Manoj Kumar Sahu's IIM Ahmedabad Interview Experience 2021

In today's interview, we bring to you Manoj Kumar Sahu's IIM Ahmedabad interview experience. Manoj has worked for 3.5 years in Aluminium Smelter at BALCO (a unit of Vedanta Resources) looking after Maintenance and Reliability of EOT Cranes (PTM cranes to be more specific). He scored a 98.71%ile in CAT 2020, and his academic background is as follows: X: 89% (ICSE Board) XII: 87 %( Orissa Board) Graduation: 8.35 B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering, NIT Rourkela. Read on to find out how his interview at IIM Ahmedabad went!

How did you prepare for your interviews?

Getting a call from a top B school is as good as nothing if you cannot convert it. I was lucky to have a bunch of friends who had already converted to top-notch B schools. I did consult with as many as possible and made an action plan to ace the interview. I had roughly 30 odd days for starting my preparation for the first B school interview. I divided my interview preparation into 4 areas.

1. Knowing myself: This is the part where I had never invested any time till now. I took some time out of my hectic schedule of office hours and noted down what I had done till now. I noted my strengths/weakness/achievements/Accomplishments.
2. Academics: After having almost 3.5 years of work-ex, it was highly unlikely that the panelists will grill me with technical questions. After all, giving an excuse was not a solution. As time was a limiting factor, I chose to read 2 subjects (Thermodynamics and Fluid Mechanics) from my under graduation.
3.  Current affairs/GK: To be honest, I had no interest in reading newspapers/magazines/articles, etc. I firmly believe in “The days that break you are the days that make you”. Though it was difficult for me, it was not impossible. I read editorials from the Hindu and Indian express. There were times when I showed no interest in reading but I came across Study IQ. They upload current affairs video sessions of 7-8 mins and almost 3-5 videos per day. It was quite effective for me to utilize my time and helped me a lot in my preparation.
4. Positive attitude According to me, this is the zone that decides where your fate lies. Hard work, dedication, and commitment might have landed me with a good percentile and a call from B school but Confidence and a positive attitude act as catalysts in the PI rounds.

Please describe your interview experience with our readers.

The admission process into the PGP of IIM Ahmedabad consisted of 2 phases:

AWT and the other is Personal Interview.

AWT- India should stop focusing on Aatma Nirbhar Bharat and concentrate on mass production to lift the economy. What are the assumptions taken by the author? What is your opinion to counter the arguments made by the author? (on these lines) The interview lasted for nearly 30 minutes. It was effective in two parts: academics and personal & current affairs. To be honest, I was both excited and nervous too. There were 7 students in my panel and mine was 4th in the order. These were the list of Questions asked to me after greeting each other. Tell me something about yourself that is not mentioned in the application form. So you are a foodie. I love to eat veg biriyani but my friends tell me it is not a type of biriyani. Comment on this statement. Discussion is related to Rasgulla and GI tag. Which state has the GI tag for it? The discussion was related to AWT. I had unintentionally assumed the author was male. Tried to grill me on that. You are doing gender bias. If given a chance how will you correct it? Think for a while and tell me any incident in which you have done gender bias. Any changes you noticed after that incident? What can we do to stop gender biasing in India? You are a mechanical engineer.

Fluid Mechanics- So tell me what is viscosity? What is its unit? How viscosity of fluids changes wrt temperature? Why viscosity of liquids decreases with a rise in temp? Why viscosity of gases increase in the same scenario? How will you measure viscosity? Can you explain? Any other methods? Thermodynamics- What are the laws of thermodynamics? Do you think energy is always conserved? Example. What is enthalpy? What is internal energy? What is entropy? Significance of entropy. Bernoulli’s equation. Does it follow the conservation of energy? Tell me something about your organization. What are its products? Who are its consumers? Why MBA after so many years? (Have 3.5+ years of work ex). Why not an executive MBA? Write down Bernoulli’s equation. What is z? (I had taken variable z for potential head ) Any questions for us. Again greeted with thank you. You can take a coffee. The panelists were very polite and at times tried to grill me but it depends on how you react.

Verdict: Converted.

What would be your final tips for upcoming MBA aspirants?

Stay calm and composed during the interview. Always try to have a positive approach rather than giving excuses. In case of generic/HR questions try to be honest and genuine to yourself. Don’t try to bluff. In the case of technical questions, it may happen that you don’t know the answer to a question, in that case, don’t panic and try to show them your positive intent rather than becoming nervous and losing your calmness. Most of us won’t know the answer to every question but the way we approach matters. Prepare for the interviews right from the moment after getting a call. Your ability to handle the interview depends upon the depth of your preparation. Interviews are a conversation between the panelists and yourself. The more you read/research about the more ideas and knowledgeable you become and this is where your knowledge intersects with the panelists. Maximize the intersection part as much as you can.

All the best!

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