Hola Applicants!
To help you cope up with your preparation, we have collated the interview experiences of our current batch students. The interviews were mostly based on the profile and background of individual candidates. We hope this would be insightful and all the best!
| Full name | Aseem Raghav |
| College/University | Delhi Technological University |
| Specialization | B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2017 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Tata Motors Limited |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 25 |
| Designation | Territory Sales Manager |
| Work Experience Background | Marketing/Advertising |
| LinkedIn URL | www.linkedin.com/in/aseem-raghav-a65216160 |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Questions can get asked from these sections in the PI round later as well, so be very honest in filling the hobbies, and extra-curricular description section. |
| Tips for Written Exam | Attempt previous year PGDBA question papers to get a feel of the exam format and difficulty level. There’s no one-size-fits-all kind of strategy for the PGDBA exam; you will have to tailor your preparation according to your strengths, weak areas, and the time you can manage to take out for your prep. Cutoff is usually in 100-110 (out of 150) range, but aim to score 130-140 in order to have realistic chances of conversion, as high weightage is given to written score,. |
| Resources for exam preparation | DILR – Any CAT prep material is sufficient. VARC- Any CAT prep material is sufficient. QA – “Test of Mathematics at the 10+2 Level” book by ISI comes highly recommended. You may also refer class 11-12th Maths books, for revisiting concepts and theory. |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | 52.33 |
| General profile based questions asked | 1. Tell me something about yourself. 2. What are the qualities of a good manager? 3. What is the difference between a manager and a leader? 4. What are your strengths and your weaknesses? 5. Highlight a marketing strategy you used in your domain to your advantage. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | None |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Q1. What do your parents call you? In how many ways can this name be permuted? Explain this formula intuitively. A: 5! / 2! Q2. What are the types of errors in Hypothesis Testing? A: Type 1 and Type 2 error. Q3. (Gave a problem) What is the type 1 error of this problem? A: Was unable to solve, so told the panelist that i was unable to arrive at an answer, and explained my approach to him. Q4. Let’s say you want to estimate the number of Red colored Maruti Altos running in your city. How will you approach this problem? A: * The population of my city is approx. 1.8 Cr. * Let’s say there are 5 members per family. Therefore total families = 1.8Cr / 5 = 36L. * Let’s say that there is 1 car per 2 families. Therefore total cars = 36L / 2 = 18L. * Maruti Suzuki has a market share of about 50% in Delhi. Therefore total Maruti cars in Delhi = 18L * 50% = 9L * Alto has been one of the best selling cars of Maruti Suzuki. Let’s say 10% of all maruti sales have been that of Alto. Therefore total Alto cars in Delhi = 9L * 10% = 90,000 * Since Red is not a common color, let’s say only 2% of the Alto cars sold in delhi were of Red color. Therefore total red colored Maruti Alto in my city ~ 1800 cars. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | 1. What does “Aatma-Nirbhar Bharat” mean? 2. What recent government policies do you relate to “Aatma-Nirbhar Bharat”? 3. What policy should government introduce that you think will benefit Tata Motors? |
| Any other kind of questions | None |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 30 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Maybe |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | 1. Carefully study the types of questions that converted candidates on this PGDBA WordPress page similar to your own profile have been asked previously in PIs. 2. Your motivation for joining this course will be studied very closely by the 3 panelists. Have a very clear opinion on why you want to join this course in particular. 3. Revise Higher Maths topics, specifically Linear Algebra, Basic Statistics and Probability. 4. For Freshers – you may be asked more questions on your grad – level subjects, your internship, any project you did, so be better prepared in that domain. For Experienced folks – you may be asked more questions related to your workex, and regarding the domain you’re from, so you may plan your preparation accordingly. 5. Finally – no amount of preparation will guarantee that you have an answer to everything asked by the panelists. If you don’t know the answer, don’t fret and tell them so rather than beating around the bush. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process | No |
| Full name | Kritica Meena |
| College/University | IIT Madras |
| Specialization | Engineering Design (Dual Degree) |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | OLA Cabs |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 19 |
| Designation | Business Analyst, Associate Program Manager |
| Work Experience Background | Analytics |
| LinkedIn URL | |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Nothing as such, just be honest and be ready with the answers which can be asked based on the details you mention in your application |
| Tips for Written Exam | Maths : Solve the past year PGDBA and JEE Mains question papers DILR & VARC: CAT material and mock tests (TIME/IMS) are sufficient for these two sections. DILR will be comparatively easy than CAT exam |
| Resources for exam preparation | |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | |
| General profile based questions asked | It didn’t start with the introduction. I was asked about the WFH situation at my company and then one panelist started asking questions related to my core branch (related to radius of curvature) |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | None |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Was asked to plot the graph of x= tcost, y=tsint for a large range of t (ISI Panelist ) |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Panelist 1 from IIM C 1)Cultural difference between Rajasthan and other states 2) Is there any reason why Delhi is more unsafe for women than Mumbai or Chennai? (this question was asked because I’ve lived in different metro cities) Panelist 2 from IIM C 3) Name 5 Rivers flowing into the Bay of Bengal and the longest river of India 4) Current Finance Minister & was Indira Gandhi first female finance minister of India? |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 30 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Maybe |
| Overall Interview Experience | 3 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | PGDBA WordPress interview experience page |
| Any other interaction post the interview process |
| Full name | Rahul Sharma |
| College/University | Delhi Technological University |
| Specialization | B.Tech Mechanical Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Maruti Suzuki |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 24 |
| Designation | Territory Service Manager |
| Work Experience Background | Marketing/Advertising;Service and Marketing |
| LinkedIn URL | http://linkedin.com/in/rahul-sharma-87b69096 |
| Tips to fill Application Form | This is an important step. Aspirant must ensure that they fill the form honestly. |
| Tips for Written Exam | Mathematics constitutes 50% of the written examination. So prepare accordingly for it. Make sure you complete all the relevant chapters from NCERT (with examples and miscellaneous exercises). The other major section is the Verbal Section. Try to develop reading habits which will help you ace this section (and will help you in life too). Also try to practice parajumbles and summary type questions. As for LRDI just make sure to go through the basics and you will definitely ace this section. The last and definitely the most important step is mock test. Don’t skip them. They will complete your preparation. Best of luck. |
| Resources for exam preparation | NCERTs + Mocks |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | 48.3 |
| General profile based questions asked | 1. Introduce yourself. 2. Your relevant Work Experiences and acads. 3. Why PGDBA. ( Try to cite relevant work experience ) |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | 1. I was not from an analytics background, so was not asked many questions on this. I was asked about my job description and how data can help better reach the company’s targets. |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | 1. If you are given a matrix 3 x 3. How can you compute 100th power of the matrix and was then asked about the concepts of eigenvectors and eigenvalues. 2. If there are 10 light switches in a dark room then in how many possible ways can you light up the room. 3. Another question on Conditional Probability ( Don’t remember the exact question but it was something about the reduced sample space ) 4. A basic question on differential Equation. Note: Just prepare stats, probability and matrix and be thorough with all the basics of these topics as these are the most important. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | 1. What are the dominant issues in India-China bilateral Relationship. 2. History of this issue ( I started from Nehru’s forward post policy and built the entire thing as a story of sorts ) 3. What is a possible way forward for India-China relations. 4. What are some recent developments in your district. |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | Interview lasted for about 30 minutes. |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Just prepare your basics mathematical concepts and try to be well versed with the current affairs. Also don’t stress over the interview. Just be normal and confident in the interview. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process |
| Full name | Rakasi Yashwanth Reddy |
| College/University | National Institute of Technology Warangal |
| Specialization | B.Tech Chemical Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2017 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Reliance Industries Limited. |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 27 |
| Designation | Shift Engineer |
| Work Experience Background | Manufacturing |
| LinkedIn URL | www.linkedin.com/in/yashwanth-reddy-rakasi |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Fill all details that you can like certificates received in college eventhough they are not high achievements in general. See that whatever you write in application you should be able to explain as they may ask in interview. |
| Tips for Written Exam | I read NCERT books selectively based on the syllabus of examination keeping interview in mind emphasizing more on topics like matrices, vectors etc.. As past papers of PGDBA will give a better understanding of the exam we will see that exam is not that tough and we can complete the whole paper within 3 hours duration, try to avoid silly calculation mistakes, this will help as there is weightage of marks of exam for final selection. |
| Resources for exam preparation | NCERT books class-11,12 |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | |
| General profile based questions asked | Introduce yourself, Why PGDBA was more emphasized by one panel member as I was from manufacturing background with no prior analytics background. Job role in the previous Organisation, details about products manufactured in our plant and their markets- domestic or international. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | No technical questions regarding analytics but as I already said I am interested in financial analytics they asked me about crash of stock market in March and recovery, Reasons for recovery FII pumping in money, demand rise, more participation of millenials as the rate at which demat accounts have been opened dailyare very high at that time as valuations looked attractive at that time. How to calculate Valuation Of Companies etc.. |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Highest possible value of n such that 50!/7^n is divisible. Ans: 8 explanation: in 50! Number of multiples of 7’s are computed i.e 7,14,21….49 so n= 1+1+1+..+2=8 (2 for 49 as it is square) here generalisation has been asked i.e if 50 is replaced by very large number x, here sum of step values of x/7, x/7^2 … till 7^k which is <= x gives the answer. nCr formula has been asked then nCr +nC(r-1) Ans: (n+1)Cr. Relation between nCr and nC(r-1). Ans: nCr=((n+1-r)/r)*(nC(r-1)) |
| General Knowledge or related questions | GDP full form and its meaning. Is there any relation of stock market to economy of country. |
| Any other kind of questions | They will ask about your Extra-curricular activities and if you have any certificates at national and state level try to highlight them. |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 30 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Yes |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | “Try to be yourself it really helps. If they ask your favourite topic always suggest topic which you are comfortable and related to PGDBA course so that know you are keen to pursue PGDBA. Go through previous interview experiences of candidates of similar profile although questions depends on panel it will help you in knowing general expectations of panel. Be prepared for questions in your current job role and undergrad subjects they may ask. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process | https://pgdbablog.wordpress.com/ for interview experiences and try to get in touch with seniors who got selected previously to know their personal experience.” |
| Full name | Aditya Yellamilli |
| College/University | Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology |
| Specialization | B Tech Chemical Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | HMEL, Startup |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 12 (Formal) |
| Designation | Process Engineer |
| Work Experience Background | Oil and Gas |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/aditya-yellamilli/ |
| Tips to fill Application Form | don’t gas around, no BS, straight to the point answers are appreciated. |
| Tips for Written Exam | Prepare well for the math portion, half the exam us math — revise from NCERT Textbook and some Fitjee material if needed. There is ample amount of time in the exam so take your time to solve all questions properly. If required take a few mock exams to boost confidence. |
| Resources for exam preparation | |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | |
| General profile based questions asked | Why are you here today? |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | Can you suggest ways to apply Analytics in your startup (online media based) |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | “Basics of Statistics like Mean, Mode and Median definitions and Relation among the 3 of them. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | How do you comment on the increasing and decreasing nature of a series of numbers (K th term was given). |
| Any other kind of questions | Tell me about Trapezoidal Rule (proff said it was advanced topic it’s fine if you never heard about it)” |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | “What happened wrong with Cambridge Analytica (I mentioned it one of my answers) |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Do you think such election manipulation is possible in a country like India? |
| Overall Interview Experience | What’s the estimated number of voters in India?” |
| Tips for Personal Interview | |
| Any other interaction post the interview process | Approx 20 minutes |
| Full name | Gourab Gopal Mondal |
| College/University | Jadavpur University |
| Specialization | Production Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2016 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Oracle |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 34 |
| Designation | Consultant (IT) |
| Work Experience Background | Software/IT and ITES;Consulting |
