Guidelines for Personal Interview

As mentioned earlier, goal clarity is one word you will keep coming across in interview as well as during two years of study. Your goal must align with MBA program and you will be asked to explain how goals and MBA curriculum fit together. There is no uniform answer for this question because for every individual, objectives and goals differ. Similarly, different candidates have different reasons for doing MBA and there can be more than one reason for doing MBA. Think of all these possibilities and analyze beforehand.

Always be original in front of the interview panel. Never ever try to imitate someone. Keep the fact in your mind that, all the students have their own particular strengths and weaknesses. Don’t try to copy perfect answers. There is a great chance of it not working for you. Always play to your strengths.

One of the primary ingredients of performing well in PI is to be completely aware of your inner self. Call it self-awareness which implies that candidate must be able to talk about each and everything related to his personality including academics, institutes, hobbies, family background. Having complete knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses is a great asset during the time of PI.

Performing under pressure is a good indicator of your personality strength. Always try to maintain calm because that will what help you a great deal. You will be grilled on your weak aspects so be prepared to handle things with calm. Never every try to lie to panelists because they are very experienced people and can literally catch your bluff. Just be honest. Follow all these steps and you are sure to conquer the final frontier.

B-school Personal Interview

In the previous article we talked about concept of Group Discussion and few suggestions to perform well in GD. The next and final stage is Personal Interview or also called as PI. As mentioned in previous article, CAT examination analyzes your personality on every level. Academic skills were tested in the entrance test whereas GD aimed at gauging one’s people and presentation skills. The purpose of Personal Interview is to analyze personality. Personality aspect includes getting an idea about yourself in your own eyes, knowing your goals and how you relate your personality traits to your goals and vision. Normally the questions raised in PI aims at knowing your true self rather than your academics.

Before going for PI, one must analyze his strengths and weaknesses. It pays big time to figure out in advance about goals and answers of few common questions. These few questions can range from your ambition, about your personal goals, your hobbies, why you want to pursue MBA, aspects like strengths and weakness etc. One should also be prepared to tell about himself and your vision of your coming future. One must not be casual while preparing for personal interview section. After all, you are projecting yourself as a future manager with lots of promises. Also keep in mind, there are no set rules for PI like GD section. It’s a free-flowing interaction session where the panelists manage to dissect your entire mentality and personality.

Group Discussion- Tips

Group discussion can be defined as a discussion among few members for duration of 20 to 30 minutes. The discussion topic can range from an economic policy to sports to current political affair. The main objective behind conducting group discussion is to find students with ability to make his presence felt in a team. The topics often given for discussion also aim to analyze students’ ability and confidence apart from knowledge of relevant topics. Group discussion is a wonderful process which focuses upon participating students’ ability to analyze the given topic, stand on the topic and presentation skills. GD is often conducted in a semi-circle arrangement.

GD manages to give a glance about students’ various characteristics including decision-making skills and leadership quality. The thing to remember is it’s not about winning or losing; rather it’s about presenting things in a skillful way. To perform well in a group discussion, candidates need to possess good listening skills. Listening skills is all about listening attentively to what other persons are saying and understanding it as well. One should also have good knowledge about the topic being discussed. This good knowledge will only come from being tuned to current affairs through newspapers, magazines etc. candidates at any cost must possess, good confidence while presenting what they are saying. Confidence goes a long way in deciding your fate in group discussion. Other details one should care about is not speaking too much, refrain from intruding when someone is making a valid point and never ever get emotional. Also, try to be a good participant rather than a dominant one. All these small things make a big difference in your final marks.

Group Discussion- Purpose

Many of the candidates who have taken this year’s CAT exam must be feeling very relieved and anxious at the same time. Relieved because, they have just managed to go through rigorous entrance examination after months of hard work and anxious because of the obvious reason of impending GD/PI schedule. So what exactly is the purpose of Group Discussion stage? The reason is very simple. Students who have worked hard and slogged for months and even year have great chances of clearing entrance test but clearing GD is a different matter altogether. Candidates need to get this fact right that, MBA institutes are not just looking for bookworms. They are looking for all round personalities who can be molded and modified to fit into rough and tumble of corporate world.

The entrance test only manages to check the fundamental intelligence which will be needed to understand the course that students have to learn during the MBA programme. But managerial life is more than that. It involves decision making ability, leadership quality, pressure handling skills and logical and analytical thinking to name a few much needed attributes. GD and PI complete the process of assessing a candidate’s personality. There are several tools to assess that aspect but these two important stages of GD and PI are more of accepted tools. It shows a glimpse of candidate’s personality within a time frame. Managerial traits are natural as well as polished and most often that not this polishing process is done during MBA course and prepare students for top jobs in corporate world.

