My GD/PI Experiences after CAT

Hi All,

Sorry for the delan in updating my blog, a lot has happened since the last time I did update it and I was wondering where to start. I guess ill start with the highlights, hehe.

I got my CAT 09 result about a month back and was really happy with my score of 96.34..yeah baby...:). However as I was dreaming during the time when I should have been applying to colleges and only managed to apply to IMT-Gaziabad,TAPMI,XIME,BIM-Trichy and welingkar(WE-School)(apart from TAPMI all application dates were after the CAT result..Lucky me..:)). For about a month now I feel as though my life has taken a turn in the more serious direction as I have been keeping myself updated with current affairs and reading the paper regurlarly, for a person who had to make up for a lifetime of ignorance this was a leviathan's task, and I have to admit that a lot more work remains to be done, and a lot more knowledge to be gained.

As of now I have converted the call which I got from XIME, I did find this a bit surprising as my GD/PI experience didnt go particularly well, I spoke only once during tthe GD(group discussion), and my interview too didnt go well. A member of my panel was an IBMer and I later found out that he(Mr Anil Philip) was the VP of the ITS(integrated tecnology services) division of IBM, perhaps one reason why he might have had a soft spot for me.

During the interview I do remember being unable to answer several q's like "who is th ceo of NOKIA?"

The interview started off on a bad note I would say as I did say that I was an IBMer but when asked who the MD of IBM was I was unable to give an answer, after some help from Mr Anil I did manage to utter his sir name (annaswamy) correctly.( I was 1st hinted the starting letter of his 1st name ie S and then I requested the starting lettetr of his last name...lol...which was A).

The next question was on the advertisements of IBM which were aired on public TV, this was something big happening as IBM's smarter planet initiatives have been, I firstly mentioned green planet and then said that I did not have much info of these initiatives. (I might write more about these later as I do have knowledge of this now)

Once I was asked about myself though I did get a little more comfortable and did tell him about my 2 years in gaming, I also remember telling him that in the 45 mins during a game, we had to be impulsive and needed qualities like teamwork,leadership and co-ordiniation inorder to succeed, also mentioned that we did take part in WCG(world cyber games) for 2 consequetive years and travelled as a team to bangalore during the tournament times.I did forget to mention about my robotics project which I did feel was one of my main plus points, as I did attend a course in robotics before my final year to gove me an insight into robotics.

After that a few questions on NOKIA- CEO, competitors( I said sony,samsung..but I think they were looking mainly for the iPhone as it's market has been expanding rapidly, with its easy to install apps.)

Then a few questions on microsoft, competitors, thank god he didnt ask me the CEO as I bet ithat I would have said Bill gates at the time{ current CEO is Steve Ballmer- BIll gates has moved on to more of his philantropic works (probably for securing himself a place in heaven in his afterlife...no offence meant...but if I remember correctly it is said in the bible that" It is more difficult for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven, than it is for a camel to enter the eye of a needle")}. I personally dont believe in this as I dont feel that the meaning of rich necessarily means money alone( Bill Gates was announced richest man in the world on more than one occasion!) ,other factors that make a man rich would be family, kids,work and freinds(in my world).

Anyways I think Ive mentioned enough about the XIME interview, but ofcourse I did feel that I did give satisfactory answers to questions like "why MBA?", " why grades going down down down?" ( I did forget to mention my robotics project through the whole interview and wasnt asked anythin on this). But for some reason I did have a good feeling in the end, the feeling which I did not have for my Interview with IMT-G which took place a week later.

My interview with IMT-G started of well according to me, 1stly being asked about my name I gave a suitable answer, the panel went on to ask me about my favorite sub in school, after I said maths they asked me how the distance between 2 points would be calculated, after giving them a decent explanation I was asked about the formula which I did give correctly, this led them to ask me how the distance between 2 stars is to be found?...hmmm..

I did give a suitable answer here as well and told them that using some sonar or radar wawes we would require to calculate the distance betbeen each of the stars and the surface of the earth, and we could also use the angle between the 2 stars at the point of observation to calculate the distance between them, was unable to give them a more detailed answer with trignometric ratios when asked about it,I did feel that with a diagram(or some drawing) I would be able to better explain this more efficiently, they then asked me what was cos hyperbolic to which I said that I dident remember the exact meaning or formual of hyperbolic functions.

"" Explanation of distance between stars""

I feel that I am now in a better postion to explanin how the sistnace between stars can be calculated today as I have had some time to reflect and such questions do intrest me.So I taught I'd take some time and draw a diagram using paint for any1 who might face such a question in the future and who is a reader of my blog...;)..

As said above our 1st step would be to calculate distances E-S1 and E-S2, using some SONAR, RADAR means wherin distance could be calculated as s(speed)= d/t(time), as speed is known to be the speed of light( dont remember the exact figure but i think it is about 3* 10 raised to 7).
looked it up "the speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s."

The next step would be to measure the angle subtended between the 2 stars at the pointy of observation(Earth- E).

Now note that in the diagram we know values of angle E,distance a and b between S1,S2 and E.Also our final intention is to find X(dist betn the 2 stars) .With a small construction extending E-S2 to R, we can now calculate R-S1(knowing b is hypotanneuse of the bigger R-angle Triangle) which would be needed in calculating E-R, then simple subtraction would allow us to calculate R-S2 (by using a)and with this and the distance R-S1 we can calculate the value of X (hypotennuse) in the smaller right angle triangle...

Hurrae!!!

Any Engineer or a person with some intrest in math should have understood my explanation and one can contact me for clarification. If you are a reader, Im sure that u can contact me by some means.""

Now here the bad part comes, I was asked some simple questions like" what are the problems India was facing economically!"

I did say that energy was a concern and just recently there were some new provisions to the 123 deal( nuclear deal). I also do remember mentioning somehow that IBM cloud compution was mentioned in the papre( by this time I did go through a alot of info about smarter planed and wasted to express myself about the initiatives of IBM which I had failed to do in my last interview!). Apart feom that i mentioned water but was unable to elaborate, did not mention more.

Then IT got worse and I was asked who was the CM of karnataka( BS Yedurappa), who's name I could not recollect it at the time( but I did remember it on my own on my way out of the building). Also when I was asked about the problems that Blore was facing I could only mention traffic which was quite embarassing as I had been a resident here for 2 years, did mention water but was unable to elaborate once again, did also mention about the BBMP electons of the start and said about 45 % turnout...quite sad.

At this time the other panel member did see something written on my hand, when asked about it I said the 4 points written were gaming,robotics,Cricket team,violin. All points which I had covered at some point earlier, and was unable to explain that the reason for writting these was that I was expecting a more in depth interview with some topic that I was comfortable with and that if worst comes to worst I would atleast like to mention my personal plus points instead of forgetting something like robotics which I had done in the previous interview.

All in all I dont expect m,uch fromo the interview and am awaiting the results. I do feel that having found out that I have converted the XIME call does put me in a slightly more comfortable position to answer the interviews to come, namely TAPMI on the 20th and BIM- Trichy on the 21st(chennai).