| LinkedIn URL | https://in.linkedin.com/in/gourabgopalmondal |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Be truthful and completely aware of what you are writing |
| Tips for Written Exam | Revising mathematics from Arihant’s IITJEE books, practicing AIEEE/JEE Main level MCQs DILR and VARC – I was already prepared for it as I wrote CAT too. |
| Resources for exam preparation | |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | 52.54 |
| General profile based questions asked | 1.Introduce yourself. 2.Why PGDBA ISI Prof : 3. x and y are binary variables taking value 0,1. Maximise f(x,y) = xy + x+y 4. What is hypothesis testing? Why Null Hypothesis is called null Hypothesis? 5. Inflection points in normal distribution curve? 6. Explain simplex algorithm (Background of above questions : Read those in engineering) IIM Prof : 1. How you’ll apply analytics in HR? 2. How is risk of a stock measured? 3. How does RBI control inflation? 4. CRR? 5. Why we need inflation? IT Prof : 1. Difference between linear and logistic regression. 2. What is logit function 3. What is KNN 4. What is VIF (Background of above questions: Told read about those ML topics, have not implemented ever) Went for 25/30 minutes, no cross questioning, amicable gestures from all. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | 1.Difference between linear and logistic regression. 2. What is logit function 3. What is KNN 4. What is VIF |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | 3. x and y are binary variables taking value 0,1. Maximise f(x,y) = xy + x+y 4. What is hypothesis testing? Why Null Hypothesis is called null Hypothesis? 5. Inflection points in normal distribution curve? 6. Explain simplex algorithm (Background of above questions : Read those in engineering) |
| General Knowledge or related questions | How is risk of a stock measured? 3. How does RBI control inflation? 4. CRR? 5. Why we need moderate inflation? |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 25/30 minutes. |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | ISLR 7th edition ( 1-3) chapter Operations Management by Taha Statistics text book (for distribution) Financial Times, Economic Times (Newspaper) |
| Any other interaction post the interview process |
| Full name | Aditya Mahajan |
| College/University | IIT Roorkee |
| Specialization | B.Tech |
| Year of Graduation | 2017 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | OYO, Airtel |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 31 |
| Designation | Associate Manager |
| Work Experience Background | Analytics;Telecommunication |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/aditya6040/ |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Explain properly about work experience, projects and extra curricular. |
| Tips for Written Exam | I used my JEE exam preparation notes for Mathematics. For Verbal & LR-DI – I gave CAT mock tests. Followed Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4NoVAkQzeSaxCgm-to25A) for clarity on mathematical topics. AI-Monks mock test series for PGDBA is good to test your understanding. |
| Resources for exam preparation | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4NoVAkQzeSaxCgm-to25A |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | 52 |
| General profile based questions asked | Introduce yourself. Why PGDBA ? Projects done in Airtel-One of the interviewer knew about it- so he asked very detailed questions. Regulations of TRAI. Why Vodafone merged with Idea? Why OYO is not doing well in USA as compared to Indian market? |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | If 2 people been given same dataset, how can you ensure both of them reaching same test-train dataset ? |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | What is hypothesis testing ? Where did you use it in your work? How do you see revenue coming from different products of OYO ? (different cohorts for number reporting) |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Telecom domain related questions. Regulations of TRAI |
| Any other kind of questions | Thoroughly prepare abt work-ex (industry specific) questions if you have work ex>=2 years. Else focus more on statistical concepts/ calculus / UG based questions. |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 35 min |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Maybe |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Give at least 5 mock interviews to your friends/parents. Get acquitted of your interview fright. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process |
| Full name | P Vijay Kumar |
| College/University | Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering (Anna University) |
| Specialization | B.E. Electronics and Communication Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2017 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | AstraZeneca |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 30 |
| Designation | Associate Engineer – SAP |
| Work Experience Background | Software/IT and ITES; Pharmaceutical |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/vijay-kumar-panchatcharam/ |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Please fill hobbies and extracurricular section carefully in the application form. Only write what you can defend in the interview and be prepared for questions on it. |
| Tips for Written Exam | I used YouTube videos on JEE Maths to prepare for the quant section. I also bought Mathematics for JEE Mains by Cengage publications to supplement the YouTube videos and for practice. It is advisable to take atleast 2-3 mocks to get familiar with the exam. |
| Resources for exam preparation | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCtUyOrCJbxz-womyB5E_aZhWcLoGDlqA https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCtUyOrCJbxyRVIqPFaEKENfKO-WXb-AK https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCtUyOrCJbxznGmIAvFmfwxWhLQ8yHShk https://www.youtube.com/c/Vedantu |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | |
| General profile based questions asked | Q: Introduce yourself A: Well prepared answer Q: Why do you want to leave AstraZeneca and do PGDBA? A: Told how I developed interest in analytics and that I have been following applications of analytics. Q: So you are not interested in doing a management course. A: Explained how I can contribute to an organization using the knowledge gained through this course. Q:Give some examples of the applications which you read recently. A: Explained about the applications of analytics in pharma/healthcare sector. Q:Your interest seem to be more on healthcare. A: Gave some examples of analytics in finance. Q: Why do you think there is more focus on analytics in recent days when these methods were existing from long? A: Huge amount of data generated everyday now and better processing speed. Q: How were decisions made earlier without these techniques? A: Based on intuition and human experience/knowledge and not based on data. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | No technical questions related to Analytics/ML/DS as I did not have experience in analytics |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Q: Which topics are you comfortable with in Maths? A: Permutations & Combinations, Probability & Random variables Q: What is a Random variable? Give some examples. A: Answered with example. Q: What is a probability distribution? What are the types of distribution that you know? A: Answered. Q: What is Binomial distribution? A: Explained with examples of coin tossing and probability of getting r heads out of n tosses. Q: If you toss the coin repeatedly and want to find the probability of getting first heads, how will you calculate that? A: Answered using Geometric distribution. Q: Do you know about memorylessness property? A: Have read about it, but couldn’t recollect. Q: Do you know about calculus? A: Yes, 11th 12th level Differential and Integral calculus. Q: Do you know about matrices? A: Yes Q: What is rank of a matrix? What is the significance of it? A: Rank – Number of linearly independent rows or columns in a matrix. Denotes the information content in a matrix Q: For a 3 x 2 matrix, what is the maximum rank that it can take? A: 2, Maximum rank = min(m,n) for a m x n matrix Q: How will you calculate rank of a matrix? A: Explained rank calculation using row-echelon form Q: Do you know how to solve system of linear equations using matrices? A: Yes. Explained Q: If you have a 3×4 matrix can you find the determinant? Can you solve the linear equations of a 3×4 matrix? A: No. It’s not possible to get a unique solution for a set of 3 equations with 4 variables |
| General Knowledge or related questions | No GK questions were asked |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 25 minutes |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Go through previous year interview experiences and prepare accordingly. Prepare well for profile-based questions and be clear on why you want to do PGDBA. In Maths, prepare 2-3 topics really well (particularly probability, linear algebra) so that you can tell the panel if you are asked to choose topics. It is okay if you are unable to answer a question. But for the questions which you know, yours answer should be very clear. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process | No |
| Full name | Karthik Prasad |
| College/University | IIT Delhi |
| Specialization | B.Tech – Mechanical Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2016 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Johnson Matthey |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 31 |
| Designation | Deputy Manager – Projects |
| Work Experience Background | Manufacturing |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthik-prasad-300973141/ |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Fill with hobbies and extra curriculars with information backed by certificates |
| Tips for Written Exam | 1) Focus on CBSE 11th and 12th Mathematics topics. Refer annexures for Maclaurin series 2) Try to get your hands on AIMCATS or other CAT preparation material to familiarize with VARC and DILR question and practice them. 3) Refer previous year questions and pattern to understand the type and difficultly level of questions from each topic. |
| Resources for exam preparation | CBSE textbooks |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | |
| General profile based questions asked | 1) Introduce yourself 2) What sort of projects do you handle in your work? 3) What sort of ROI calculations do you do? 4) Since you have worked with projects and their ROI, have you heard about sustainable ROI? |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | Since my profile did not have any Analytics or ML/DS related points, this line of questioning did not happen |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Basic puzzles where asked. Questions like prove a certain statement is true or false. It helps to think out loud while answering these questions so that the interviewer knows you line of thought and can guide you if you deviate at any point. Questions on matrices and matrix manipulations were asked. Had to prove a statement involving multiplication of matrix and its transpose |
| General Knowledge or related questions | None. |
| Any other kind of questions | Be prepared to show your interest in the field of analytics and business. It always helps to be well versed with recent developments in this domain |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 15-20 mins |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Be confident about yourself. Try to convince the interviewer about your genuine interests and try to highlight analytics part of you workex and hobbies. Revise graduation level linear algebra as this will help in cracking questions on matrices with accuracy and confidence. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process | None |
| Full name | Jaydeb Das |
| College/University | Jadavpur University |
| Specialization | BTech in ETCE |
| Year of Graduation | 2016 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Siemens Ltd |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 44 |
| Designation | Sales & Marketing |
| Work Experience Background | Marketing/Advertising |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/in/jaydeb-das-20677552 |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Nothing special. |
| Tips for Written Exam | I was preparing for CAT. So, I did not prepare separately for PGDBA VARC and LRDI section. Math/QA: Complete ncert books and past Aieee papers. |
| Resources for exam preparation | Math/QA: NCERT 11,12 book, past AIEEE/IIT mains papers and YouTube video (Mohit Tyagi & GB) LRDI: Very easy VARC: Any CAT level book and past CAT papers. |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | |
| General profile based questions asked | 1) Why do you want to leave IIM Lucknow (PGP)? 2) Did you study math & stat in your UG? Tell me the topics. 3) Questions from Fourier series. 4) Question from analog and digital communications and some basic functions. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | 1) Difference between business analytics, data analytics and data science. 2) Asked me to mention few topics (statistics) that I know. And a few follow up questions. 3) Questions from Bayes theorem and conditional probability. 4) Applications of data analytics in sales. |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | 1) A few math functions and asked me to draw a few curves 2) Convergence and divergence and a few following up questions. 3) Questions from probability. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | NA |
| Any other kind of questions | Why not MBA? |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | Around 30 mins |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Be honest. If you don’t know then tell it to the panel members. You should be comfortable with the math concepts (class 11 & 12). |
| Any other interaction post the interview process | NA |
| Full name | Satyam Neelmani |
| College/University | IIT Kharagpur |
| Specialization | B. Tech in Agricultural and Food Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2019 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Athancare |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 13 |
| Designation | AI Researcher |
| Work Experience Background | Analytics |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyamneelmani |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Be honest, don’t bluff in hobbies section. Always get your answers proofread by seniors whatever you are writing. |
| Tips for Written Exam | RD Sharma for Quant, CAT past 5 year papers for LRDI and XLRI and CAT past 10 year papers for VARC |
| Resources for exam preparation | Analyticsvidhya blogs |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | |
| General profile based questions asked | Introduce yourself |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | Explain your designation AI Researcher |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | 1. Is there any relation between binomial distribution and normall distribution 2. Name few sci-kit packages? 3. Gave a very basic permutation and combination numerical |
| General Knowledge or related questions | 1. Tell me something about the agriculture practices in India since 1947, ( My B. tech is in agriculture) 2. What was the size of my company? 3. How to become a market leader in healthcare (I was from healthcare) |
| Any other kind of questions | They had not asked me much from tech or mathematics. My interview was of 15 minutes for which IIM Prof took 8-9 minutes. |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 15 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | I was already in the field of AI and regular client interaction was a part of my job. So, I didn’t specifically prepared for interview. Just structured my thoughts only. I used to have a detailed discussions with my friends who have cleared IIM interviews. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process |
| Full name | Vemula Yaminee Jyothsna |
| College/University | IIT Mandi |
| Specialization | B.Tech, CSE |
| Year of Graduation | 2017 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Cognizant |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 30 |
