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My WAT and PI for the New IIMs was quite an experience. The process started in the morning at around 9 am; my centre was Kolkata. The WAT topic was “Should the appraisal system of being judged by senior employees be carried on, or the juniors should also be allowed to evaluate seniors?” The time given was 30 minutes with a Word limit of around 300-350 words. There was very little statistic available with me in support of my writing so I wrote in a logical way. I was quite happy with my effort.
The second round was the Personal Interview where there were 6 panels of interviewers of 3 in each. Mine was the last one and I was the last candidate of my panel list. At first, I was feeling a bit nervous, while I was sitting on the waiting bench but, once my turn came and I entered, things turned very interesting as well as unexpected. One interviewer started with an assumption that I wasn’t fit for MBA as I was a fresher and an engineer. The panel tried to convince me that I wasn’t meant for MBA and I was only smiling. Soon I realised that they were trying to put me in a stressful situation and I kept on smiling and putting forward my logic behind aspiring for MBA, not getting stressed at all. This was later appreciated by the panel. One member asked me, what my hobbies were and I replied “Quizzing”. And then the first sets of questions were thrown at me; a Geometry puzzle was given to me with 4 questions of increasing level of difficulty and I was very quick to solve the first two. The third one was the toughest one which resulted in a wrong answer. The interviewer expected a positive from me on this but then he said “OK”.
They didn’t ask me any business related question as my domain was engineering. The next set of questions came from my own background which is Electrical Engineering. The basic questions regarding Grid, different zones of the National Grid and how these are grids are connected or disconnected were asked. This part went neither too bad nor too good. At the end, I said “Thank you” and came out carrying my documents in hand. It was mostly a stress interview setup for which I wasn’t prepared at all, but somehow I managed to pull through. Maybe, being jovial throughout the interview worked for me and I got landed in IIM Raipur by God’s grace.
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About the Author:
Arkaprabha Bhattacharyya
PGP 2016-18
IIM Raipur