IIT Kharagpur to IIM Ahmedabad, the story of how the wonder twins cracked CAT and aced the interviews— Anchit Shahare, IIM Ahmedabad
My name is Anchit Shahare. I did my under-graduation from IIT Kharagpur, getting a dual degree in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering. I am currently pursuing my PGP degree from IIM Ahmedabad, studying in its 2nd year. I am an avid reader and a big fan of anime. Fun fact, I have a twin brother who also got into in IIM Ahmedabad and is now my batchmate.
How did you manage your CAT preparation at IIT Kharagpur?
My CAT experience was far from being easy and yet not that difficult. I had joined the TIME classes to help me prepare for CAT 2015. Their study material and practise tests were a big help. Kharagpur being a village we had to travel to a school outside campus every weekend, which I stopped doing seeing I could easily utilize those 4 hours in self preperation. I also had access to Career Launcher’s test series and they conducted a full day session after the CAT percentile was out. This gave me clear idea of where I stood with respect to my GD/PI preperation and help plan my preparation going forward. I mostly self studied from TIME material and had regular brainstorming and doubt solving sessions with my friends who were also preparing for CAT.
Why did you choose to do an MBA? What would you like to share with you about IIM Ahmedabad?
I don’t have any work experience and being straight out of college I did had no idea about the career path I wanted to take after my education was completed. A little family pressure, a little advice from my already working classmates and my plan to do an MBA in the future led me to choose MBA over a campus job. And I chose IIM Ahmedabad simply because it is IIM Ahmedabad. And after having gone through one whole year at IIM-A, I find my then decision totally justified. Other than the wonderful faculty and the case based method of teaching, it was the tag of being from IIM Ahmedabad is what led me to choose this place over any other IIMs (And I had converted all the other IIMs so this was a conscious choice not just take-what-you-get).
How did you go about preparing for your interviews?
Having gone through the one day workshop with Career Launcher I found out that I was pretty good at GDs but my interview skills were well below acceptable. I started my preparation with some HR questions like ‘Tell me about yourself’, ‘Short term/Long term goals’, ‘Strengths/Weaknesses’. I made a word document with all the HR questions, that could be easily found online, and prepared my answers to them. The next thing I prepared for was my resume. It is very important to know your resume inside out and being able to justify everything that you have written down there is the least that the interveiwers expect. Most of the interviews start with the question ‘Tell me about yourself’, or something similar to that. And this is where you can, as every coach and mentor will tell you, drive the interview. I used to keep my introduction short, including a little from my resume and a lot from my interests, and I would end with the fact that I have a twin brother who was with me in my undergraduation and who also gave CAT and is giving this same interview with another panel. Half of my interview would be driven by this strange coincidence and the rest is history. Although this might not be something everyone can use as their strategy for driving their interviews but you can very talk more about your hobby or something that you like to do so that the interviewer would be interested to getting to know about it more.
Could you share with us your IIM Ahmedabad interview experience?
My interview started with the clichéd question: ‘Tell me about yourself’. I started reciting my resume but the interviewers wanted to know more about what wasn’t on it. So I told them about how me and my twin brother had scored the same marks in 10th class board exams and then how we got into the same IIT, same department and finally we will probably end up in the same IIM (which we eventually did :P). They then went ahead to ask me the next clichéd question: ‘Why MBA?’. And I gave them my prepared answer: ‘I always had a keen interest in management, which became prominent after my stint as an event manager during my department’s fest at IIT Kharagpur. I wanted to work in a technology management role so I can leverage my technical knowledge from engineering along with the managerial knowledge that I will gain at IIM Ahmedabad.’ They then asked me about my undergrad internship and what I had learned from it. I told them about my project but did not go into any technical details. Instead I told them how I had learned the importance of working with a team and how a good mentor helped us through the project, which was totally new to us. They also asked me about my hometown, Nagpur. I had prepared for this question and so I told them some history of Nagpur, like how it got its name and who had ruled here before it was colonised. Finally they asked about my WAT answer and the GD that had followed. We were given a very generic topic so it was easy to write and discuss. The only problem I faced was there was very limited space and I had to stucture my thoughts and write the most relevant points. This final question actually worked in my favor because there I put forward some points that I could not include in my answer, which I had thought of while waiting for my interview.
One tip for CAT aspirants
The key to cracking CAT is practice. A lot of practice. And the key to do well in interviews is to prepare your HR questions before hand and know your resume by heart, being able to justify everything you have included in it.