| Designation | Associate Projects |
| Work Experience Background | Software/IT and ITES |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaminee-jyothsna-v-1135b2130 |
| Tips to fill Application Form | NA |
| Tips for Written Exam | prepare NCERT 11 and 12 maths |
| Resources for exam preparation | AIEEE maths text books |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | |
| General profile based questions asked | Introduce yourself, Why PGDBA |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | NA |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | what is continous function, types of random variables, modules graph. If given ,function is continuous or not? |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Indian Economy during covid. Reasons for the decrease in economy. Was economy already decreasing or else step fall due to covid? |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 20-25mins |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Yes |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | stay confident, Even if you dont know answer just explain them your approach to the solution |
| Any other interaction post the interview process |
| Full name | Prasun Kumar |
| College/University | IIT BHU |
| Specialization | B.Tech Chemical Engineering and Technology |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Merilytics |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 24 |
| Designation | Data Scientist, Business Analyst |
| Work Experience Background | Analytics;Consulting |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/prasun-kumar/ |
| Application Form | NA |
| Written Exam | If you have studied maths well in 11th and 12th standards, then it won’t require more than a month to prepare for the entrance exam. The questions are pretty rudimentary if you know the formulae well. I referred to handwritten notes of JEE Advanced aspirants and it would be quick and sufficient for revising concepts. |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | NA |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | 49 |
| General profile based questions that were asked | 1. You have previously worked in the manufacturing industry and now you have moved to analytics field. Can you explain your current job role? 2. Please elaborate on one of your projects. 3. Suppose, your previous employer comes and asks you to join them again. In which department you will join and how will you help them with your analytics knowledge. 4. Suppose you have been given survey data related to the happiness index of employees at two locations (Delhi and Mumbai) of a firm. What kind of insights can you derive? |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | These questions were asked because I mentioned that I used this algorithm along with other algorithms in a customer clustering project: 1. What is k means algorithm? 2. How does K means algorithm work? 3. In which situations K means algorithm is not a good choice? 4. What is the time complexity of K-Means? On what factors, time complexity of K means will depend 5. Give a business situation in which we can’t use K means. Give a business situation in which we can use K means algorithm. |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | Given that p is a prime number. 1. Comment whether it is true or false: one of the 2p+1 and 4p+1 will be divisible by 3 2. Find p such that p,2p+1,4p+1 are prime. 3. Write the formula for Gaussian distribution. |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | Have you heard about Rohingya community? Can you tell us about them? Why have they been forced to leave Myanmar? Which country they originally belong to? |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | NA |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 30 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 4 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | If you are from an analytics background, then focus on any one of your projects and learn about the algorithms used in the project as much as you can. Think about the assumptions made while applying those techniques. You should know about the situations in which these methods will fail. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? | NA |
| Full name | Aditya Pareek |
| College/University | Delhi Technological University |
| Specialization | B.Tech Mathematics and Computing |
| Year of Graduation | 2019 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Barclays |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 7 |
| Designation | Quantitative Risk Analyst |
| Work Experience Background | Software/IT and ITES;BFSI/Finance |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/aditya-pareek |
| Application Form | Make sure to include only those extracurriculars for which you have the certificates |
| Written Exam | Quants: I covered NCERT book and solved the comparatively harder problems. In oarallel I was also referring to the JEE prep material as it had nice questions as well. DILR: Nothing in particular, solved a few previous year CAT and PGDBA questions. Verbal: Nothing in particular Try giving mocks if available. |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | |
| General profile based questions that were asked | 1. Introduce yourself to the Panel |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | Q. What is operator overloading? A. Told Q. What is the difference between dynamic programming and “divide and conquer”? A. Told |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | Q. Have you studied Operations Research? A. Yes but I scored the worst grade in that subject in my entire degree. Q. Cool, I’ll ask on this topic then. A. :\ This was followed by three back to back questions for which the answer was an instant “I don’t know” Q. Okay, frame the Linear Programming problem for me. A. That I knew and I did. Q. Rotate the given vector by 60 degrees. A. Gave the rotation matrix, told him that we can multiply the vector with it to get the result. Q. What is Null Space? A. Told Q. What will be the Null Space of the following matrix? A. Answer given Q. What is PCA and how do Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues play a role there. A.Told |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | Q. What was the latest Supreme Court judgement on Aadhaar Card. A. I didn’t know so I kept beating around the bush but he asked me to forget what actually happened and try to think rationally what could be the concerns related to Aadhaar Card. We had a good discussion on that and in the end he ended up educating me a bit 🙂 Q. What is GDPR? (since I had worked in BFSI) A. Told |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 30 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 5 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | Be thorough with your relevant undergrad courses. Try to be up to date on current affairs. Don’t be afraid to say no to the questions you don’t know the answer to. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? |
| Full name | Satyam Behera |
| College/University | IIT Kharagpur |
| Specialization | B.Tech Metallurgical and Materials Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2019 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | EXXONMOBIL |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 7 |
| Designation | Materials Engineer |
| Work Experience Background | Manufacturing;Oil and Gas |
| LinkedIn URL | |
| Application Form | Instructions are simple and straightforward follow those. Simple and to the point statement of purpose should work. |
| Written Exam | There is no specific plans. But make yourself comfortable with the question pattern and get all the math concepts revised. |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | Last year question paper from PGDBA site to start with. |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | |
| General profile based questions that were asked | What type of work you are associated in your current profile? Why is the motivation to join PGDBA? |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | Don’t remember the exact questions. But some basic questions around exponential model was asked. |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | One of the question was I guess what could be the possible number of handshakes given a number of people and I that could ever be odd? |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | Your native state? Chief Minister of your state and his father and the political party they are associated? |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 20-25 min |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Maybe |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 4 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | Get your thoughts organized and everything will be smooth throughout the interview. Try to avoid guessing anything. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? |
| Full name | Ashish Urankar |
| College/University | Fergusson College(BSc), IIT Guwahati(MSc) |
| Specialization | MSc Mathematics and Computing |
| Year of Graduation | 2017(Bsc), 2019(MSc) |
| Work Experience | Fresher |
| Organization(Name) | |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | |
| Designation | |
| Work Experience Background | |
| LinkedIn URL | |
| Application Form | Focus on Extra Curriculars (Sports (District, Zonal, State, National level), Projects , Exhibitions etc). |
| Written Exam | 1) Maths (TOMATO book, 1Month before exam) 2) Previous Year Papers 3) Reading Newspaper 4) Solving some online Puzzles for logical reasoning |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | |
| General profile based questions that were asked | Q) You have a Master’s in Mathematics and don’t have any business experience, so why PGDBA? (Prepared Answer) |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | NA |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | 1) Functions (basic definition) 2) Differentiability (basic) 3) Continuity (basic) 4) PnC (basic) 5) Pure mathematics basic definitions. |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | Q1) Some current affairs news Ans: Talk about problems faced by students preparing for entrance exams (JEE etc) Q1.1) What would you have done if you are given the power to take decision? — There was some discussion here Q2) Share with us some news that we might not know. Ans: Talked and explained about a Mathematics problem. Also had to explain in brief how it was solved. |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | Q1) You participated in Mars Exploration Mission exibition, Olympiad, hockey etc, so tell us something about the exibition. Q2) You are a hockey player, what do you think about Indian hockey team? [Was told to share screen and show the Hockey certificate.] |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 25-30 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 4 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | 1) Took tips from Ex-PGDBA students. 2) Took tips from one of my senior in IIMB. 3) One of my friend took my mock interview (14-15) times. Topics I prepared 1) Maths (All definitions, Real Analysis, Linear Algebra, Abstract Algebra, DS-Algo, Metric Spaces) 2) Probability and Statistics (Basic to intermediate, Probability distributions, CLT, PI, CI, HT, Linear Regression, Bayesian Inference) – [I have passed CS1 (Actuarial Statistics from IFOA UK)] 3) Current Affairs |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? | I asked them why didn’t they ask me any statistics related questions. They started laughing and said because you are from maths background. |
| Full name | Koyya Venkata Ravi Teja |
| College/University | IIT Madras |
| Specialization | B.Tech Civil Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Tata Steel |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 18 |
| Designation | Technologist |
| Work Experience Background | Civil & Structural Design |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/venkat-will-not-give-up/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_feed%3B5nZBExv0SROCZKwrx3o%2BJA%3D%3D |
| Application Form | I would recommend to have a copy of filled in application form downloaded as it would be useful in further selection process, after clearing the written exam. One should fill the Position of Responsibilities only if they can produce a relevant certificate. Be careful while filling the work experience duration. |
| Written Exam | I have focused on mainly mathematics part and Reading Comprehension. For Mathematics, I have revised IIT JEE mathematics and practiced questions from previous year IIT JEE(advanced) questions collated chapterwise from several years. I have not taken any test series for PGDBA specifically, I have used past year PGDBA papers as mock tests. I have practiced Reading Comprehension from CAT test series. For the remaining parts too, I have practiced from CAT test series |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | I have used Disha previous year IIT JEE questions chapterwise from 40 Years book for mathematics part. For Reading comprehension, I have followed RC99. |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | 47.2 |
| General profile based questions that were asked | I had an online interview due to Covid. The first question is as expected by me, introducing myself, for which, I have mentioned my academic and work background including the ML related projects, which I have done during my UG, having been prepared to answer any questions related to my ML projects but my first question came from mathematics. The panelist has given me a hypothetical scenario where I have to set up a steel plant abroad. What are the things I have to look for before selecting the place to set up the steel plant. I have mentioned the prominence of abundant water supply for steel plant, Labour laws of that state, availability of cheap labor, transportation system inside the country and export restrictions of the country. The panelist then asked a question on labor laws to which I honestly admitted that I am not much aware of it. |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | As, I belong to civil engineering background and worked in design office, I have not been asked any ML/DL questions |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | As I said earlier, my first question is about probability. The question is an algorithm that returns value one if the point satisfies the circle condition of unit radius for x and y. I was asked to compute the probability of getting one, for which I have computed the probability of areas ( area of circle to overall domain area of x and y). I was asked what is Poisson distribution and asked me to show the general form of Poisson distribution. A follow-up question to the same, where they asked me if there is any similarity between Poisson and Binomial distribution, for which, I have answered as the no of trials increases for a binomial distribution it would become a Poisson distribution. Another follow up question to the same is which is the limiting case? Is it the binomial the limiting case of Poisson or the other way round what is a Singular matrix? |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | Question on Labor Laws, which I couldn’t answer 🙂 |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 25 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 5 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | If you have done any projects related to ML /DL better be prepared with what you have done, because it would project a bad image if you couldn’t answer from the topics which you claimed that you have worked on or know. I have taken mock interview sessions before attending the main interview which was helpful. I have followed the following YouTube channels: JB Statistics : Statistics 3 Blue 1 Brown : Linear alegebra Machine Learning : Statquest |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? |
| Full name | Prashanth Ramshetti |
| College/University | NIT Warangal |
| Specialization | Btech Chemical |
| Year of Graduation | 2019 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Startup(In Agritech 2 Years),BASF(1.5months),Byjus(13Months ) |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 13 |
| Designation | Cofounder,GET,Senior Marketing & Business Development Associate |
