Rahul is a current student at FMS Delhi. He scored 99.74%ile in CAT 2018. He completed his engineering from NIT Uttarakhand in 2017. He has work experience of two years in the education sector. In this article, Rahul will tell us how he cracked the FMS selection process.
***
Hello Rahul, how are you? How was your first year at FMS?
Hi Dilshad, I am Good. I had an amazing experience since I joined college.
How did you prepare for the selection process? Can you explain all components in brief namely GD, Extempore and Personal Interview?
As you might be aware that usually, FMS conducts interviews late in April when few B schools already announced their result of selected candidates. So, this was my last interview. After the call, I had enough time to prepare and as the FMS process is very transparent, I was sure about getting a call after the CAT result. There is no rush after the call, or you can’t say you didn’t get time to prepare for the second-round process.
Now, let’s talk about how I prepare.
First, I had understood that these interviews are going to test me on my profile and my personality not on any particular subject like any hiring for a technical job. And I breakdown my preparation into parts and try to cover every possible question that can be asked around it. I bucketed it into three categories.
| Bucket |
Importance |
| Family, Early childhood and Schooling |
Basics |
| Engineering and Job Profile Related Questions |
Important |
| HR-related questions and General Awareness |
Most Important |
So, these were six major points. I tried to find an answer for every ‘Why, When, What, how’ related to these points. Like, Why engineering in Computer Science? Why do you want to quit the job? What do you want to do in the future? I prepared my answers for all these questions. And for the last point, as I had a good habit of reading newspaper daily since childhood, so it helped me a lot for general awareness. But I did one thing that I prepared a few topics very well that was matching to my profile like I was working in the education industry, so I prepared all recent news related to this sector. These all were my preparation parts. Now come to FMS second-round process
FMS interview process comprises of three subprocess-
1)
GD [ It had 10 % weightage in overall selection process]
2)
Extempore [It had 5 % weightage. It was taken in between interview any time]
3)
Personal Interview [ It had 15 % weightage]
GD: We were six students in the panel. The GD topic for my panel was
Direct Benefit Transfer.
Extempore and Interview-
The interview was somewhat similar as I expected. Every question was from my profile even the extempore topic was related to my work experience. FMS gives you to fill a form when you apply for it. I filled it carefully and went through those answers before going for the interview to make sure coherency and fluency in answers. In the interview panel, there were three professors.
As I entered the room they asked me about my percentile and what other calls I had, after that they give me an extempore topic which was ‘RACE’. So, I started with about rat race in our education system, and end on a lighter note by naming a few sports and movie RACE-3. After this, one professor told me that I was given this topic because I mentioned in the form that I have a Facebook group named
CAt RAce for helping students in the preparation of CAT. And they told me it was good extempore as they were expecting me to talk about the education system as I was working in the education sector.
After extempore, Lady professor asked me about my family background and my father’s business. Then, a few questions were related to my graduating college as that time it was in news due to some reasons.
It was about 12-15 minutes long interview, with hardly any unexpected question. And all the questions were subjective, So I was not sure if it was a good or bad interview. It seems to me as just a simple conversation between the panel and me where they asked questions about my life and choices that I made majorly.
What do you suggest to students who are currently preparing for the selection process?
Once you are shortlisted for the process, there is plenty of time to prepare. Also, since FMS conduct the process in the last, so you may be prepared with GK and academics related questions while preparing for other college interviews. Now you need to prepare for GD and Extempore, majorly. I would advise doing mock interviews with friends/guides or with the mentor allotted by FMS. For GD you need a group of 8-10 people and practice it at least 3 times before the final interview. For extempore, you need to practice it with topics available on the web. Take a topic when you are alone set a timer for 2 minutes and record it. After these practices, you would get better.
Thank you, Rahul, for taking time from your busy schedule for this interview, thanks very much.
It’s my pleasure. I love to do such things. I really appreciate your platform in ways it is helping students not only in making them to their dream B school but also after that.
***
Recommended For You