Sanskrit, Cousins and IIM K interview

So here I was for my last interview of the season, IIMK! I stayed at my mausi's place in Kaushambi and had a great time with cousins.My younger sis was having her Xth board exams and her next paper was Sanskrit on 13th March so alongwith her I read little bit of Sanskrit remembering the good old class X days. Poor girl! She studied Sanskrit till 330 AM and was still cheerful about it. I enjoyed listening to her school stories. I really appreciate her attitude towards life- full of zeal, dreams and ambition, straightforward with no complications.Sanskrit was an ordeal for me then and I barely scraped through it in preboards. There was a general notion that Sanskrit is like mathematics and everything is based on formulas. I never felt so. Anyways, I slept just two hours before interview and here is the experience:

12 March, 2006
IIC Annexe, New Delhi
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GD- An article was given: Sumantra Ghosh, a management guru presented at NASSCOM infront of various IT professionals. His slide contained only "Thankyou". He was thanking IT professionals for what they have given to country. Indians in foreign are proud and confident but an average Indian man in any city is not so.

11 ppl in GD! And to put it mildly it was chaotic!! Though I spoke but no one heard me, and my pen stopped working so I could not even take notes, thankfully no one was asked to summarize.
Two interviewers and me, I was the first person to be interviewed.

P:Tell me something about yourself.
A:intro, hobbies, technicals..
P:What kind of communications?
A:Signal transmission and reception..digital communications..
P:What is Nyquist rate?
A:told
P:Minimum or maximum bandwidth?
A:*confused, took time* told
P:What is the sampling rate of audio?
A:44khz
P:What is the sampling rate of PCM??
A:64 khz
P:Are you sure?
A:not sure
P:So in Software Development, what do you know??
A:Told about languages *cut short*
P:Difference between C++ and JAVA?
A:JAVA is platform independent, many features are inbuilt
P:Why programmers prefer JAVA?
A:Repeated the last answer
P:Any other advantage?
A:Can't remember
P:POinters...
A:*snatched the opportunity* yes JAVA doesn't have pointers, memory allocation fundas
P:How should we evaluate your performance in GD??You hardly spoke??
A:You might consider me as a docile person who gives due respect to others say
P:SO you would have performed better had the group been a little peaceful?
A:Yes, but the discussion was fruitful, points were raised and we were able to address to the problem
P:You have done well in school but how do you rate your performance in graduation??
A:Not up to the mark, could have done better
P:So what was the reason?It is not expected that you get all As but it could have been better?A:told about various reasons..
P:I can see that you repeated one course?
A:That was because I submitted the assignment after my internship and college's SRS has no such provision
P:Did you inform your college authorities because it's a permanent thing?
A:Yes, we've told them and they're changing it...
P:I can see a lot of chess certificates, tell me who is the world chess champion
A:Told that two international chess authorities PCA and FIDE are running in parallel, so there're two champs- Vladimir Kramnik and Vaselin Topalov
P:Who is you all time favourie chess player?
A:Bobby Fischer
P:Why?Tell me about his matches
A:Talked about his style, visualization and famous matches...
P:What is ELO rating?
A:Explained the formula..
P:Why is named so?
A:After the person who made it...
P:Why 10^something?
A:*dumbfounded* Sir it could be anything 8^something 9^ something..*whatta stupid answer*
P:Has it got something to be with common logarithms?
A:*jumped* yes it is because so and so...
P:OK Amod, you live in Gandhinagar, tell me something about Gandhiji
A:Told..about freedom truggle and how he differed from extremists
P:What's his autobiography's name?
A:my experiments with truth
P:So how was Gandhi's methodology different??
A:appeal to common mass, moves like satyagraha and dandi march
P:What qualities of Gandhiji do you possess?
A:*stumped* non-violence blah
P:Oh yeah, you told me you are docile *laughing*, that we saw in GD *laughing*
A:**smiles*
P:You want to be a public figure??*hehe* how?
A:some arbit gyan..pure philosophy..
P:So what all have you learnt in mathematics?
A:I have done courses on calculus, matrices, discrete maths, probability, stats etc.
P:Matrices hmmm.. what is eigen value?
A:I forgot, but i will take a guess, told something *completely wrong*
P:What is transpose?
A:told
P:What is diagonal matrix?
A:told
P:Repeat it
A:repeated
P:Does elements of a diagonal matrix have to be equal necessarily?
A:not necessary
P:Sure?
A:yeah, sure
OK, Thankyou, Best of luck!
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It was a simple feel good kinda interview. I came back and spent fun-filled evening with my cousins - shopping, eating out, driving etc. I really wanted to go back to home from there but considering the fact that India is a highly populous country, getting ticket of any sort was impossible. Now I feel like reviving my B Tech Project out of shambles and with just two months left in college I also need to preserve things for nostalgia.

IIM L Interview@New Delhi

So here I was, once again, in New Delhi. I love and hate this city simultaneously. Love it, simply because Delhi and everything related to it has a class of its own. In general, Delhi education, Delhi chicks, Delhi roads, Delhi culture and the feel of Delhi is just rocking! What I hate about Delhi is the people out there which includes autowalas, hawkers, cyber-cafe owners etc. who always try to cheat. These are all my personal experiences and I do not relate it to any Delhite in particular, so don't pounce on me :) There was lot of security in Delhi this time because of George Bush's visit. Fortunately, I was not caught in traffic jam due to the reason aforementioned. Well, the purpose of my visit was IIM Lucknow interview at IIFT.

Mar 1, 2006
1000 AM
IIFT, New Delhi

GD Topic: Income Tax creates more liars than showmanship (..kinda)
In my group there were two of my friends Riddhi and Diwesh, so some fraternizing was there :) GD was cool with people cooperating and even summarizing at the end.

I was 5th guy to be interviewed...A long wait once again. I just want to get rid of this number '5' from my life.

Some of the questions asked in PI:

Tell me something about yourself.
So the other guy is also from same place?
You good at number crunching?
Why acads bad?
How did you manage same marks in both X and XII?*laughing hysterically*
How does number crunching help in your course?
What is 'three thinkers'?Who were they?
So you took a course on philosophy?48 hrs a sem on philosophy?
What did you do in that course?
What is the meaning of 'tactile'?
Why a separate word like that?
How is it different from touch by emotions?
You have done a course on Business Finance, what were you taught?
What is balance sheet?
What are the components of balance sheet? Explain!
How is it different from profit and loss account?
What are expenditure and income?
If I buy a house for company, where will it appear in balance sheet?

Interview was cool, no serious grilling, but not soothing either. How on earth do you expect an engineer to know about the intricacies of balance sheet? Anyways, life's like that only, so no hard feelings.

After interview, I went off to meet some of the old stupid useless friends. Incidentally, I also met one of my blog friends -666 and we went for a coffee. It is always nice to meet new people especially girls. Thanks for the treat 666!

All in All, it was a decent trip. Have had loads of fun.