| Work Experience Background | Marketing/Advertising;Manufacturing |
| LinkedIn URL | http://linkedin.com/in/prashanth-ramshetti-8a5338140 |
| Application Form | It’s Just basic application form followed previous years blogs wordpress etc |
| Written Exam | I was preparing for CAT for few months. Focused on weak areas in Math & Vocabulary |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | Math basic Engineering and +2 Material used for JEE |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | 54 |
| General profile based questions that were asked | Introduce Yourself, Why Pgdba, Asked 5 Math related Courses in UG. Asked 3 Questions from Linear algebra,Probability,Calculus |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | What all you have applied previously in Analytics Domain,Recent Key developments in Analytical space. |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | Name Discrete and Continuous Probability Distributions,Properties and Applications of the same,gave some instances and built some questions on the same,Gave Polynomial function and asked about Continuing and Differentiability of the same. Asked Question from Multinomial Theorem. 3*3 Matrix Eigen vector and Values built on the same about Factorisation,2 Questions from Sets were asked basic operations etc.. |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | About application of Al& ML in Oil and Gas,Agritech,Edtech as I was into these domains. About startup and my Extra Curricular Activities .I had 2 GIAN Courses in Applied Mathematics asked about experience in the same. Questions related Published paper at National conference on Applied Nonlinear Dynamics (2016). Where do you see yourself in 5 years. |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | About Covid and its Impact On Economy |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 35 mins |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Yes |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 4 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | Take Mocks as many as you can paid it with friends ,Just be confident and carry a smile on face,Answers Should be Point specific without Jargons.Structure of Answer in interview matters rather than Accurate solutions. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? | No |
| Full name | Yerramsetty L N Siddhard |
| College/University | NIT Warangal |
| Specialization | B.Tech Electronics and Communication Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2011 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Analog Devices Inc |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 32 |
| Designation | Design Engineer |
| Work Experience Background | Chip Design |
| LinkedIn URL | |
| Application Form | |
| Written Exam | I started with solving past 4 year papers. With this, i understood the type of questions being asked. I could answer most of the mathematics questions without special preparation as i was in touch with the subject(because of my preparation for civil services exam with Maths optional). So, I focused mainly on topics that i was not in touch with.This included Probability. For this, i referred to “Problems plus in IIT Mathematics” by A Das Gupta. |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | 58.93 |
| General profile based questions that were asked | Why PGDBA? Question Related to UG: What is Nyquist rate? Question Related to Job: What are the benefits and issues related to the scaling down of transistor size? |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | None |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | 1. How many permutations are possible with the word “MISSION� 2. There are 120 chips. These are numbered from 1 to 120. There are some faulty chips among these. Faulty chips are divisible by 2, or are divisible by 5, or are divisible by 7. How many numbers of chips are non-faulty? How? |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | 1. Do you know about National Health Stack? What are the challeges involved in its implementation? 2. Do you know about Mission Karmayogi? How is it going to be implemented? I might have been asked about the above as I mentioned them that i prepared for civil services exam. |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 25 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 4 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | For interview, I learnt Machine learning and some basics of statistics. Head First Statistics is a book that i referred to for learning basic statistics. This will be useful for beginners. For machine learning, I enrolled for Andrew Ng’s machine learning course in Coursera. I gave two mock interviews with AIMonks. Their feedback was useful in the actual interview. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? |
| Full name | Vigneshwaran |
| College/University | COIMBATORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY |
| Specialization | B.E |
| Year of Graduation | 2016 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Accenture, Byju’s |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 36 |
| Designation | Software engineer, Sales representative, Recruitment manager, Sales Development manager |
| Work Experience Background | Software/IT and ITES;Marketing/Advertising |
| LinkedIn URL | |
| Application Form | – |
| Written Exam | Solve previous year question papers and revise 11,12 ncert |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | 43 |
| General profile based questions that were asked | Nil |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | Nil |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | Normal distribution, How to remove noises from data |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | NEP, ARTICLE 377, CAA |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 15 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 5 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | Try to have the flow of interview in your control. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? |
| Full name | Tanav Jain |
| College/University | IIT Kanpur |
| Specialization | BS Economics |
| Year of Graduation | 2019 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | EXL Services |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 5 |
| Designation | Consultant-I |
| Work Experience Background | Analytics;Consulting |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanav-jain-b5a646119/ |
| Application Form | Be honest. |
| Written Exam | Solved 2-3 last year papers. |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | 51.67 |
| General profile based questions that were asked | Short introduction. Some informal discussion about Lockdown and Family. No question related to workex. Related to bachelors: Q: Favourite subject from UG? A: Prob/Stats, Game Theory and Econometrics. Q1: Nash Equilibrium vs Pareto Optimality. (Explained through Prisoner’s Dilemma) Q2: What is Cobb Douglas Production Function? Q3. Meaning of Returns to scale and how to check in the case of Cobb Douglas? Q4: Other production functions where A (total factor productivity) is not constant? Q5: How to calculate GDP in Unorganized Sector? Could not answer Q4 and Q5. |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | NA. |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | Q1: (Very easy probability question towards the beginning of the interview) What is the probability of being selected if each of the 3 panellists toss a coin and you are selected only if each of us gets a Head? Q2: (Discussion around independence of events) Why did you multiply the probabilities? When are the events independent? Q3: What is conditional independence? (Had not heard before but guessed it from the term) Q4: Population vs Sample Variance? Why “n-1” factor in Sample variance? Q5: (Follow up on Q4) Definitions of biased and consistent estimator. Q6: Concept and significance of p-value? Q7: Parametrized function wrt time for drawing (i) circle and (ii) spiral on a Cartesian plain? I was not able to give a concrete answer for Q6 |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | NA |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 20-25 minutes. |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 4 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | Revised basic concepts of Probability and Statistics. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? | Confirmed if I have uploaded the certificates of achievements/extra-curricular activities which were mentioned in the application form. |
| Full name | Madhur Bhat |
| College/University | NITK, Surathkal |
| Specialization | B.Tech ( Electrical and Electronics Engineering) |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Tata Motors Limited |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 13 |
| Designation | Graduate Engineer Trainee |
| Work Experience Background | Manufacturing |
| LinkedIn URL | |
| Application Form | Nothing in Particular |
| Written Exam | As I had prepared for other management entrance exams as well, for the PGDBA test I prepared mainly for the quants section. Practicing problems helped in building confidence. I had focussed on keeping my accuracy as high as possible. |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | I used 11th and 12th RS Aggarwal for preparation. Previous year papers were also useful. I had also taken 5 mocks from IMS. |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | |
| General profile based questions that were asked | Introduce yourself Why PGDBA? Tell 3 Good and Bad things about your previous organization. How would your specialization in undergrad help in this program? What is the previous organization doing on electric vehicles? Why is analytics needed? |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | Do you know what is Markov Model? Do you know Bayes classifer? |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | 1.Identifying whether a particular number added to a prime number would also be prime. 2.Finding number of onto, one-one functions. Articulated the thought process throughout instead of just arriving at the final answer. 3.Problem on Bayes Theorem. Question was to find the probability. I got the calculation wrong and gave the wrong answer. So, I tried to explain the formula clearly for that problem and that helped. 4. Discussion on whether regression is statistics or analytics. |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | Questions on Labour Laws and what its impact was. What exactly does it do? How will it help? |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 45 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 5 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | Sheldon Ross, Inference by Johns Hopkins, Linear Algebra Videos Gilbert Strang, 3Blue1Brown youtube videos, |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? |
| Full name | Avishkar |
| College/University | BITS Pilani |
| Specialization | B.E. Manufacturing Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2019 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Tata Trust |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 7 |
| Designation | District Lead – National Nutrition Mission |
| Work Experience Background | Policy Consulting |
| LinkedIn URL | www.linkedin.com/in/avishkar-gupta-247465135 |
| Application Form | Only write things you can realistically justify in the interview |
| Written Exam | NCERT for quant theory and some good questions from RD Sharma |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | RD Sharma book is good enough |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | 49.06 |
| General profile based questions that were asked | Introduce Yourself, what are your hobbies |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | Give me 2 examples where analytics can be used in your current workplace, What is supervised learning and unsupervised learning, What is the difference between analytics with ML and analytics without ML, How can analytics be used in Manufacturing |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | What are eignevalues and eigenvectors, If trace of a matrix is 7 and determinant is 12, find the Eigenvalues, Why trace is equal to sum of eigenvalues, How do we find eigenvalues of a matrix, Is the function 1/log(mod(x)) continuous, What is Poisson distribution, If in a poisson distribution, P(X=1)=P(X=2), find the mean and expectation, When can we find the inverse of a matrix, What is the value of AA^-1, If a dice was thrown 6 times, find the probability that all outcomes will be unique |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | Recently some public sector banks were merged together. What was the reason behind the same, What do you mean by the term Geopolitics, context behind Korean war and Israeli-Palestinian conflict |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 35 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 5 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | Divide your prep into specific sections – 1. General Mathematical Topics (Calculus, Geometry, Linear Algebra) 2. Stats related topics – Probability distributions, sampling distributions, statistical tests, basics of probability (Bayes theorem, conditional probability etc), ANOVA/MANOVA if time permits 3. Basics of analytics: general concepts such as linear regression, logistic regression, bias vs variance, k nearest neighbour, supervised vs unsupervised (need to go deeper if from analytics background) 4. Profile and general HR : prepare well regarding your work ex, motivation behind pursuing PGDBA (be very clear regarding this), relevance of analytics in your educational background/work ex, some trending gk topics. If possible, take a mock interview series. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? | No |
| Full name | Thomas Preetham |
| College/University | VIT University |
| Specialization | B.Tech Electronics and Communications Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Bank of America, Deloitte |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 15 |
| Designation | Senior Tech Associate, Business Technology Analyst |
| Work Experience Background | Software/IT and ITES;Consulting |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-preetham-nammi-937b58114 |
| Application Form | Just follow the instructions given carefully and if you’re stuck anywhere, contact the concerned team immediately. |
| Written Exam | I was inherently comfortable with quants. So, I concentrated more on verbal part. It depends on what you’re comfortable with. Also, irrespective of that, I think one should spend more time on preparing verbal part because the RCs are getting tougher year after year and they ask for any vocabulary. For para jumbles, the more you practice, the better. While preparing for verbal, make sure you cover the current affairs by reading the Hindu and editorials because that’ll help you for both the exam (vocabulary wise) and the interview because they ask anything under the sun during interviews. Pay equal attention towards LRDI and quants because that’s heavy on scoring. Even if you are not sure about any answer in the verbal part, you should be 100% accurate in LRDI and quants. That’s how you can maximize your score above 130. |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | For Verbal and LRDI, concentrate on CAT or an equivalent material. Quants, prepare from NCERT 11th & 12th and Arihant reference books |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | 53.8 |
