Interviews: Part 2: Live from Georgia Tech--Anish Mukherjee (EE 2010-14)

(This interview was first published on University Beats website)

We would like to congratulate you on your brilliant academic accomplishments. JU is proud to have you as an alumnus, and, it is our great honour to be interviewing you.

1)      When did you start preparing for GRE and what was your approach?

Ideally, the rule seems to be that you have to study (practice) continuously for 2 months prior to taking the GRE. As for me, took the GRE exam in August and started attending training classes in January. It was a two month course, but after that I did not practice for a long time since I was away for a summer internship. After coming back, I practiced for a month before taking the exam.
You can self-study if you are confident about your language skills or attend training classes (the most popular are Princeton Review and USIEF; I attended the first one). Generally, I would advise to attend classes simply because it gives you a lot of practice which is essential for scoring well in GRE (along with a good sleep before the exam).

Enough about my experience, here are some general tips:

i) If you studied in an English medium school or have a good grasp on the language, then one month of practice is enough in my opinion. The only hurdle for these people is vocabulary and that can be increased with enough practice. For these people, GRE is more of a test of logic than of vocabulary or grammar.

ii) If you are not confident in your English skills, START EARLY! Read a lot of books (not Chetan Bhagat ones but good ones, preferably classics) and editorial columns in newspapers. A year of practice will set you up well for the actual preparation.

2)      How did you prepare for TOEFL?

By playing a lot of video games! Seriously, there is no formal way of preparing for the TOEFL. In case you don’t know, the TOEFL is divided into 4 parts, and all of them are damn easy! Practice for the Reading and Writing part overlaps with GRE preps. Listening practice can be done by watching a lot of movies (again, watch oldies like 12 Angry Men etc) WITHOUT SUBTITLES; if you can do that well, TOEFL Listening will be a piece of cake for you. Speaking practice can be done with a friend; set up sessions where you speak to each other about different topics in English. Take a few freely available tests to get a feel of what the actual test is like.

Again, if you studied in an English medium school or have a good grasp on the language, you don’t need any form of practice. Just chill! And I’ll advice to take the TOEFL one week after GRE simply because you will be in a flow.

3)      Please tell us about your field of research at Georgia Tech.

My field of research, broadly, is Bioengineering. More specifically, I am involved in a study of the Lymphatic system. This system has a number of important roles in the body like tissue fluid pressure balance (disruption of which causes lymphedema, a currently untreatable disease that is a by-product of many surgical procedures like breast cancer surgery, transport of lipids and even metastasis (spread) of cancer cells. We work on the development on tools and techniques to better study this system and use them to better understand the mechanical and biological factors that contribute to the its functioning, so as to develop techniques for diagnosis and treatment of pathological conditions.

4)      What kind of a profile should an aspiring student have to get such high-profile admits?

Tough to say, really. A lot depends upon CGPA (something above 8.5 is crucial IMHO), and then comes research work. It  has been verified by a number of people that number of admits is not a measure of the profile of the university you will get in. Quality always matters more than quantity! GRE and TOEFL are secondary considerations but try to keep something above 320 and 100 respectively, just to be safe.

Try to bag a foreign internship if you can. Some of the options are DAAD, USC-Viterbi fellowship, MITACS etc. This is not essential to get into good places (I didn’t have one!), but having one always provides a distinct advantage. In the end, it is what sets you apart that counts.
Finally what your profile should be depends on what you want to study. If you want to study in suppose ECE or ME, a more focused CV (work related to a particular field, e.g. Signal Processing or Control Systems) helps. If you like me, are interested in Interdisciplinary research, a CV showing a diverse range of interests (from Image Processing to Fluid Mechanics, in my case) will help.

5)      How should a junior student identify her/his field of interest?

This is a difficult question. Unless there is a specific reason why you joined your program of study (instead of ‘I want to be an Engineer’ or ‘My parents told me to’ or ‘I have no effing clue’), chances are this will be impossible for you at the moment. Just keep reading stuff and see what interests you. Do robots fascinate you? Go for a project in Control Systems. Do you like Maths? Do something related to Signal Processing. That’s the best you can do as a first or second year student. I think the first two years should be spent on learning programming languages and computational skills in general and building a good Maths background. Serious focused research can be started from your third year of study when you have a general idea of what interests you.

6)      Do projects and publications matter only in terms quality or in terms of both quality and quantity?

