IIM Rohtak Interview

Finally I managed to postpone my interview from Marach4th to March 5th for the new babies of IIM's i.e. Rohtak,Raipur and Trichy. Thanks to Mr.G, for dropping me in time with little bit gyan on how different people handle tension situations. I am supposed to reach venue at 11:30. I reached there at 11:45 and started filling the form right there. Finally entered registration area 5 mins late and lucky to avoid gyan by faculty. We were then taken to 3rd floor where we will have GD and PI. 

There were 3 profs in the panel. One, you can clearly guess that he is a tamil Brahmin.I will call him TamB. The second prof resembles typical government servant  of 80's. I will call him Killer for his killer looks. He can kill a person psychologically with his killer looks. The other guy is a smily. He will give a smile even though you say a blunder and make you feel comfortable though you know that actually you are in a deep trench.

TamB called the names and asked us to sit in a chairs in an U-fashion. 50% of the panel members bunked the interview. Needless to say it is a good GD since there were only 6 people. The topic is "Can common man get justice in India? Or should he approach panchayats?". We discussed about nature of cases to pending number of cases, how to reduce the cases and how to empower panchayats etc. Overall, this is the first GD which I felt like some discussion was happening instead some panchayat where people scream whatever they want. GD time was only 10 mins. So I felt like GD was over the next moment we started it.After GD was over , we were asked to wait outside for PI. I somehow managed to pass on time with a girl sitting next to me. I simply admire this virtue of girls where they laugh at every damn joke you crack though that is the dumbest joke you have ever tried[Except the case where the girl is your lover].First interview went for 20mins,next was for 15mins and next was for 10mins. Going by the trend I assumed it to be just a handshake for me. But it turned out to be other way. Finally I was called for interview.

Me:     May I come in Sir.

TamB: Mr. Narayana Trinadh Kotturu, Please come in.

Me:    [ I was on clouds, This is the first time some one called my name correctly.(May be because he is of same caste????)]

TamB: Are you feeling hungry?Take some toffees.

Me:     Sir, I had break fast at 10:30. So not much. [ I am very impressed with this guy. First time, someone is really considerate of the student. Love you,TamB.]

tamB:  Tell us about yourself, your parents,your sisters and brothers, your education, your hobbies and why MBA in short.

Me:     [ In Short??? telling all those things will itself take at least 15 mins..] Finally managed to say something in 2-3 mins..meanwhile his eyes lit up when I said my sister is a lawyer. [Now he might have understood why I was supporting the useless judiciary system of India, copy-pasted from British Constitution in GD]

Killer: [After flipping through my transcripts thrice] So Trinadh, do you remember anything from your civil engineering.[with a killer smile and look][Please add these killer looks and smile after every question of Mr.Killer.]

Me:   Sir, I remember the basics.

Killer: How many years have you studied civil courses.

Me: Explained him the bitsian system where we do core courses for one year and all other trades for remaining 3 years.

Killer: So pick up any subject which you think you remember something.

Me:    [Sir, I don't reme,mber anything. Should I tell hime structural analysis. NOOOOOOO..you are going to get doomed here..so lets pick something which is by your favorite prof] Sir, Transporation Engineering.[ Later I realized this made my life hell..as KIller is also from Transportation Engineering, I guess]

Killer:  [ This two words worked like a magic and made him feel like RajniKanth..coincidentally he is of almost same age]  So tell me what is CBR?

Me:   [what the hell is it?] Sir, I don't know.

Killer: [With 2x killerlooks and smile] What is transportation?

Me:   Anything which transfers people/materials.[I thought this is the dumbest definition of Transporation any Civil Engineer might have given..so thought of continuing it to some point] It is of four types.1. Railways,where civil engineers design tracks, track radius etc 2. Roadways, where we design two different roads,cement road and Tar road. 3. Naval ways, where we don't have much to do[ to which we don't give a damn] 4. Airways, where we design runway to be as frictionless as possible.

Killer: OK, So how do you estimate the traffic in a city like Delhi.

Me:     I will select few points in some busy roads, and will see how many vehicles are moving in each direction, how much time they are taking to cross the lenght, and use this information to forecast.

Killer:  Are you sure, is this the method.

Me:    Yes Sir, this is the method which we employed at Pilani. [ Pilani=Delhi, aha,,Trinadh, hats-off to your logical mind]. We have this as lab experiment.

Killer: [Understood that I don't know what I am speaking] Do you remember anything from Structural Analysis.

Me:   [If I remember that, I should have told that in the first place itself] Sir, I remember the basics.

Killer: What is indeterminate structure.

Me: [You, I am not able to determine what kind of person you are] [ After killing 5-10 secs] I have heard of this term, but I don't remember.

Killer: OK, you have done Geographical Information Systems, tell me one good use of it.

Me:     Sir, we used it for rain water harvesting in nearby village of Pilani.[ I still remember those days where I used to carry 2lacks worth of GPS instruments to outside the campus to a village, where they used to look at me like a geeky techie]. Sir we tried to construct tanks which are connected to big tank.

