Hear Ashutosh Chaudhary from IIM Indore revealing secrets of nailing CAT interview

If you are curious to know what goes inside the four walls in a CAT interview, take your seats and sit back because Ashutosh Chaudhary, a graduate from NIT Surat (Mechanical Engineering), who made it to the prestigious IIM Indore is here to spill the beans for us! With a 90 percentile and 12 months of work experience at TechnipFMC as a Planning engineer, Ashutosh is here to share his CAT interview experience. Let us listen to what he has to say about his interview which took place on 16 March 2021.

Ashutosh’s Scores

(Note: WAT (Written Ability Test) could not be conducted online, so it was removed from evaluation.)

Overall Experience- The panel members were very polite and supportive. They made me drive the interview to my comfort zone. Most of the questions were technical. There were two professors in my panel, one in his 40s and another one in his 50s. I will be referring to them as P1, P2 and myself as A.

After initial greetings, the interview started with P1

P1: Ashutosh, from which branch you have done your engineering?

A: I have done my B. Tech in mechanical from NIT Surat.

P1: NIT Suratkal? (Due to noise in between, he heard suratkal)

A: Sir, Surat in Gujarat.

P1: Okay, tell me two things for which Surat is famous for?

A:  Popularly known as diamond city of India, it is a hub for diamond cutting and polishing. Apart from this, Surat is also known as the textile city of Gujarat.

Over to P2

P2: Ashutosh, you have done your engineering from mechanical, so what is your favourite subject?

A: My favourite subject is fluid mechanics (since I have done my internship related to fluid machinery and I had thoroughly revised this subject during preparation. I was knowing if the interview will be on technical side, then I should have command in at least one or two subjects. I was quite confident about fluid mechanics).

P2: Okay, what is equation of continuity?

A: Equation of continuity is area of cross section of flow multiplied by velocity of fluid. It is based on law of conservation of mass.

P2:  What is Bernoulli’s principle?

A: For an incompressible, inviscid, steady flow sum of pressure energy, kinetic energy and potential energy of fluid flowing through a pipe is always constant.

(…I lost the connection in between and after few seconds I reconnected again. I apologized for my poor network and we continued.)

P2: Application of Bernoulli’s principle?

A: 1. Centrifugal pump for transferring fluid from one place to another,

     2.Venturimeter for measuring the flow rate of fluid through pipes

P2: You told centrifugal pump as one of the applications, there is phenomenon called cavitation in centrifugal pump, do you know about it?

A: Yes sir, when fluid flows through inlet of centrifugal pump at the eye of impeller when static pressure falls below the vapor pressure then there is formation of bubbles, these bubbles impinge on the surface of impeller and implodes, causes holes and pits these phenomena is known as cavitation.

P2: You seem to have good knowledge in fluid mechanics, Why MBA?

A: Gave a well-prepared answer. Told, I want to do MBA because I know people who have done MBA and grown as a leader. I want to learn various skills which are being taught in MBA which will help me to grow as a leader by learning how to take better decision and communication skills. It will help me to develop my understanding of business like reading different reports related to business, understanding of business in terms of operations, organizational behavior, marketing, finance, resource management, different policies being framed by company. It will help me how to work in changing business environment.

Over to P1

P1: Okay, I will give you a topic you have 30 second to think and 2 minutes to speak on, ”Child marriage”.

A: Was prepared for extempore spoke for 2 minutes continuously without any hassle.

P1: Do you follow news?

A: Yes, I follow Hindu, Economic Times and Guardian.

P1: What is IoT?

A: I fumbled initially, I was not sure about the answer, so I passed the question.

P1: What is artificial intelligence? (I have included Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning in my previous answer initially)

A: Told with few examples.

P1 and P2 were noting down on their sheet while I was speaking

P1: Okay Ashutosh, we are done with you. You can now leave the meeting room.

A: Okay Sir, Thank you.

The results were declared on 11 May 2021 and Ashutosh made it to IIM Indore in the very first list!

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2. Avani Raghuwanshi's journey to XLRI will help you ace MBA exams!
3. From a failed attempt to IIFT, know how Yugant made it to his dream B-School!