A Place-O-Analysis

With all my interviews now completed and making it to IIT Madras MBA batch of 2008-2010….I am happy to present the analysis of the places I visited so far!......In the process I shall compare…..contradict…..curse…..criticize…. comment…. on all the cities I have visited…..

Statutory Warning: If the content of this blog hurts anyone…..I would not be sorry about it and would recommend them to consult a psychiatrist for being such a sissy!!

In the order of interviews, I have been to IIT Kanpur, IIT Bombay, IISc Bangalore (for IISc and IIT Kharagpur as well), IIT Chennai and finally IIT Delhi. In the process, I have noticed something great abt every place n something not so very great as well…..in the due course of this blog, u shall be reading abt my musings and experiences in the diff places……

IIT Kanpur:

Me and my friend shruthi took the flight to Delhi from Hyderabad and then rajdhani express to kanpur……In the flight, even after having our heavy breakfast, we bout the not-so-good chicken sandwiches jus coz we were bored n wanted something to eat…..the 200 bucks went into the gutter since the sandwich was like the upma tht I cook for myself when no one is home…..after landing, our dear friend Smitha was there to receive us and show us around for a while since we had 3 hours gap between the flight n train…..we went to palika bazaar and bout lots of stuff for 500 bucks only…..it was my mom’s strict condition tht I don’t spend too much on clothes during my trips to different places!....n then we took the wonderful metro rail to the railway station from palika bazaar station…..metro rail is one thing tht makes us believe tht we aren’t in India…..at least for a while….n then u look around and find our very own software engineers and business men, all dressed up and standing around in the train…..we then bade gud bye to smita n hopped on to the train….it was 2pm and we were hungry…..meals were included in the ticket and with my never-eat-veg attitude, I ordered non-veg meals for myself and veg for shruthi….actually our whole idea was to play safe…..if the non veg dish isn’t gud, we wud still have veg dishes and vice-versa…..thankfully the food was decent n he even gave us ice creams!!....slept for a while n then woke up around 4pm to see tht tea and snacks were being served!!.....n then me n shru opened our great manorama tht we made for ourselves to get us thru the interviews and started revising [:D]….at around 6.45pm, we landed in kanpur. My close friend bhaskar was there to receive us and we left for the IIT Kanpur campus in an auto…..

My first impression on the city:

The station was too smelly….the autos are decent…..the place is horrible….the roads are waiting-to-be-repaired…..the weather was cool….

We finally arrived into the campus and then my whole view changed…..Awesome campus they have….amazing I must say…..we were allotted hostel rooms by some senior girls and then we went to have dinner at some canteen…..the walk from the hostel to canteen was long n nice….kanpur ppl have the best campus, I must say….spotted neel gaay on the way and returned to hostel after dinner….next day was our interview….

My Interview Experience:

We were divided into slots and I was on the fourth slot n moved to some SIDBI (small industries development board of India) building for GD/PI….My group has 13 people in all…..our topic was a case study…..some lady….Nancy for the time being….Nacy takes up job as ceo of a company and she was earlier working with HP and did a great job there…..she believes in making decisions herself and never involved too many in deciding….she gives her 100% in the job but at the end of 6 months, sales drop and board of directors issue her a one month notice to resign….a special committee is formed n they report all of nancy’s inconsistencies….even meager issues like she talks too much on phone or she eats for too long types will be quoted…..now we had to analyze what went wrong and why….is there gender bias in tht company….suggest any remedial measures…..we were all given 5mins to read n note….one min each to read out our points to the rest….n in the end 6 mins to discuss…..fairly gud GD with occasional spikes of fish market….I did perform well enuf and I was happy.

My Interview:

Me: may I come in sir?

Panel of 5 professor: yes, please take ur seat…

Prof1: so sahiti, ur from ece background….tell me how comfortable are u with ur subjects?

Me: quite comfortable sir(I hope u wont ask me subjects tht I have done one day batting for)

Prof1: okay can u draw us a full wave rectifier with phased lock loops?

Me: (@#$%&* the what!!) Sir I rem the basic full wave rectifier, cant recollect abt phased lock loops.

Prof1: fine draw it first.

Me: (drew the picture n I know its correct….i was really happy about it….)

