side...
PG: Draw
Moi: Drew
PG: how do u know this is skewed?
Moi: Sir by looking t it...
PG: without looking
Moi: Sir if mean median and mode are same then they will besymmetric otherwies skewed
Continued little more on this till he confused me a bit and finally let go of it
GG: Ok now i shall ask you abt finance....
Moi: Sure
GG: what all have u learnt?
Moi: sir cash flow, funds flow, ratios, capital budgeting, project evaluation

GG: ok tell me what is NPV and IRR
Moi: TOld
GG: which is bbetter?
Moi: Sir depends
grilled me more on this till a dead end

Then the kind lady said I ahve only one question for you?
Shea sked me abt any event I had done adn the problem I had faced therien?
Gave her the reply and she seemsd satisfied
LAdy:You may leave. have a toffee!
Take one thank you
LAdy:Take another
thank you grinning now that I have 2..

EXIT
End of IIMA GDPI my job is done now left to gods up in the heavens and those at IIMA ;)

Overall sasfied with Gd adn cud have had a slightly better FInance section in my PI
ypou may post comments here or on PG
Sorry for the lengthy post...