Starting with a brief about myself, I am Dibyendu Patra and I'm a ‘20 Civil Engineering graduate from Jalpaiguri Government Engineering College. I had scored 99.85%ile in CAT'20 and 99.9%ile in XAT. I have decided to join SJMSOM, IIT Bombay and here is my interview experience-
My interview was scheduled on the last slot of the last day of the interview process i.e 7th March 2021. A week before, we were notified that our interview would be held on a platform called 'Gather', the same platform where IITB hosted their Virtual Convocation. The Adcom had sent us some walkthrough videos to familiarise ourselves with the platform.
The interview process was the coolest of all the interviews that I had, and it went really close to how an offline interview would have been.
The entire lot was divided into 17 groups with around 10-12 members each. On the Gather platform, each of us had our Avatar which we could customise. We could roam in the virtual campus made on Gather and interact with our fellow mates. They had an auditorium made where we had to wait for our turns. The process was divided into two parts- a) Document Verification and b) The interview. Both happened simultaneously in the opposite order.
The process was long and the Adcom were kind enough to play 'Tom and Jerry' which we could watch when we're in the auditorium.
Now coming to the interview. There were three panellists. One of them was a finance prof and the rest were alumni. The interview lasted for 12-15 minutes. The questions revolved around the subjects from my undergrad, some personality-based and current happenings in the business world. The panellists were pretty chilled and there wasn’t any cross-questioning or grilling.