1. General Questions
2. Questions related to Pre-MBA Preparation
3. Questions related to Group Discussion / Group Exercise
4. Interview-related Questions
5. After Joining MBA

2. Questions related to Pre-MBA Preparation

Q. What was your first step to start preparation for getting into the B-school of your choice?
A. I was not initially serious about preparation, as you get complacent after getting on campus job. This was my first serious attempt (CAT 2007). Earlier. I had just sat for CAT 2006 to check my status, and scored pretty badly. As my first step, I started shedding some extra work at my job-place and joined Career Launcher.

Q. When did you start your preparation?
A. I started preparing from January 2007, but seriously only after July 2007.

Q. How many months and how many hours daily did you devote for preparation to entrance procedures?
A. As I was working, serious preparation started 5 months before CAT. 3 hours daily. A month before CAT, I started devoting more than 6 hours daily. I also used to use my breaks during office hours to study.

Q. Did you take up some coaching institute or you believed in self-study?
A. As I was working while preparing, for constant motivation, I joined Career Launcher.

Q. What was your experience with coaching?
A. My coaching institute was Career Launcher at Adyar, Chennai. The faculty was ok, specifically for verbal was pretty good there. Apart from that, I wanted to specially mention Mr. Narayanan here, the Center Coordinator who stretched all his help - be it Test Papers, Extra Classes, or GD / PI Preparation.

Q. Can you tell us which were your favorite books, books that you used for preparing for entrance, books for self-development and books for pure relaxation?
A. I prepared mainly from coaching material and test papers. Apart from that, I used Arun Sharma for Quants. As per other books, I am a voracious reader, and used to read just about anything I could get my hands on. Before CAT, I was reading Ayn Rand's "Atlus Shrugged". Daily editorials and Swaminomics were my favourite time-pass reads.

Q. What were the others books and tests that you used for your MBA preparation, besides the study material provided by your coaching institute?
A. Book on Quants by Arun Sharma, and I also used GMAT books by Kaplan and OG for Verbal. "Word Power Made Easy" is a must.

Q. What was your strongest and weakest area while preparing for MBA?
A. My strength was Verbal, and my nemesis was Quants.

Q. Some tips which you used for mastering Quantitative Aptitude, Reading Comprehension, etc.
A. Well, only thing is to practice about RC - I feel one must do GMAT Books and go for active reading style. This helped me a lot - barring a few occasions, I never missed cut-offs of any mocks in Verbal.

Q. How much time did you put for MBA preparation everyday? In case you were working, how did you manage this preparation while working full time?
A. Initially, I spent 3 hours daily. It was a tough fight for me. As my work was also killing, I reduced my sleep hours and used to work till late night. A coffee a night keeps sleeps away.

Q. Which all Exams and B-schools you applied to?
A. Exams: CAT, JMET, XAT and FMS, IRMA, IIFT.
B-schools: IIMs, MDI-Gurgaon, NITIE-Mumbai, IMT-Ghaziabad, IMI-Delhi, IIT-Bombay / Delhi / Kharagpur, XLRI-Jamshedpur, XIM-Bhubaneswar and FMS-Delhi, IRMA-Anand, SPJIMR-Mumbai, IIFT-Delhi.

Q. Your present B-school and programme. What made you opt or this particular institute and programme?
A. IIM Shillong, PGP, Batch of 2008-2010. Well, its an IIM. Period!

Q. What procedures your school has for admission to its MBA program?
A. CAT, then GD (Case Study), and then Interview.

Q. What is the range of score for students who are admitted?
A. Mostly they have around 97-98%ile in general.

Q. What was your score?
A. My score was 96.65%ile. OA (Quant: 88.78%ile, VA: 95.34%ile, DI: 93.89%ile).

Q. Give some handy tips regarding the MBA written tests that would be of great help to MBA aspirants.
A. Well, preparation is same for almost all exams, just some difference in structure is there. Its always good to find old papers from previous years to see the exam trends. Apart from CAT, the rest of the entrance exams are pretty predicatable.

Contd.   3. Questions related to Group Discussion / Group Exercise