| General profile based questions that were asked | 1. Tell us about yourself. 2. Why do you want to get into Analytics? 3. Why do you prefer PGDBA over many other Analytics courses? 4. It is know that PGDBA students get decent packages during placements. Is that why you prefer PGDBA? 5. According to you, what defines the success of a course like PGDBA? |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | None. |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | 1. Can you prove the empirical formula of measures of central tendencies? Ans. The formula is Mode = 3*Median – 2*Mean. It is only an observational result that Karl Pearson concluded after performing a large number of tests on different data. Hence, it has no mathematical proof. 2. What is the difference between local minima and global minima? I could not give a clear answer to that as they were not satisfied with the basic understanding I had about it. 3. What are the difference and the similarity between Standard Normal Distribution and Normal Distribution? Ans. Normal Distribution can have any mean and variance but Standard Normal Distribution has a mean of 0 and variance 1. The Mean, Median and Mode are all same for both distributions. (The entire panel disagreed with my answer but I did not change my answer because I knew it was right) |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | 1. Could you enlighten us about the New Educational Policy of 2020? 2. Why do you think it took so long to bring this reform? |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | Do you have any questions for us? |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 30 – 35 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 4 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | 1. Hindu Paper 2. Undergrad subjects (especially UG Mathematics) 3. High School Mathematics. 4. Articles on Business Analytics 5. Basics of probability and statistics |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? | None. |
| Full name | Rishi Gupta |
| College/University | Sardar Patel Institute of Technology |
| Specialization | Electronics |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | IITian’s Curious Minds |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 27 |
| Designation | Manager and Maths Faculty |
| Work Experience Background | Education |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishi-gupta-a29120106 |
| Application Form | Don’t fill which is not true or you can’t justify. |
| Written Exam | 1. 11th and 12th NCERT 2. JEE Previous year Questions |
| Useful resources for exam preparation (if any) | Any Arihant book |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | |
| General profile based questions that were asked | 1. Tell me something about yourself 2. Why PGDBA 3. Maths Questions on Matrix and Eigen Values/Vectors 4. 10 years goal |
| What technical questions (relevant to Analytics/ML/DS) did the panel ask? | None |
| What Mathematics/Statistics questions did the panel ask? | Matrix Eigenvalues/Vectors |
| General Knowledge or related questions (if any) | Just keep reading basic |
| Any other kind of questions that you would like to share | |
| How long was your interview? (in minutes) | 30 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| How was your overall interview experience? | 4 |
| Tips and resources for Personal Interview | Keep Calm and Smiling |
| Any other interaction post the interview process? |
| Full name | Raj Chauhan |
| College/University | D. J. Sanghvi College of Engineering, Mumbai University |
| Specialization | B. E. Computer Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | EY |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 19 |
| Designation | Analyst, Associate Consultant |
| Work Experience Background | Analytics |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/raj-chauhan-5397b5147 |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Fill details truthfully |
| Tips for Written Exam | Verbal – Solved previous year questions. Reading (articles, op-ed/editorial pieces) LR/DI – Solved previous year questions. Maths – 11th and 12th NCERT, solved all examples (solved and exercises) |
| Resources for exam preparation | |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | 48.8 |
| General profile-based questions asked | Introduce yourself – The interviewers asked me to follow a structure – Academics followed by work experience and ending with hobbies. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | 1. Describe your work experience – I worked as a data analyst in the audit/assurance service line. Explained that audit requires considering each data point, and which was previously being done on a sample basis. 2. What is the typical audit data size, in terms of the number of rows and columns. 3. What tools did you use – I worked with Tableau, Python, and Alteryx. 4. What Statistical tools did you use – Talked about a few projects I had worked on, as the statistical tools varied from project to project. example: One of my projects required applying Benford’s Law, explained what it is. |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | 1a. I mentioned that I was interested in sports, and the mathematics behind it in my introduction. The interviewer asked me to give my opinion on whether the batting average in cricket is a good measure of the batsman’s ‘average’ run-scoring performance, as it does not take into account the number of innings when the batsman remained not out. – Explained that the term given for the measure can be a bit misleading if considered as an average per inning, as per my understanding, it actually is a measure of how many runs a batsman scores before getting dismissed (between two successive dismissals) 1b. The interviewer asked me to then suggest a better metric for measuring the per inning average score by the batsman. – Suggested the use of quartile scores. 1c. Can we give make a rewarding adjustment to the batsman’s score if he remains not out, comparing it with his current average performance? – Each inning is affected by a multitude of factors, rewarding on the basis of just the historical performance may not be the most optimal choice. If a reward score is given, should also penalize the batsman for getting out before his average score. 2. Give an example of numbers that have the same mean and standard deviation. – (0, 0, 0, …) will have the standard deviation 0 and mean 0. The interviewer then asked for a non-trivial solution and asked whether (2, 0) will satisfy the given condition. 3. Describe hypothesis testing, what is significance level. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | As I was from Mumbai, the interviewer asked me to explain the reasons behind farmer suicides in Maharashtra. |
| Any other kind of questions | 1. What is Assurance/Audit – Talked about the etymology of the word audit, that it meant ‘to listen’. Traditionally audit reports were given orally to an audience. 2a. I had mentioned reading as a hobby. The interviewers asked me about the last book that I had read, and what genres I was interested in. – I liked reading Fantasy, briefly described a few of my favorite fantasy books. 2b. I had also mentioned Philosophy as a genre I was interested in, the interviewer asked me how that interest was developed and what book was I currently reading. – Cognitive bias was a topic I was interested in, and how that affected rational thinking. The philosophers devoted their lives thinking and reading about their perspectives may help to improve rational thinking. |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 30 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | I had prepared statistics, and engineering mathematics from a few online articles and YouTube videos. I had created a detailed description of all the projects that I had worked on at my job. Prepared and practiced my introduction and answer to why PGDBA. |
| Full name | Pranjal Sharma |
| College/University | BITS Pilani |
| Specialization | B.E(Hons) Chemical |
| Year of Graduation | 2017 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Credit Suisse, Apollo Global Management,llc |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 36 month |
| Designation | Associate |
| Work Experience Background | BFSI/Finance |
| LinkedIn URL | |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Make sure you don’t do any mistake this might lead to problem later. |
| Tips for Written Exam | I have taken test series from IMS they provide good formula sheet which is sufficient to get started to solve pgdba paper. Cover chapters from ncert do atleast example. Solve previous year and take some test-series. |
| Resources for exam preparation | |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) (Optional) | 52 |
| General profile-based questions asked | They asked me to give my introduction and I answered about myself and my job profile. I also mentioned about my hobby. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | Because my background is from Risk Management they asked me about Var(value at risk), distribution. How a credit default is calculated. |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | They asked me about poison distribution, linear regression, central limit theorem. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | We had discussion on the NPA side they asked me how can we reduce NPA for a bank. Again this question came because of my relevant work profile. So expect some gk question based in your profile. |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 25-30 minutes |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Prepare basics of stats and mathematics . If you have work experience be thorough with what you do. |
| Full name | Sidhant Bansal |
| College/University | Punjab Engineering College (Deemed to be University), Chandigarh |
| Specialization | B. Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2019 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Gemini Solutions Pvt. Ltd., Gurugram, Haryana |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 7.5 |
| Designation | Software Engineer – L1 |
| Work Experience Background | Software/IT and ITES |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/sbansal-96 |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Besides mentioning the Achievements, provide a brief description of the same. Prefer splitting the Achievements by Category [Academic (Scholarships & Accolades), Technical (Course Certifications), Extra-Curriculuar, Work Experience Related, Volunteer Work Related). Hobbies should be something you are really passionate it. The Interviewers are sure to ask about them |
| Tips for Written Exam | NCERT Class 11 and 12 are a must, especially the Chapters related to Calculus, Linear Algebra (Matrices & Determinants), Trignometric Identities & Equations, Conic Sections, Algebra (Permutations & Combinations, Binomial Theorem, Sequences and Series) and Common Expansions (power(e,x), Sin(x), Cos(x), ArcTan(x), log(1+x) etc.) |
| Resources for exam preparation | NCERT Class 11 & 12. |
| Pre-Interview Composite Score (out of 60) (Optional) | 47.4 (Don’t be worried if your Composite Score is a little low (even if you are a GEM), Interview is very important. |
| General profile-based questions asked | Incidently, I was not asked for Introduction. I was however asked why I was interested in the Program, which I related to my interest in Applications of Business Analytics to the fields I was interested in, (Cartography, BFSI & Healthcare). besides my interest in Statistics and Inference. I was not asked any questions related to my Core Undergraduate Courses. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | Most of my Interview was centric to Mathematics related Courses (Graduate Level Statistics, Linear Algebra, Class XII Level Calculus (mainly Limits), Class XII Level Linear Programming Problems). I was however prepared for Machine Learning (Andrew Ng’s Course in Machine Learning is a good starting point), SQL, Data Structures, Algorithms and Graph Theory (due to my Work Experience as a Software Engineer) |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Statistics: Properties of PDF, f(x) for Geometric Distribution, Memoryless Property, Moment Generating Functions (and by Extension Characterstic Functions), Quasi-Random Variables [Had No Clue Regarding this during the Interview], Jacobi Method for Calculating the Probability Distributions for Functions of Random Variables, Unbiased Estimators (E(theta cap) = theta), Cramer Rao Lower Bound for Variance) Linear Algebra: Idea of Linear Transformations, Linearity Property, Matrix as a Linear Transformation, Projection as a Linear Transformation from RXRXR to RXR Calculus (Class XII): Limit for Sin(x)/x as x tends to Infinitly, Mathematical Definition of Continuity Linear Programming Problems (Class XII): Basic Definitions – Objective Function, Constraints, Feasible Regions, Feasible Solutions, Basic Variables, Bounded and Unbounded Polygons, Conditions for Unbounded Solutions [No Maximum/ Minimum] and No Solutions [Constraints with Conflicting Requirements] for Linear Programming Problems, Introduction to Simplex Method |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Since I was previously a Student and Intern in Taiwan (2017-18) and China (2018) and had attended a Volunteer Work related Conference in Bangladesh recently (2019), most of my General Awareness Questions were centric to History and Geography (but not Politics) of these Countries. China-Centric: Local Language spoken in Guangdong and Guangxi, Administrative Divisions of China (Provinces, Autonomous Regions, Special Administrative Regions, Directly Administered Municipalities), Once-China Policy, Political Parties of China and Taiwan (CCP, KMT, DPP) Bangladesh-Centric: Year of Independence of Bangladesh (1971), Trains to Bangaldesh (Bandhan & Maitree Express), the 2015 Land Boundary Agreement (& the Concept of Enclaves & Exclaves), Political Parties (BAL, BNP) Others: Capital of Pakistan prior to Independence (Karachi) |
| Any other kind of questions | Be sure to have a post interview conversation with the panelists in the form of a question (either Technical/ Non-Technical) or in the form of a remark, to close the interview on a good note. [For me, it was Discussion of the Attitude on Indian Students towards Programs in Business Analytics and Narration of a few lines of Amar Sonar Bangla by Rabindranath Tagore to depict my interest in Bengali Language and Culture.] |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 45 [In retrospect, it was a rather long, but enjoyable interview] |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Statistics: Erwin Krezig, Hines and Montegomery (if time permits) Linear Algebra: Erwin Krezig, Strang, 3B1B (Youtube) Optimization & Graph Theory: Erwin Krezig Numerical Methods: Erwin Kreyzig Machine Learning: Andrew Ng’s Course in ML (Coursera) Calculus: NPTEL (Courses in Engineering Mathematics by Dr. Jitender Kumar – IITKGP) |
| Any other interaction post the interview process | Discussion of the Attitude on Indian Students towards Programs in Business Analytics and Narration of a few lines of Amar Sonar Bangla by Rabindranath Tagore to depict my interest in Bengali Language and Culture. |
| Full name | Nisarg Harshadkumar Raval |
| College/University | NIT Surat |
| Specialization | B.Tech Mechanical Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2016 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | J K Paper Ltd, |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 49 |
| Designation | Senior Engineer |
| Work Experience Background | Manufacturing |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/nisarg-raval-15055113a |
| Tips to fill Application Form | 1. Be honest while filling application form 2. Focus on your strengths |
| Tips for Written Exam | 1. Gone through 11-12 mathematics ncrt book (except vector algebra) 2. I haven’t prepared for DI-LR as I had strong grip on DI-LR 3. For Verbal – Practiced questions based on previous years papers from various open platform |
| Resources for exam preparation | |
| General profile-based questions asked | 1. Questions on businesses of JK Group ( As I worked in JK Paper Ltd.) 2. Questions on roles and responsibilities on woek-ex |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | NA |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | 1. In the sample of 12 students 7 has passed the examination, what is the probability of passing 10 students? 2. There are 12 balls ( 4 Red, 4 Blue and 4 Yellow). What is the number of Minimum balls to be withdrawn so that at least one ball of each colour you have? |
| General Knowledge or related questions | 1. What are your views on current issues – 1) Sushant Singh Rajput – Riya controversy and 2) Abrogation of article 370 and 35a 2. Who is governor of RBI |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 20 min approx. |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 3 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | 1. Be honest 2. Prepare introduction part very well so that you can answer counter questions based on your profile and introduction effectively 3. Practice in front of mirror – helps in improving body language and confidence |
