Given below is the interview experience of Khushiram Sharma, PGDBA alum from 2016-18 batch.
I hail from a very beautiful city of Ajmer in Rajasthan. I completed my schooling from DAV Centenary Public School and later got admission in IIT (BHU) Varanasi in 2009 and graduated from there in 2013. After graduating as a Mechanical Engineer, I joined BPCL in May 2013 as a management trainee. I worked in the capacity of Retail Engineer (Ludhiana) and Assistant Manager Operations (Gorakhpur) during my tenure of 3 years.
During my stay in Gorakhpur, I was sharing a flat with my immediate college senior (currently pursuing MBA from Duke University, USA). He introduced me to the field of analytics and data science which was predicted to have a promising future. I got to know about PGDBA from a college friend who joined BPCL with me. Interestingly, he got admission both in the first batch of PGDBA as well as MS in Data Science from Cincinnati University, USA. In 2015, he chose the latter one but motivated me enough to try for PGDBA in 2016.
The Written Test
In 2016, a separate examination was conducted by IIT Kharagpur, thus alienating the admission criteria from CAT. This examination had fifty percent weightage for math which comprises a similar syllabus as that of the 12th standard. I prepared from 11th and 12th standard NCERT books only for the math portion only. This entrance test checks the conceptual knowledge in the quantitative field rather than speed which is the case with CAT. Verbal ability, data interpretation, and logical reasoning can be prepared from any test series being offered for CAT (difficulty level for PGDBA entrance was lower).
The Interview at Admission to PGDBA
During my interview for PGDBA, I was asked to briefly explain my profile of work for the entire duration i.e. from 2013 to 2016. As I had been to many places during this time and the last one being Gorakhpur (UP), they picked a question from there. They asked me to give five cultural differences between UP & Rajasthan (I am from Ajmer), and also explain how they were different. They stopped me when I had explained four of them convincingly. There was no question from statistics. On the mathematics front, they created a problem like this: “We have identified four places in Rajasthan to be made headquarters of education for the state. Out of these, we must finally select only three based on the distances need to be travelled by people in the future. All other conditions will remain the same for all places.” Given this, before jumping on any solution, I discussed further assumptions like population density, if I could assume a shape as per my drawing if people would travel to their nearest headquarter (as per straight line distance).
Finally, they said that all other conditions would remain the same for all places. After trying for 2 minutes, they made the problem a little bit easier for me. I had three locations and must select two of them. Now, I drew circumcenter/perpendicular bisectors of this triangle and then explained the solution. They asked me if I knew any coding. To which, I said,” primarily no, except that I studied C 6 years back in the 2nd Semester.” Then they asked to write a code for printing my name (string) in reverse order, that I did.
This sums up me and my admission to PGDBA, a unique, new and promising career opportunity.
This time belongs to data technology and the best thing is that we are young.
Here’s a link to Khushiram’s LinkedIn profile. He would be happy to share his course experience with you.
To help you prepare for your admission to PGDBA, we came up with a list of the important topics that you must study well before your admission process starts. Check it here and gain an edge over your peers!
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this post are solely of the author. Neither do these views reflect the opinion of AI Monks now do they bear any responsibility on AI Monks.
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