How I managed to crack a B-School interview -By Vaishnavi Subramanian from IIM Lucknow
My passion for masters in molecular biology
Hence, ironically, my recipe for success would be GRE, and an inherent passion to pursue my masters in molecular biology from Germany. In the end, I cleared one of the toughest exams in the country.
I distinctly remember, whilst I was busy prepping for my GRE. My dad casually enquired if I would be interested in appearing for CAT. I murmured a “yes” and continued fighting for it. I felt that it would not do any harm. Also, I remember 26th November 2017 as the day of my CAT exam and I was not interested in giving the exam as I only had a few days left for GRE. My parents encouraged me to go to the exam. I reasoned I could put my Verbal and Quant to test, so I agreed.
When I entered the examination hall, the tension was palpable in the air. All the nervous applicants were switching their gaze back and forth between the clock and the computer screen. I could wager a huge bet that I was probably the only one who was calm. But I could understand their situation. I prepared for a long time and I knew that 3 hours would be a make or break situation. I would have panicked as well. Having nothing to lose, my only worry was not to fall asleep after eating a heavy lunch.
The result declaration and B-School interview
The first was the verbal section. As I started attempting the questions, I realized that the verbal reasoning of CAT was much easier than that of GRE. After completing this section on time, I progressed to the logical reasoning section. I started solving the questions and liking the paper. It really forced me to think and I have always been a fan of puzzles. Hence, what has been an incomprehensible nightmare was a fun hour for me. I pushed myself to think more and ticked the correct answers. Next was Quant, and although it was slightly trickier than GRE. I managed the questions as the difficulty level was not too high.
As the minutes turned to hours, and as I logged off, I realized that I had actually given a fairly decent examination.
When the results were out after a couple of months. I realized about my stressful performance. I gazed at my computer screen in shock to process the numbers on the screen. It showed 98 percentile. I assumed it wasn’t bad for the first attempt. But then the miracles started happening. I started getting calls from all the top IIMs: IIM Calcutta, Lucknow, Kozhikode and so forth. I realized it could be a decent enough back-up option as I had scored 325 in GRE, which wasn’t good enough to secure admission into the top universities. After doing intensive preparation for two months for WAT/PI, I found myself staring at the interview panel in Lucknow. It was a stressful interview and the reason that I didn’t start panicking was that I still had nothing to lose. After responding to the questions fired at me, I made my way outside the panel room.
Life is full of miracles and exams
After a month or so, I opened my laptop, eagerly waiting for my result in a coveted university in Germany. My heart sank. I was on the wait-list out of the 10,000 applicants who had applied. I was good, but not good enough. As fate would have it, the results for IIM Lucknow were also released that evening. I couldn’t believe I had made it to the first list. Miracles do happen.
This is not a short story of how a fresher accidentally cracked a B-School interview. The moral of the story? Sometimes, a calm mind is more powerful than razor-sharp intelligence to conquer any obstacle.
This article was submitted as a part of Become an Author conducted by Dare2Compete.