| Full name | Saurabh Choudhary |
| College/University | IIT Gandhinagar |
| Specialization | B. Tech Civil Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2019 |
| Work Experience | Fresher |
| Organization(Name) | |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | |
| Designation | |
| Work Experience Background | |
| LinkedIn URL | |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Don’t write about stuff you don’t know. |
| Tips for Written Exam | Past year papers |
| Resources for exam preparation | |
| General profile-based questions asked | None |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | None |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Que:- Applications of Mathematics. Ans:- Gave 5 daily applications of mathematics (Rainfall estimation, etc.) Que:- Calculate space mean speed of vehicle. Que:- Find maxima and minima of a function. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Asked about Dassault Rafale Asked about football |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 20 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Maybe |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Engineering Mathematics |
| Full name | RAJEEV KRISHNA S |
| College/University | IIT MADRAS |
| Specialization | BTECH AEROSPACE ENGINEERING |
| Year of Graduation | 2019 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | EXL |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 5 MONTHS |
| Designation | CONSULTANT 1 |
| Work Experience Background | Analytics |
| LinkedIn URL | |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Make sure all the personal details are filled accurately. Plan well in advance about the center for examination and interview. Experience (in months should be filled properly) |
| Tips for Written Exam | 1)NCERT books 11th and 12th (thoroughly) 2)Verbal and DILR (Arun Sharma) 3)Revise JEE Mains topics for higher mathematics. |
| Resources for exam preparation | 1)NCERT BOOKS 2)ERWIN KREYZIG(HIGHER MATHEMATICS) 3)ARUN SHARMA(DILR ,VERBAL) |
| General profile-based questions asked | 1)What is the meaning of the initials in your name? 2)Why pgdba? |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | 1)Application of analytics in a Supermarket? 2)Sharing of sensitive data by facebook(data security issues) 3)Text recognition algorithms to detect hate speech |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | 1)square of 85? Square of any two digit number ending with 5 (general formula). How to generalize the formula to more than 2 digits? 2)cluster analysis(variance, bias etc) |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Article on facebook (political news- BJP) |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 25 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | 1)Be thorough with general knowledge. Especially with recent news. 2)Be calm and confident. 3)Even if you don’t know the answer don’t panic. Just start with your line of thought. The interviewers will help you along the way. |
| Full name | Ayaz Lakhani |
| College/University | IIT Gandhinagar |
| Specialization | B.Tech Mechanical |
| Year of Graduation | 2019 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | JSW |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 6 |
| Designation | In-house consultant |
| Work Experience Background | Manufacturing |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayaz-lakhani-802832168 |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Be precise, fill out relevant and recent achievements. |
| Tips for Written Exam | 2-3 Mocks are more than enough. |
| Resources for exam preparation | Mocks from coaching institutes |
| Pre-Interview Composite Score (Out of 60) (Optional) | 51.2 |
| General profile-based questions asked | None |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | Basic probability questions, Bayes theorem. |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Derivation of multinomial, Composite integrals (+2 level). Basic combinatorics. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Alot of GK was asked, especially mythological one. ( I had mentioned quizzing in my extra curriculars) |
| Any other kind of questions | Basic current affairs regarding stock markets, merger and acquisitions, etc. |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 20-25. |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Get basic probability and statistics sorted out. Have an idea about the scope of this course. Knowing basic AI/ML stuff is not a a pre requisite but it is always good to know about it. |
| Full name | Sumit Kumar |
| College/University | IIT Kharagpur |
| Specialization | Mechanical Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2015 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Axis My India, FIITJEE Limited, D.Y Patil Institute, IItian’s Pace |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 43 |
| Designation | Management Trainee, Faculty |
| Work Experience Background | Education |
| LinkedIn URL | |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Fill the necessary details carefully. It is very crucial at the time of your interview. Avoid filling unnecessary and false information |
| Tips for Written Exam | I had teaching experience of over 3 years for IITJEE Mathematics, so Mathematics and DI were not a burden for me. I focused more on the verbal part: solved Comprehensions, Para-jumbles, word meaning, etc., from Arun Sharma’s book. |
| Resources for exam preparation | Jee Main Question Bank and Arun Sharma Book |
| General profile-based questions asked | 1. Please give a brief introduction of yourself? 2. Why do you want to leave your current job? 3. Why have you switched 4 companies in 4 years |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | 1. Explain one case where govenment can be benefitted from the application of AI/ML in Education Domain |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | 1. What is Variance? Give an example and explain intuitively? 2. What is skewness? 3. What are the types of skewness. Draw the diagram and show the Mean, Median, Mode in each case. 4. What is Central Limit Theorem? Does it follow for median as well? 5. Explain the condition for three linear equations in 3 variables to have no solution, unique solution and infinite solutions. 6. Explain the above case geometrically |
| General Knowledge or related questions | 1. When did Bihar bifurcated 2. On what basis states get bifurcated? 3. In the near future, do you think that any state will be bifurcated |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 25-30 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Work on your profile. Prepared the list of questions that can be asked from your profile and try to answer them. If you are from mathematics background then you should get your fundamentals strong |
| Full name | PARTH TYAGI |
| College/University | IIT DELHI |
| Specialization | BTECH CIVIL |
| Year of Graduation | 2015 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | EXL |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | ~40 |
| Designation | SENIOR CONSULTANT |
| Work Experience Background | Analytics |
| LinkedIn URL | |
| Tips to fill Application Form | write acccurately, don’t inflate things |
| Tips for Written Exam | follow IIT maths for quant. |
| Resources for exam preparation | |
| General profile-based questions asked | Introduce yourself, Why PGDBA |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | Analytics related questions , game theory based question and optimization questions (my background was in analytics) |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | |
| General Knowledge or related questions | NA |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | ~30 mins |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | prepare the things that you have written in the application form properly |
| Full name | Abhinav Ranjan |
| College/University | IIT Kanpur |
| Specialization | BT MT Dual Degree (Mechanical Engg) |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | ITC Limited |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 18 |
| Designation | Asst. Project Manager |
| Work Experience Background | FMCG |
| LinkedIn URL | |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Keep the content crisp & precise and fill it carefully. |
| Tips for Written Exam | For quant, solved previous years JEE Advance paper ( only for topics mentioned in exam syllabus). Gave mock tests and other online available test series for practicing VARC and LRDI. |
| Resources for exam preparation | |
| General profile-based questions asked | Questions related to work-ex like explaining the factory operations and marketing were asked. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | Central Limit Theorem and its assumptions |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Questions based on differentiability of functions. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Who will win the US elections? |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 20-25 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Go through PGDBA blog to get an understanding of what sort of questions were asked previously. Sometimes, interviewer do ask about your favorite subject/topics and then they ask questions from that. So prepare them well. |
| Full name | Saurav Rajput |
| College/University | IIT Delhi |
| Specialization | B.Tech Civil Engg. |
| Year of Graduation | 2017 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Startup |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 24 |
| Designation | Founder and CEO |
| Work Experience Background | Consulting |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/sauravrajput |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Be honest |
| Tips for Written Exam | Use any standard JEE textbook for preparing quant. I used Cengage. For Cengage, go through the theory part completely, try to attempt the solved question given in between along with the exercises. If you are comfortable with these questions then you can ignore the exercises at the end of each chapter. This will be more than enough to secure 100% in quant. 1 month prior the exam, join any telegram group in which people posts questions daily. This will help you immensely. For LR-DI-Verbal, use any standard CAT material. The level of PGDBA will be lower than it. In the last month try to practice at least 1 passage, 1 problem set of LR and DI each everyday. Strategy – Focus on obtaining 35 questions of quant, LR, DI correct (easily attainable). If you can secure marks around 130/150, there will be less dependency on interview marks (very random) and you will have great chances. |
| Resources for exam preparation | |
| Pre-Interview Composite Score (Out of 60) (Optional) | 54.67 |
| General profile-based questions asked | 1) Introduce yourself. 2) A lot of questions regarding my work ex. Around 70% of my interview time went on the questions around my startup journey and why this course and not MBA. Note – If you have had your own venture, you can’t mess. You ned to be clear about every aspect of it. You should have a good story which should start from your college life to your startup, then very swiftly, to PGDBA. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | None |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | 1) 2 questions from set-subset combination theory. (If you have a set of n elements , how many subsets you can make and all). 2) 2 questions from number theory. (if you have 2 numbers(different cases, both are odd etc.) can their cube difference be odd/even) |
| General Knowledge or related questions | 1) Name any three famous civil engineering structures present in India. Ans – Howrah Bridge, Sardar Sarovar Dam, Bhakra Nangal dam. |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 45 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Yes |
| Overall Interview Experience | 3 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | 1) Watch as many videos of 3 blue 1 brown YouTube channel you can watch. (Linear algebra and calculus must) 2) If you have time do Andrew NG course from Coursera(free). It will give you a brief flavour of ML and you will be familiar with the common terminologies. 3) You should be well equipped with the concepts of PnC and Probability. |
| Full name | Sudarshan Kumar |
| College/University | IIT Kharagpur |
| Specialization | B.Tech. (Civil Engineering) |
| Year of Graduation | 2017 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Coal India Limited |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 27 |
| Designation | Management Trainee |
| Work Experience Background | Coal Production |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/sudarshan-kumar-087590b9 |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Try filling the interview application form honestly. Mention only those hobbies which you follow, not just for the sake of it. |
| Tips for Written Exam | I prepared Maths section of the PGDBA from Bansal study materials for JEE(only those topics which are in PGDBA syllabus) which are available on the internet for free. For the Verbal part, I gave IMS mock test and if you have prepared for CAT or any other MBA entrance exams, you need not prepare anything extra for PGDBA. Try giving at least couple of mocks before the exam for better preparation. |
| Resources for exam preparation | |
| General profile-based questions asked | I was asked to introduce myself covering my school background and work experience. I was also asked why I wanted to join PGDBA after leaving a secured high paying PSU job. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | Difference between AI and ML? Do you follow any magazine or news on analytics? Why do you want to switch to analytics despite being a Civil Engineer? |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Give an example of Normal Distribution. Explain Normal Distribution and some follow up question on variance of Normal Distribution. What are the ways of parameter estimation? Explain Maximum Likelihood estimation. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Why china is behaving aggressively these days? Which county comes 2nd and 3rd in terms of size of economy? What is Hong Kong issue (related to protest against China in Hong Kong recently)? Which places have you lived and which did you like the most? Give a comparative analysis on the places you have lived so far(panel was expecting answer in terms of economic activities). |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | Around 25 minutes |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Prepare Statistics and Probability as well as brush up Current Affairs |
| Full name | Sisir Kumar Das |
| College/University | IIT Kharagpur MTech , IIT Kanpur BTech |
| Specialization | Mechanical Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2007 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | IBM, Deloitte, World Bank Group, Trident , Capgemini , Shell, |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 180 |
| Designation | Officer Engineering, Program Manager , General Manager (GM) |
| Work Experience Background | Software/IT and ITES;Consulting |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/sisir-das-5190b124 |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Keep simple . Follow the instruction. |
| Tips for Written Exam | I revise my IIT entrance preparation Maths and for other part I followed one CAT material |
| Resources for exam preparation | |
| General profile-based questions asked | Related my work experience and related interest in PGDBA |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | Related co-relation |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Matrix , Rank of Matrix |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Related current event , China -India relation and financial impact |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 35 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Be patient to hear exact question and share your views on that . If you don’t know , say it immediately. |
