It’s that time of the year. Every MBA aspirant is revising formulas of the quant section, taking and analysing as many mocks they can. Some are pondering why their marks in the verbal section are not improving, some are enquiring in Iquanta who all are there in the same slot as of them on the D-Day. Believe me – we all have gone through the same set of ordeals. After one month or so, you’ll all appear for CAT/XAT/IIFT/SNAP, for some examinations will be good, for some they will be bad. You’ll start matching answers from TIME, IMS, CL and if you don’t, no worries. You’ll find it out soon in the first or second week of January. But the question is will a good CAT/XAT/IIFT/SNAP score only be enough to secure admission in a premier B-school of the country?
Apparently NO as you all know. Each college gives different weight to different criteria and most of them (10th, 12th, Undergrad CGPA) are already fixed and you cannot change them. What you can change is your score of GD/WAT and PI with a well-structured plan that carries great weight in your overall score in the final selection. Believe me, I have seen people with 99.XX percentile missing out on top business schools due to a poor GD/PI. Now after CAT, you’ll have around 1-1.5 months of time for WAT-GD-PI preparation, make sure you use that well.
Tips to crack WAT/GD/PI:-
1. Subject Knowledge:- I remember GD of XUB and the topic given was ‘GST Implementation: boon or bane’. Now the topic is damn easy for someone who knows a thing or two about GST. I knew next to nothing about GST or most of the topics I were given during the WAT/GD process when I started my preparation after CAT. I started making notes from videos on general topics and current affairs from StudyIQ and this helped me a lot in GD as well as PI. In a GD, if you have already made 3-4 entries with rich content, you have a big upper hand over others in the process. Same is true for WAT as well.
For interviews, you need to have a high-level understanding of all the core domains like Marketing, Finance, Operations, HR. Go through the basic jargons. I couldn’t have cleared the interview of NITIE hadn’t I told the interviewer what JIT is or what constraints are in linear programming. If you are having work-ex, be thorough with the work you did and the industry you worked in. If you are fresher, revise your engineering subjects. DO NOT BLUFF ever. It is absolutely ok to say that you don't know the answer of a particular question rather than giving a wrong one.
Most importantly, prepare convincing and realistic answers for questions like ‘Why MBA?’, ‘Your strength and weaknesses’ or ‘Where do you see yourself 5 years down the line?’. Back these answers with personal experiences as examples.
2. Etiquettes and Manners:- Keep your body posture upright with leaning in a bit, show positive hand movements while answering and try to be polite with your fellow aspirants and panel members. Most importantly, DON’T overdo any of them. Don’t be too timid to make a point, DON’T STOP if someone cuts you in the middle provided that your point is logical and relevant.
3. Timekeeping:- Wear a watch on the D-Day. Do not start the GD topic too early. Make well-timed entries at equal intervals. Keep a note of the clock while writing essays during WAT. Allocate time wisely for individual sections - Introduction, Body and Conclusion and start writing accordingly.
4. Smile:- Smile a lot. I know you are tensed, but remind yourself of a joke/film sequence that made you laugh. I was so tensed before my interview at SCMHRD and one of the volunteers told me that the panellists are very chilled. The frowning face turned to a confident one and it turned out to be one of the very best interviews that I have ever attended.
Finally, all I can say is that these tips are something that I am telling from my experiences and not something that you must follow. Each one of us is unique and we have our very own success mantras. This was mine and would not have produced results had I not practised enough mock GD and PIs. Whatever success mantra you have, do
practise a LOT. I wish you all the very best for your entrance examinations and will love to see some of you writing your own success stories in a year or so.
#NITIE #WATGDPI #MBA #CAT #XAT #IIFT #SNAP #NMAT