Entrepreneurs and Risk-Taking

Why do thousands of youngsters dream of doing MBA from reputed institutions? Slogging it out for months and burning the candle at both ends, these aspirants dream of big business successes. Doing MBA from a reputed institute is the first step towards that big dream. There, one learns all the essential fundamentals required to succeed in the hustle-bustle of corporate life. However, business success majorly depends upon people’s ability of taking risk. In other words, business success is a sum total of all the calculated risks taken by management people.

In times like these, when world economy is going through severe crisis, risk taking factor is even more crucial. When a management graduate aspires of becoming someone like Henry Ford or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, he has to take unprecedented decisions which can greatly influence the outcome of his business endeavors.

This is a world of entrepreneurs as is evident by choices of several passed out candidates from colleges’ world over. When one dreams of being a successful entrepreneur, he has to take several decisions which can make or mar his business enterprise. In that case, risk taking is all about grabbing opportunities in a fast changing economic scenario. Even a recent study conducted emphasizes the same point. When an entrepreneur starts his own venture, he also becomes accountable to accompanying risks like reputation, finances, family, stability etc. ability to quick, rational decision under difficult situations largely decides success of an entrepreneur. According to the above mentioned study, most of the risk taking decisions proves to be of advantage when combined with enhanced flexible problem solving.

CAT- Expected Cut-off Marks

So after weeks and months of preparation, the D-day came and went leaving behind many hopes and crushed aspirations. Imagine the number; 2.70 lakhs! So, now all said and done students must be waiting for cut-off marks. Those who are quite confident of their results must have already started to prepare for GD and PI. But before that lets check out the anticipated cut-off marks of various institutes and colleges.

Institute Name -----> Test Exam ----> Anticipated Cut-off Marks
IIM Ahmedabad---> CAT----> 99.3
IIM Bangalore ---->CAT ----> 98+
IIM Calcutta ----> CAT ----> 98.96
IIM Lucknow ----> CAT ----> 98+
Indian School of Business ----> GMAT ----> 690+ (SCORE)
Xavier Labour Relations Institute ----> XAT ----> 98.5 & PM&IR- 97.5
Faculty of Management Studies ----> FMS ----> 92+
Indian Institute of Foreign Trade ----> IIFT ----> 92+
IIM Kozhikode ----> CAT ----> 98
IIM Indore ----> CAT ----> 85
Institute of Rural Management Anand IRMA ----> 95+
Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies ---->MH CET----> 183(Score)
Management Development Institute ---->CAT----> 95+
National Institute of Industrial Engineering ---->CAT ---->92 – 95
S P Jain Institute of Management & Research ---->CAT / XAT/ GMAT----> 85 / 680
Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, IIT Powai ---->JMET----> Up to 400 (Rank)
T A Pai Management Institute ---->CAT/GMAT ----> 88/650
Tata Institute of Social Sciences ---->TISS----> 43 marks
Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneshwar ---->XAT----> 96.21
Bharathidasan Institute of Management ---->CAT----> 95
Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi ---->JMET----> 401-850 (Rank)
Goa Institute of Management ---->XAT----> 90.01
Institute of Management Technology ---->CAT----> 96
K J Somaiya Institute of Management Studies & Research---->CAT/CET ---->96.35 / 171(Score)
Loyola Institute of Business Administration ---->XAT----> 90+
Mudra Institute of Communication Ahmedabad ---->CAT / GMAT----> 90
Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies ---->NMAT----> 95+
Praxis Business School ---->CAT / XAT / GMAT ---->No cut-offs*
Symbiosis Centre for Management and Human Resource----> SNAP----> 89 (Score)approx
Symbiosis Institute of Business Management----> SNAP ---->85 (Score)approx
University Business School ---->CAT----> 85+
Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur----> JMET----> 851-1400 (Rank)

CAT 2008 Examination Analysis

The CAT examination has a tendency of surprising students all these years. CAT 2008 was no exception. This year, total number of questions increased by 20 percent. What caught students’ off-guard was added emphasis on verbal section. That also means, weightage of verbal section was almost 45 percent resulting mainly from 40 percent increases in verbal questions. Students with adequate vocab knowledge and grammatical efficiency must have relished the surprise. RC (Reading comprehension) also had five questions per passage. Last year, it was three questions per passage. That way, verbal section became lengthier but it was also quite manageable. Coming to Quant and DI sections, there were not many surprises except few question patterns based on the previous CAT exams.

Students needed to apply unconventional methods including substitution method and numerous options to answer questions of DI and Quant sections. There were also several question formats and styles quite similar to previous CAT exams and it was also anticipated to some extent. So that must have helped students while handling these questions. DI was definitely tough whereas Quant was manageable for well prepared students.

According to experts, CAT paper was of reasonable complexity level. Because of more choices in English section, paper was also considered balanced. Total number of questions was 90 compared to 75 questions last year. DI and Quant had 25 questions each whereas Verbal section contributed 40 questions. Expected cut-off is 125-128 from IIMs.

Section wise expected cut-off marks are;
Verbal- 45-49
DI- 27-30 and
Quant- 30-33