| Full name | Abdul Subur Momin |
| College/University | IIT(ISM) Dhanbad |
| Specialization | B.Tech Electronics and Instrumentation |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | L&T(Smart world and communications) |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 18 Months |
| Designation | GET, Se.Engineer |
| Work Experience Background | Software/IT and ITES |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/subur-momin |
| Tips to fill Application Form | It is pretty straightforward, make sure to fill it correctly |
| Tips for Written Exam | NA |
| Resources for exam preparation | NCERT 12 should be done thoroughly, For very basic statistical concepts you can refer to makemeanalyst.com, Statistics and Probability from Khan Academy( there are excellent video tutorials too), Also focus on current affairs and refer some static GK book |
| General profile-based questions asked | Why PGDBA, why not MBA, why not first job experience, questions on work ex like: your roles, technologies on which I worked, a recent innovation in the field and any implementation of analytics in the field. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | What is Linear regression, Analytics used in workex, smart elements, AI in camera |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Some graphs of complex questions, thorough understanding of summary measures (mean, median, mode, IQR etc), different types of graphs used for different types of variables |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Favorite MP, why, question on formation of cyclone, related to hometown, some questions related to RBI policy |
| Any other kind of questions | |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | Around 25 minutes |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Resources are shared above, for a tip I would suggest to go through your CV/ application form thoroughly because it is filled by you and you should be able to justify each and every point written in it. |
| Full name | Hitesh Kashyap |
| College/University | National Institute of Technology Delhi |
| Specialization | B.Tech. in Electronics and Communication Engg |
| Year of Graduation | 2017 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Capgemini, WeExcel |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 32 months |
| Designation | Sr. Software Engineer, Digital Marketing Executive |
| Work Experience Background | Software/IT and ITES;Marketing/Advertising |
| LinkedIn URL | www.linkedin.com/in/hitesh-kashyap |
| Tips to fill Application Form | There were two sections: Extracurricular section: Highlight any competitions you have won, olympiads or if you have organized any events or so. If you do not have any such achievements, you can highlight some other actively that you pursue actively in your free time. Make sure you have enough knowledge to back your points. Hobbies section: In this section, mention any hobby that you pursue in your free time. It could be like reading books, watching movies (do have knowledge about the genre and directors), playing any musical instrument, playing any outdoor game discussing political issues, solving SUDOKU, drawing, painting, dancing or anything on which you have sufficient knowledge. |
| Tips for Written Exam | I prepared for CAT. So, DILR and VARC of CAT level was sufficient for me. For DILR, I practiced AIMCATs and SIMCATs of previous years – the questions are generally not very hard of this section. For VARC, I solved RC100 of IMS, also went through word power made easy book. It is really helpful to understand few words structure. For Math section, I referred to Unacademy’s Video lectures of JEE level for concept clarity and solved some questions given at the end of the videos. Mostly revisiting of class 11th and 12th concepts is quintessential to master this section. Practice JEE level questions if you have sufficient time. Previous year question papers are must for all 3 sections. I solved their DILR and Math questions. Mostly, the pattern and topics are same every year. |
| Resources for exam preparation | Hand Written Short Notes for Quant – https://drive.google.com/file/d/17PGlFtbtGPINRlF_hsTop1XiI5CPmZeX/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y8wSeYMXuXl4sQ7pJbjHGLDd-oQsrtEw/view?usp=sharing |
| General profile based questions asked | It was Online Video Call Interview. They started with -Introduce Yourself. Why did you leave your job? I left to pursue an MBA and was pursuing it at the time of this interview. Why do you want to join PGDBA leaving MBA? What do you know about PGDBA? Do you have any State or National level achievements? (No ques on UG Subject) |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | No question on technical stuff. |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Q1. You have 10 Red, 30 Blue and 60 Green Candies, you observe the candies in each round and eat one candy from the lot having the highest no. of candies. Which is the candy that you eat in 92nd round? Q2. 3 nos are given : -50,50 and 100. What is the arithmetic mean and what is the geometric mean? |
| General Knowledge or related questions | 1. What is NGT act? Ans. I don’t know sir. 2. What is the difference between insolvency and bankruptcy? Ans. Can I take few seconds to think? Interviewer: Yes. Me: (after some time) I don’t know Interviewer: Any guess? Me: Answered something on the lines that bankruptcy is worse than insolvency. |
| Any other kind of questions | Q. Name any 5 subjects name taught in this course. Q. They asked about the audio and video quality of the video call. (was asked to type in the chat box) |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 20 minutes |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Brush through your own profile, know what is taught in the course, give logical explanation to mathematical and reasoning questions and read about some general knowledge facts, try to read a newspaper daily (GK ques are unpredictable – do not stress about them much). Ask your mentors what to read and what to follow for interview preparation. Although, I did not prepare specially for the interview. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process | No. |
| Full name | Shashwat Shubham Mohanta |
| College/University | IIT Guwahati |
| Specialization | B.Tech Civil Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2017 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Cognizant Technology Solutions |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 29 |
| Designation | Associate – Projects |
| Work Experience Background | Analytics |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/shashwat-mohanta-383b041b8/ |
| Tips to fill Application Form | We were not asked to fill up a separate application form for the interview. The application form for the written test had sections to mention about the extracurricular activities, achievements and hobbies. |
| Tips for Written Exam | VARC: The level was somewhat similar to CAT and other MBA entrance exams. One can practice from previous year cat materials or something related to that and it will be enough. There would be some para jumbles and other verbal type questions too. Plus there are no TITA type questions. DILR: It’s the easiest section in PGDBA. Almost everyone scores full here. You can check previous year PGDBA papers and you will get to know about it. If you still feel that you need practice then you can practice the very basic questions from cat sample papers. QUANT: Here one has to put a little more effort. It includes topics such as calculus, limits, continuity, conic section etc. One can say it contains almost all topics of 11th and 12th. For this one has to revise NCERT books of both 11th and 12th. Also, if one has time then he/she can practice questions from RD Sharma Objective Mathematics . This will be enough. |
| General profile based questions asked | I was directly asked to say about my work experience and some follow up questions on that, e.g. I was asked a question on SEO. And some general questions like “if you are not selected then what would you do”. No questions on UG subjects. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | No technical questions were asked on Analytics/ML/DS |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | I was given a trigonometric expression and was told to find its minimum value. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | I was asked about Covid-19 vaccines and how analytics has made present vaccines different from earlier vaccines. |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 20-25 minutes |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | I went through the interview experience of the previous batches and accordingly made a strategy. One can revise statics and linear algebra from youtube channels. https://www.youtube.com/user/joshstarmer https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw At the end it matters how you present your ideas. So keep calm and think before you speak. |
| Full name | S Hemanth Kumar |
| College/University | NIT Trichy |
| Specialization | B.Tech ECE |
| Year of Graduation | 2016 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | CitiGroup |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 40 |
| Designation | Technical Analyst |
| Work Experience Background | BFSI/Finance |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/hemanthkumarsankarapu/ |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Be cautious on extracurricular and co-curricular activities that you mention |
| Tips for Written Exam | More focus on Mathematics section and aimed for a score of 120+. Verbal, DILR comes handy of you have prepared for CAT earlier. Since we have ample time in this exam (3hrs for 50question), ensure to go through all topics mentioned in the Math Syllabus. Prepare a revision note simultaneously which will be useful during interview preparation |
| Resources for exam preparation | Subscribe to any mock test series; Youtube or Nptel lectures to understand math concepts |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | 51.3 |
| General profile based questions asked | Introduce yourself, Follow-up on my extra-curricular activities Asked to choose any mathematics subject (Be prepared with one subject) |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | Basics of Hypothesis testing, applications |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | -Probability of getting prime number when two dice are rolled – Probability of drawing two white balls without replacement out of 8 Black and 6 White balls -What is conditional probability? What will it be in case events are independent? -How does Gaussian random generator work? – Normal distribution, follow up questions on it -Hypothesis testing, p-value, errors |
| General Knowledge or related questions | How my employer company is doing. About the CEO and his initiatives Why Kodak ran out of business? |
| Any other kind of questions | Work related – difference between website and web application |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 20 minutes |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Be thorough with Maths Concepts and decide your subject beforehand |
| Full name | Abhishek Bansal |
| College/University | IIT Kanpur |
| Specialization | B.Tech Chemical Engineering (Minor in Functional Materials) |
| Year of Graduation | 2015 |
| Organization(Name) | Reliance Industries Limited, Propellum Infotech Ltd |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 9 |
| Designation | Graduate Engineering Trainee, Assistant Manager: Content |
| Work Experience Background | Software/IT and ITES;Manufacturing |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhishek-bansal-b769a155/ |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Just stick to the facts. Avoid mentioning big buzz words like AI, Big Data etc if you do not actually have in depth knowledge of them. |
| Tips for Written Exam | I was working in an e-learning start-up at the time of giving the written exam. Before that, I had prepared for the Civil Services exam with Mathematics as my optional subject. So I was fairly conversant with the 12th level mathematics that is tested in the entrance exam. UPSC preparation had also helped expand my vocabulary. Differentiating between correct and seemingly correct English was a subconscious process for me, which helped a lot in the verbal section. So, my preparation before the exam consisted of solving the previous years’ papers and revising some trigonometric identities. Nonetheless, I ended up forgetting those identities in the exam and had to derive them from scratch. Apart from the wisdom to solve the NCERT 11th and 12th maths books, my advice to aspirants is that you should solve all the previous years’ papers diligently on your own even if it takes a lot of time. This way, the solution will be your own and your mind will more easily embrace and remember it. The process will reward you much more than solving any test series. Refer to the internet for detailed solutions only after you have exhausted all your efforts. For those candidates with little background in competitive exams like JEE, GATE, etc., solving a few practice questions of the ISI Tomato exam might be very useful. Try to memorise all the trigonometric identities. Revise all the special cases of permutation and combination and probability problems taught at the 12th level. If you solve past years’ papers, you would realise that most of the difficult questions of the Mathematics part revolve around these topics. The rest are largely basic algebra and geometry questions. Some practice of basic statistics concepts like histograms, pie charts, frequency, central tendency, variance, etc. is also necessary along with the interpretation of graphs. In the verbal section, paragraph-based questions are always very tricky and the most common source of negative marks. So attempt them with caution and practise a lot of such examples. |
| Resources for exam preparation | https://www.ctanujit.org/isi-bstat-bmath-exam.html |
| General profile based questions asked | No question asked on my general profile |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | No Analytics/ML/DS question asked |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | The last panelist (I presume that he was from ISI) asked which topic of statistics was I most comfortable with. I replied in all honesty that I have zero background in statistics, not even at the UG level. Then I told him that I felt strong enough in Calculus and computational methods as far as mathematics is concerned. So, I was tested on the fundamentals of calculus. I was asked to definite continuity, distinguish it from differentiability and then give examples of functions that are continuous but not-differentiable and vice-versa. I was tested on differentiability of some functions posed by the panelist. In the end, he asked me to compute the integral of the greatest integer function from 1 to 10 without using any paper/pen/calculator. All questions were framed as a natural corollary to one another. There was a hint dropped when I was stuck in the middle of a question. There was however not much time given to think before responding. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | One panelist asked me questions entirely on global economics. I was asked about Brexit, its impact on India, WTO, special initiatives to promote manufacturing in India by the Govt., economic soundness of the recent decision to raise import duty on a lot of technical goods. There were a lot of questions one after another around the common area spanned by these topics. |
| Any other kind of questions | My interview started with the first panelist straight away asking me why does a ship not sink even though it is so large. How does a yacht capsize? What are the types and directions of friction acting on 2 wheels of a bicycle? and so on. All the questions were from concepts involving class 12th level physics. I was found wanting in conceptual clarity in these topics. |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 22 mins |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Practise speaking impromptu in front of the mirror. Improve your articulation. Instantaneous conversion of our thoughts into the most meaningful words is a skill that comes only with experience. Do not mention anything in your form which you cannot defend. Be honest with the panel and do not even think for a second that you can fool them by over-selling yourself. |