Prof1: now can u draw the waveform for it

Me: (confidently drew the wrong waveform….i was so dumb tht u don’t even ask me…..i was in some world of my own and drew the wrong wave form)

Prof1: are u sure abt the waveform…

Me: I think so. I didn’t even bother to verify it!!....

Prof1: okay which is ur fav subject in engg….

Me: communication Systems.

Prof2 takes over: okay tell me what happens when u switch on ur mobile phone.

Me: explained in detail abt the base station, antenna, HLR, MST and all tht crap.

Prof2: okay now I am making a call from land line…how does it connect to the mobile….tel the flow…

Me: at the telephone exchange, its routed to the corresponding station.

Prof2: no, I am saying how does the connection get established?

Me: thru telephone cables ( I was so elated to give this answer[:P]….like this is the ultimate answer tht can ever be given!!)

Prof2: yeah, tht is fine. I am saying what is the exact process tht happens there.

Me: I am not sure about it sir. This is all I know.

Prof1, getting back to me: have u heard of WLL (wire locked loops) in telephone networks.

Me: yes sir, I have. Frankly, I don’t remember any of it. We don’t have a course in it.

Prof1: so what do u know miss Sahithi??

Me: (@#$%&*....fine I know nothing…but ece is not my cup of tea coffee milk n cool drink!!) Sir, I have answered to the best of my abilities.

Prof3: okay can we do some maths?

Me: sure sir. He asked me about the integral of something, which I cant recollect ryt now n I answered it.

Prof4: so u have resigned from ur job in july 2007. What have u been doin since then?

Me: I have been involved in various activities and also prepared for MBA entrance exams.

Prof4: what made u leave ur job? Didn’t u like it?

Me: No sir, I really liked my job. But I had decided to give Cat and other exams a proper shot. I was having too much work and wasn’t able to do it. I spoke to my PM and we arrived at the consensus to resign. If I wouldn’t have resigned in july,07. My next chance was in feb,08 which is too late to even study. I made the decision n came out sir.

Prof4: you could have worked it out with ur PM.

Me: sir, thr was a lot of dependency on me in the project. I had to act responsible and not leave the project at the wrong time. Since our module was completed in june and new module was just allocated, my pm said july,07 is okay. But once I got absorbed into the new module, I had to wait until its delivery which was tentatively feb,08. So I decided to resign.

Prof4: oh okay. So u have been preparing well then. What happened to ur cat? What is ur percentile?

Me: its ** % sir.

Prof4: can u split it?

Me: (split it up n told)

Prof1 to prof5: sir, do u have anything to ask?

Prof5: no nothing. U may leave.

Me: (finally im done)

So I guess the interview went just about okay with prof1 charging towards me with unexpected questions!!....since this was my first interview, I learnt a lot from it.

In fact, me n my friends who were preparing for CAT were so very much into the prep tht our conversations were as follows…..

Pavan: hey today I had pizzas at pizza hut.

Me: okay tel me who owns tht grp and what else do they own? Also their competitors?

Pavan: Amma talli!!.... any normal human would have asked me what pizza I had or who did I go with….we ppl are all cracked up with our MBA prep!....we aren’t thinking normally n humanly[:D]….

Me: I know. The other day, I was watching tv which was playing a big bazaar commercial. I immediately started thinking abt future group and its various other ventures. A normal person would have switched to another channel or watched the ad peacefully…..

During a recent conversation with one other frend of mine who got thru IIM Indore.

Yashu: I also got thru Carnegie Mellon with aid for MS in Management information systems. I dunno which one to choose?....

Me: I rem he was a great business fella. Tell me, what was his business? Why did he start this school? When did he start it?

Yashu: I dunno!!![:P]

Me: ever since ur mba interviews are done with, u hardly read n since this is not in India n doesn’t have an interview, u became complacent[:P]….very bad[:P]….

Yashu: edisavu le[:P]….i stopped reading news paper the day my last interview was over!....i don’t even watch news channels anymore.

Me: Neither do we!!![:D]

Some how, I know I deviated from the main topic n ended up some where else. But who cares man!....Deviating is my birth right!![:P]

I shall blog about my other interviews shortly. Do keep reading and commenting.