My SJMSOM-interview was scheduled on 4th March 2021. I had scored a not-so-useful percentile of 97.84 in CAT 2020 and the interview call from SJMSOM was frankly a surprise to me. I was not riding on high hopes of converting SJMSOM as its MBA-program gives considerable weight to an applicant’s work experience and CAT score in the final selection process. The average work experience of a SOMite is 27 months and I had no fulltime work experience. For an applicant who receives an interview call, the conversion was 40% dependent on his/her interview performance, another 40% on CAT score (grr…) and the rest on profile.
The Interview: The panel had 3 interviewers- 2 alumni and 1 professor of Finance. We exchanged quick introductions and I got to know that the alumni had specialized in Finance. They then asked me more about my educational details and the SOP I had mentioned in my application form. For a very brief moment, I quickly thought about the direction in which I wanted the rest of the interview to go: I had a major in mechanical engineering but barring a couple of favorite topics my engineering courses were a blur to me. On the other hand, the concepts I learnt in the finance electives I had taken in my under-graduation were still fresh in my mind. Furthermore, I knew I had to ace the interview to even stand a chance to get waitlisted (since you know…my CAT and work experience (profile) weren’t of much help to me) and to do that, I had to impress 3 finance professionals. So I decided to talk more about my Finance minor. For the next 30 minutes there were no general awareness questions, no hygiene questions, no engineering questions and no internship-related questions; I was bombarded with technical questions around corporate finance, accounting concepts and financial ratios- and that was exactly what I needed. I handled the questions comfortably and the interview was wrapped.
My PI performance helped me get waitlisted at SJMSOM a few weeks before I received and accepted their MBA admit.