| Full name | Himanshu Mishra |
| College/University | NIT Bhopal |
| Specialization | B.Tech Electrical Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2016 |
| Organization(Name) | ALSTOM |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 39 |
| Designation | Design Engineer |
| Work Experience Background | Manufacturing |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Fill the form very well. Give ample amount of time to study the fields and highlight your achievements from all the areas. |
| Tips for Written Exam | Be well versed with the basics of +2 level Mathematics. Practice enough to maximise your scores in this section. Refer any standard book for it and try to cover all the concepts. VA section is a bit tricky so practice a lot of RCs. |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | 52 |
| General profile based questions asked | 1. Tell me about yourself. 2. Why PGDBA? 3. Why do you want to move into analytics after working for almost 3 years in core Manufacturing sector? |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | I was asked to explain the concept of heteroscedasticity and multicollinearity. Post this there was a discussion on regression analysis. |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | 1. Define the basis of a space and was asked to intuitively explain Eigen values of a matrix. 2. Few basic questions on PnC and polynomials. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Explain the government policies and steps taken regarding how to handle the economic crisis post COVID lockdown? |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 20 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Cover the Statistics and Probability concepts really well. In case you are a fresher brush up your UG subjects too. Keep an open approach towards solving maths questions, your way of approaching the problem is what matters the most. You should also cover PnC concepts and some basic Linear Algebra. But all said you can’t afford to miss out on current affairs and general basic economics concepts. You will be asked questions about your job role if you are experienced. Be confident and stay true to yourself, you will ace the interview. |
| Full name | Utkarsh Yadav |
| College/University | IIT Kanpur |
| Specialization | B.Tech Civil Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2016 |
| Organization(Name) | Citi |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 50 |
| Designation | Application Developer |
| Work Experience Background | Software/IT and ITES;BFSI/Finance |
| LinkedIn URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/utkarsh-yadav-96255384/ |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Fill the application form carefully as it is used during interviews. Fill the required education, extracurriculars and work experience related details. |
| Tips for Written Exam | For Verbal Ability, Logical Reasoning, Data interpretation and visualization the preparation would be similar to any management aptitude test. For Quantitative aptitude section use class 11th/12th NCERT books and solve previous year PGDBA exam questions. |
| Resources for exam preparation | Mathematics: https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy https://brilliant.org/ |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | 52.6 |
| General profile based questions asked | You have 4 years of work experience, why do you want to join PGDBA ? Why not MBA? |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | None |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | A mathematical puzzle on combinatorics was asked. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Who is your favorite female Chief Minister. Who is your favorite Female CEO and why? Questions on macroeconomics were asked. How do Central banks work? Role of RBI. Concept of Money supply and inflation rates. What the Government and Central banks are doing to tackle the covid crisis. How Central banks can make income? Why does the central bank reduce the repo rate? |
| Any other kind of questions | What are the extra curricular activities you have done? Have you won any awards? |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 30 minutes |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Be prepared to answer why you want to join this course and whether you are really interested in this field. Go through the probability and statistics concepts. Maths and Statistics channels: https://www.youtube.com/user/jbstatistics https://www.youtube.com/user/joshstarmer https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw |
| Full name | Gudi Jyothi Krishna |
| College/University | JNTU, Anantapur. |
| Specialization | B.tech Mechanical |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 |
| Organization(Name) | Varroc Engineering Ltd |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 11 months |
| Designation | Graduate engineer trainee |
| Work Experience Background | Manufacturing |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Be careful while filling your hobbies. Don’t put it anything which you don’t. |
| Tips for Written Exam | It’s an iterative process. First go through the syllabus mainly Ncert. And YouTube for other topics. Make a proper notes while reading. It helps a lot while understanding. Derive everything if you can’t go through the proof and then try it yourself. Because many doubts arise when you do the proof. Clarify them. Then test yourself by doing problems and mocks if possible. Identify failure areas. Concentrate on them. For verbal section a great lot of material is available from institutes teaching for CAT. I feel the toughness of Verbal is increasing year by year. So a strong prep in that area differentiates you from other aspirants. If you have a study partner then it will be so much easy. But choose your partner wisely because if your partner is not motivated, it may affect your motivation too. Take plenty of mocks before exam. The mocks in which you underperform teaches you more than where your performance is great. If you feel that your paper is tough then use that opportunity to practice being level headed in face of adverse conditions while answering the paper. Choose your questions logically. The universe will be on your side. |
| Resources for exam preparation | Combinatorics on the YouTube channel math quest. Blackpenredpen, numberphile, 3blue1brown are all amazing channel to understand concepts and methods of solving problems. Don’t forget khan Academy. |
| General profile based questions asked | Where did you work? What’s the cost of a engine in an automobile? Problems you faced at work? Extension questions to my answers |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | None actually. |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | The first panalist asked me to solve a problem I tried and I couldn’t. I politely told the interviewer that I was not getting it. The panalist tried encouraging me to solve it I tried for a while but couldn’t so I told him that I didn’t want waste the time dwelling on that single problem. He said fine my work is done and passed on to the next panalist. I was expecting another problem from him but his response sent a couple of chills down my spine. The next panelist asked me what did I know about statistics as I was from mechanical engineering background. I told him that we use statistical quality control in mechanical engineering and I told him that I have gone through a book called statistics for engineers by Anthony hater. He tested on that by giving different scenarios and asking what would be the probability distribution it would follow. I remember that the panelist had asked questions about distributions that were mentioned as optional/additional study in the book. I was so happy that I didn’t skip those while studying. He then asked about Memoryless property of distributions and then passed on to the third panalist. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | No. |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 15 to 20 minutes |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | If you don’t have any analytics background brush up your basics of statistics. Put in some real work into it. It shows that you really are committed to get into this field. And know the general and specific applications of statistics. |
| Full name | Sundeep Samant Singh |
| College/University | Govt. College of Engineering, Keonjhar |
| Specialization | B. Tech, CMA(Level 1) |
| Year of Graduation | 2014 |
| Work Experience | Experienced |
| Organization(Name) | Bank of India |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 39 months |
| Designation | Scale I – Credit Analyst & Risk Manager |
| Work Experience Background | BFSI/Finance |
| LinkedIn URL | https://in.linkedin.com/in/4267a4200 |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Designation and Position held during job to be properly mentioned. |
| Tips for Written Exam | NCERT Books and Cengage Books for Maths, Regular CAT preparation books for English and DILR. |
| General profile-based questions asked | 1. Introduce yourself? 2. Why you want to join PGDBA course? 3. General Knowledge based questions on banking sector. 4. Some questions on achievements. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | No analytics questions asked |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | 1. What is regression? How to know whether a regression model is good or not? 2. What is method of dispersion and central tendency? 3. What is probability of default? |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Mostly on banking sector, NPAs and use of analytics in banking sector |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 30 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Yes |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Get yourself properly acquainted with basic stats and math. If you have used analytics during work-ex, you’ll be asked to explain your approach and how you handled it for that particular project. General knowledge in your working field is also important specially the analytics applications. |
| Any other interaction post the interview process | None |
| Full Name | Ankit Gupta |
| College/University | IIT Roorkee |
| Specialization | B.Tech Civil Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2017 |
| Organization (Name) | Shapoorji Pallonji and Company Private Limited |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 31 months |
| Designation | Deputy Manager |
| Work Experience Background | Construction |
| LinkedIn URL | linkedin.com/in/ankit-gupta-94bababb |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Just fill it like a regular form. Don’t Brag about anything else you may end up in a bad position. |
| Tips for Written Exam | Just focus on Class 12th Level Modern Maths and Linear Algebra. If your VARC is poor try taking some CAT Level Mocks for VARC Section. DI/LR is quite Easy. You may enroll for Test Series from CL/IMS (5 test each) for hands-on practice before the main examination. |
| General profile based questions asked | Scope of AR / Analytics in Construction. Major News about SPCPL in past 2-3 years and reasons behind the same. |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | None. |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | I had mentioned about the course on Probability and Statistics in my UG. The interviewer from ISI asked a lot of questions about Bayes theorem and independent variables. He tried to confuse me on a lot of technical terms and their meanings so as to evaluate if I had just rote them or I really know that stuff. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Conflict in South China Sea. |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 25 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Yes |
| Overall Interview Experience | 5 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Brush up the basic concepts that you have studied in Class 12th and Graduation. Don’t try to fool them. Rather accept you don’t know instead of fooling them around. Get knowledge about application of analytics in the industry you are currently in. |
| Full name | Debeshwar Maitra |
| College/University | Presidency University, Kolkata (Graduation) & IIT Kharagpur(Masters) |
| Specialization | B.Sc(Hons.)+M.Sc. in Physics |
| Year of Graduation | 2018 (B.Sc) , 2020 (M.Sc.) |
| Work Experience | Fresher |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Each and every entry should be absolutely correct. Profile based questions would be based on it. So, be ready to explain all your achievements, successes, failures and choices as mentioned in the form. |
| Tips for Written Exam | For Quants I revised Class 11 and 12 Mathematics books. I solved English Comprehension and Data Interpretation-Logical Reasoning questions from CAT papers and the sample paper. |
| Resources for exam preparation | NCERT textbooks (for Quants), CAT papers (for English Comprehension and DILR) |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | |
| General profile based questions asked | 1. Introduce Yourself 2. What is your motivation for applying to PGDBA course? 3. Make a Business Case Study on how joining PGDBA would benefit you (Follow up question: What is Opportunity Cost? What is Leverage?) |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | None |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | 1. What is the Integral of arctan(x)? Solution: Using Integration by Parts. 2. Suppose you are given the CTC of all students of PGDBA batch. Which measure of Central Tendency would be more important to you- Mean or Median? Ans: Median, since Mean could be impacted by outliers. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | What are the provisions of the National Educational Policy (NEP)? |
| Any other kind of questions | What is the state of Classical Music artists in India? Why? What role can the government play to improve it? (Vocal Classical is my extra-curricular) |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 25-30 |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | No |
| Overall Interview Experience | 3 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | Being clear and to the point helps (in my opinion), beating around the bush doesn’t help. If you don’t know some answer or if you make some mistakes admit it, don’t try to bluff the panel. Read newspapers regularly. Brush up graduation topics/extracurriculars/projects and any other thing mentioned in the form before the interview. |
| Full name | PILLA RAVI KIRAN |
| College/University | NIT Warangal |
| Specialization | B.Tech Mechanical Engineering |
| Year of Graduation | 2017 |
| Organization(Name) | Musigma |
| Work Experience (in months as on Jan 31, 2020) | 29 |
| Designation | Trainee Decision Scientists |
| Work Experience Background | Analytics |
| LinkedIn URL | www.linkedin.com/in/ravikiran-pilla-a002a911a |
| Tips to fill Application Form | Be Honest, avoid writing anything that you haven’t done or not comfortable with. |
| Tips for Written Exam | Read 11th 12th NCERT Maths, for Verbal, practice RC’s and Para jumbles from Cat materials. |
| Pre-interview composite score (Out of 60) | 55.47 |
| General profile based questions asked | Introduce Yourself |
| Technical questions (Analytics/ML/DS) asked | Types of statistical problems – Descriptive, Inquisitive, Prescriptive, Predictive What is p-value. Define correlation, Explain K-means clustering with examples. all these are formal definitions |
| Maths/Stats questions asked | Define rank of a matrix, Linear Independence, Integral as limit sum. |
| General Knowledge or related questions | Define GDP, Covid measures taken by central Government. |
| Interview duration (in minutes) | 20 minutes |
| Did you feel that your interview was a stress interview? | Yes |
| Overall Interview Experience | 4 |
| Tips for Personal Interview | If you are from analytics background, be sure on the Techniques used. Prepare Linear Algebra and Calculus. |
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