How to get into a B-School of your choice!
Tips, tricks, opinion and gyaan from those who have been there a while back
Congratulations on an excellent CAT score. You have made it well almost. The part which tests your mathematical ability and hard skills are over. The test of patience, stamina and perseverance is still on. In the next 5–6 months you will be expected to fill forms, write SOPs, give interviews and not lose Enthu (slang for the enthusiasm you will soon hear about in a BSchool) or hope while at it. Interview prep is synonymous with anxiety and confusion. In this article, I will try to cover what helped me and a bunch of my friends to go through the process successfully ( and more importantly without losing our sanity, ample opportunities for the same after you join a B School ). This article doesn’t cover all use cases and options for prep. Still, an attempt has been made to encompass as many things as possible while focusing on essential matters.
Let’s cover the hygiene factors first!
Once the CAT/XAT/IIFT etc. results are out, calls and shortlists for BSchools will start pouring in and within roughly 2–3 months all of them would have sent out invites for you to apply for the next rounds. Steps below cover the things you should do right away
- Make a list of all calls and set up your calendar accordingly. Make all travel arrangements as required. In case you have any clashes with exams or in between two interviews, please inform the admissions team as soon as possible so an alternative arrangement can be made. Plan and take leaves for work if need be.
- Fill the necessary forms that require only factual information from you. Structures that are longer and require an SOP from you can be filled later, but do keep track of them too. Deadlines are sacrosanct and are hardly extended for any BSchool.
- (Optional) Create a shortlist of interviews you want to give. Sometimes giving a lot of meetings in a week gets too overwhelming and might result in deteriorated performance. If during prep, you feel that you might be affected by the same 1. create a priority list of interviews you want to give. Personal recommendation is to provide all meetings possible
Prep like your life matters on it!
Prep and only prep can help you crack this process. Facts are that not all 100%ilers cracks all interviews they give and so any advantage that you have from your CAT score, grades or work ex won’t be enough to set you up for a sure shot spot at a B School of your choice. Below is a list of things I and my batch-mates across various Indian B Schools went through last year.
- Figure out the story of your life
Everyone loves a great story and interviewers are no different. As a first step of figuring what story you want to share with your interviewers, you need to figure out the key events that have happened in your life. Starting from school to university and then work ex. Create an exhaustive list of things you did. Now try to find common threads between these events and see how they all weave together. For, e.g., Let’s say 1. You have high academic scores throughout your academics; 2. You have volunteered with multiple different organisations or regularly acted for a cause. 3. You have been part of various clubs and committees in college and maybe at the workplace too. These are three different storylines you can build on an attach positive traits with them that you have developed over time. Longer the thread ( more time you have spent on a thing) better it is. Try to recollect challenges and learnings from these events and make it into a homogeneous story and finish it with great storytelling
2. Prep for things that might be asked in an interview
Apart from your life questions in an interview can come from any topic under the sun ( not really, but yes, the list is comprehensive enough ). Interviewers will expect you know about a problem enough to carry on a meaningful 10–15 min conversation. These topics can be on — your academics and subjects, your work experience ( firm, industry, trends ), general affairs, your interests ( ones you mention and ones on your form) and overall anything that they can remotely connect to you. A standard line of questioning is on cities you have lived or worked in. Given how broad this topic is, I will write on the same. The overarching idea is read up and be informed about a bunch of things. Prioritise on what you need to read first considering there is a limited time
3. Take Mock interviews
I can’t emphasise enough the risks of your actual conversation being your first interview ever. There are a lot of things that can go wrong, and without experience, it will be tough to think of ways to drive the interview in the right direction on the spot. What mock interviews do is that they give you ample chances to fail and figure out your strategy early on. Quality mocks with quality feedback can help you perform above par on the final day. It will help you test and develop answers on things that are likely to come upon interview day and will put you in a tight spot if you haven’t thought about them earlier. For me, it was low grades in engineering, and there are similar dark spots for almost everyone. There will also be dark spots that you aren’t aware of ( I realised I had forgotten nearly all of my basic geometry and calculus ) and mocks will help identify them. It will also slowly build confidence in things you know and help to master the art of how to divert the conversation to topics you are comfortable with. Solid 7–12 mock interviews with interviewers from a variety of background will put you in an excellent position to crack your final set of interviews.
4. Join/Make a study group
Study groups are a great way to ensure that you are on track and have someone to share your thoughts and ideas with. Preparation periods can get very tense at times and having people who are a part of the process to support you can make a lot of difference. It also helps to share and receive essential materials for prep. Creating heterogeneous groups can help even more than a homogenous one. Share your knowledge, information with one another, hoarding on to data will not give you any competitive benefit while looking at the broader picture
Overall stay positive during the process. Keep away from people who are spreading any negativity or speculation. Avoid spillover from one interview to another. Don’t use any business jargons you can’t defend very well and never LIE on paper or in the discussion.
Getting into a BSchool might be just one of the ways to achieve a career you want, and there are many others. The selection process involves a fair amount of luck, and no one can predict what happens in that interview room, and the outcome is even more unpredictable. So don’t analyse your interviews or get disappointed on missing out on a college. Life goes on!
If you need any help, you can reach out to me by commenting on this post below, and I will try to do by best. Good luck and godspeed
