The Joke called Bschool interviews...

The elusive call from that prestegious bschool changed my life... overnight, the nobody that i was transformed into this celebrity.... giving speeches on how to crack CAT and inspiring hundreds of juniors... an average joe in the top 40 among 60 students in an engg college whose claim to fame was nothing more glamorous than paying fine for lack of attendance in all his 8 sems..... suddenly catapulted to limelight by the vagaries of CAT patterns...

A year has passed since then...and today, on the other side of the bschool campus wall i begin to wonder whether this is indeed worth all the fuss!!! Back then we had these wonderful notions about bschool interviews... "they pick only the best!!! one mistake and u can kiss your chances goodbye…u know, they tape your interviews and study it with a microscopic lens before they pick u!!! when u join, u can be rest assured that the profs will know your life history!!!”

Oh yeah? I certainly dint get that impression from any of MY interviews… the bschool, touted as the Harvard of India…. When I walked up to them, the first question that they ask me is some shit about finding the radius and height of a goddamned cylinder!!! Excuse me??? Is this some kinda IIT interview??? Forgive my ignorance, but I thought I was joining a management school… what has marketing gotta do with cylinders??? Or perhaps, they don’t believe that their entrance test can indeed identify the IQ level of a candidate!!! Strike one!!! The next…. Supposed to be the first n foremost destination for finance in india!!! “rishi, do u know what is KKK???” of course I did… but what I did not know was the connection of a cult that operated during the American civil war and a bschool education in the 21st century… I’ll explain… I had put my hobby as “music” in my cv… that led to a discussion on kishore kumar, my fav singer… and lo! In a stroke of genius, KK was transformed to KKK….what a perfect interview question!!!!

I’ll list some of the questions I was asked in my interviews…no doubt they are all relevant to a bschool education…

• What is the distance of railway line between Thane and Mumbai?
• Do you have a girlfriend? Are you planning to elope with her?
• If you get an admission in this bschool and in another one X, where will u join? Why?
• How did your interview with bschool Y go?
• You are from Kerala.. why is it such a lousy state? (he seemed pretty pissed off when I differed and gave him statistics that supported my views)
• You have 60% in engineering. You are a bad engineer. Why should I take you? (Inference: bad engineer = bad manager)

As a parting shot..i don’t know whether any bschool prof is gonna read this… but candidates work really hard to get that elusive call… those 15 minutes can alter the course of their life…. Please take this as seriously as they do…it is the least way you can reward their hard work…and as for me, well.. I’m now in a bschool that offers two courses… and I never knew the difference until the profs told me during the interview… even so, here I am… catapulted to fortune by the vagaries of bschool interview processes…