Killer:  For that , you don't need GIS. Simple relative levels will suffice.

Me:  [Exactly this was the question I asked my prof then, but I don't remember the answer he gave at that time] Sir, we can use GIS to determine the positions of resources. Also if wee have like multiple contsraints, we can overlap layers of all resources and can come up with ideal locations for the placements pumps etc.

Killer:[Understood that I am pumping the info][Meanwhile smily passed on my grade sheets to Killer. Kiler gave a serious look at my scores and wanted me to beat badly] So you have dome geodesy. What did you study there?

Me:  [ Are you planning to take me as a civil courses assistant???] Sir its almost 4 years since I left the field[My desperate attempt to switch the topic..before this Godzill can finish me] So I remember that we did counters, surveying etc.

Killer:  What is triangulation?

Me:    Sir, we use traingles to determine the area.[ Another dumb answer.But can't help it]

Killer:[Gave a look which conveyed how the hell did you pass out from BITS, with that score?.][He finally gave up the idea of interviewing me as it might badly affect his intellectual quotient]

TamB:  [All the while TamB is just enjoying my ignorance] Tell us something about your work.[ He wants to see me saying any other thing apart from 'I Dont Know']

Me:     Started that I am working on Analytical Reports ans Tweet Mining.

 Every prof gave a look as if I said I am supporting Kasab/A.Raja. I understood that they don't know what is Twitter and distributed three glasses of gyan to them on Twitter and my work.

Smily:  Do you remember anything from Optimisation?

Me:     Sir, in that course we studied about optimizing maximum function,minimum function.

Smily:  What, Optiizing..Max..imum.. function...

Me:     Sir, what I mean by that statement was we tried to optimize the values for maximum or minimum.

Smily:  Give me an example of optimization problem?You may use x,y,z etc..

Me: Sir a1x+b1y+c1=k;a2x+b2y+c2+k2[Then realized that these questions can be solved easily..so told some thing else]

a1x+b1y+c1z=k1,a2x+b2y+cc2z=k2, so we have two equations and three variables, so we need to assume one value and solve for maximum/minimum of others..[ I know this is wrong there itself]

Smily:  Do you remember anything from Operations Research.

Me: Sir, we studied about distributions.

Everyone jumped to their feet and said, W..H..A..T..?

Me:(Afraid) Sir we studied how to solve problems like petrol pump queuing etc using distributions.

Smily: What are those problems called?

Me:    [ How on earth people will remember the names of the problems..especially when you are surrounded by 3 peple who are trying toi kill you with their questions] Sir, I thinbk they fall under queue length problems.

Smily:  They are queuing problems. Ok, now I will ask you something to which you might be familiar, Graphs and Networks.

Me:[ This is the one course which I hated. Me and Pilli, used to attend this class only on Mondays..to see a Pharmacy girl doing lab experiments in adjacent room] I will try to answer Sir.

Smily: Assuming the road network as graph, tell me what are the nodes and edges.

Me:    [ Smily, you rock!!] Junctions will be nodes and connecting roads will be edges.

Smily: In the same analogy, incorporate directed and undirected edges.

Me: Directed-one way traffic, undirected-traffic is allowed to move in both directions

Smily:  So assuming you are starting from (I told him I staty in BTM) BTM layout, how ill you find the shortest route?

Me:      Sir I use Dijkstra's algo or bellman-ford algo.

Smily:  Explain me the algo.

Me: Sir, we start with initial node, and try to relax the node or We start with initial node and will try to find next node which is connected to this node with a minimum weighted edge.

Smily: What you call these kind of problems.

Me:    Sir, I think edge relaxation problems.[ You need to relax].

Smily: Don't you call them greedy problems?

Me: Yes Sir, they are indeed greedy[ Why I am so greedy not to use this term..come-on these the basics]

Smily gave a kind of look that he is done.

TamB: Tell me about your hobbies.

Me:     [Initially I forgot to tell him about my hobbies..TamB is holding this question from a long time] Sir Trekking,playing cricket and foosball.

TamB: What are the places you have visited during trekking?

Me: Sir, I went to Valley of Flowers, dalhousie,vaishno Devi, badrinath,Agumbe and last year i Visted some places near by my city.

TamB:  Who is the first person to reach the summit of Mount. Everest

Me:      Tenzing norgay.

TamB: recently there was some person claiming that he did it before him. Do you know his name?

Me:     [Is he your neighbor..or is it you?] No Sir, I don't have any idea.

TamB: Fine, Trinadh, we are done with your interview.

Me:    [peace restored] Thank you Sir,. can I some toffee?

TamB: Sure Sure. Take all of them, if you want.

Killer gave a disgusting look at me snatching away chocolates which he thought he would give to his grand children.

And thats how my Interview ended. A pure academic interview with a person who forgot his basics and trying to elope from academics. It clearly gave a slap on my face. A real  bad one which I deserve for my lack of preparation for the interview and casual attitude towards young guns of IIM.