I have mentioned this before. Never compromise quality for quantity, even if you don’t get a publication. If you have done good work, you will get a glowing recommendation from your mentor (which is all the better if he is a renowned person), which counts a lot, trust me. It will also help you to build a good relationship which will help you immensely later on.

7)      What would you advise a 1^st year JU student who has similar aspirations?

Follow all the advice I have given you in the previous answers! And get advice from more seniors. See where they intersect, and finally, make your own decision about what to do.
It is too early for you to decide what you are going to do with your life, so explore different avenues. Maybe do an industrial internship after your second year to see if that interests you, and then think seriously about going into the world of academia when you are sure that this is what interests you.

8)      Please tell us about your time spent in JU.

Well, this is an ambiguous question! Do you want to hear stories of how I crammed stuff before exams, or my love life? I am sure you will be bored either way!

9)      How did JU influence in creating what you are?

I have met some great teachers during my time there, and some even better friends! They shaped me a lot in becoming who I am now. As a university JU offers a lot of chance for recreation (Photography Club, Debate Club etc.) which you must not miss out on (as I did). These things help to shape you a lot, as I am understanding after coming to Georgia Tech. No matter what your parents tell you, you have not come to JU ‘only to study’. Use all that it has to offer to your advantage!

10)   If you were to sum up your JU experience in one sentence, what would it be?

Lyad, Prem, Mosti, Adda, Antlamo! Sorry, I will not translate these to English, just to maintain the sanctity of the words!

(Interviewed by Chandrashis Mazumdar and Soumik Ghosh on behalf of JU IMG team)

Interviews: Part 1: Cracking the XAT-- Arnab Poddar

(This interview was first published on University Beats website)

We would like to congratulate you on your brilliant academic accomplishments thus far. JU is proud to have you as a senior student, and it is an honour to be interviewing you.

1)    Please tell us a bit about yourself.

Firstly, it’s a great pleasure to share my experiences with you guys and you all are doing a splendid job indeed. About me- I am from Kolkata and I did my schooling from Baranagar R K Mission High School. I am currently pursuing BE in Computer Science and Engineering from Jadavpur University. I managed to score 98.80 percentile in CAT 2014 and 99.81 in XAT 2014. I am from a business family and it is the key reason that I’m more interested in entrepreneurship in future in spite of the huge opportunities in CS field.

2)    Were you focused solely on MBA or was it a fair competition among GATE, GRE etc?

GATE and GRE were never my area of interest. I was totally focused on MBA (at least until I got a job). As I have already mentioned that I have a dream of exploring myself as an entrepreneur in future and GRE/GATE would not have served this purpose.

3)    When did you start preparing for MBA entrance examinations?

I started my preparations from the end of my 2^nd year of engineering. But I do believe, MBA preparation is something which starts from your childhood. Whenever you read a good novel, an article or watch a good movie, those can add to your MBA preparation. As far as formal preparation is concerned, the sooner you start, the better. As there are a wide range of subjects to cover in Quant and DI, You must prepare for at least one year rigorously.

4)    What was your preparation approach? Did you enroll with any coaching institute?

Yes. I absolutely did. I enrolled in Vistamind, JP.  You must enroll in any of the reputed coaching institutes because MBA preparation is something which really needs  guidance. Apart from joining an institute, I also bought some of the Quant and Verbal books available in the market. Some of the good books are Face to face CAT (Arihant Publication), Quantitative Aptitude Books by Nishit sinha, Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis etc.

I have not been a voracious reader in the past. So for the verbal part, Barron’s GRE word list was a must for me to improve my vocabulary. For the Reading Comprehension (RC) preparation, nothing can be better than regular newspaper reading (especially the most boring articles on Economics and politics from The Hindu). 

In the quant section, the standard of questions in CAT has unexpectedly deteriorated  big time this year. But as we did not have any clue about it, we prepared hard for the Quant section with a tendency to avoid the verbal.  But from now on, all you need to do is to gather the very lucid concepts of all the chapters, sharpen your expertise in trick questions, and concentrate solely on speed. Speed is the factor that’s going to make the difference.

I have also taken the Mock CATs from Vistamind and Career Launcher which also helped me rectify my faults and improve my speed.

5)    How did you overcome the CAT disappointment and bounce back in such an emphatic manner a couple of weeks later?

CAT disaster was something which I was pretty sure of. It did not come to me as a surprise at all. With the sudden change of standard of questions in CAT, it became very difficult for the students who aimed entirely for the Quant section to rule out others. But this year, verbal section became an area of utmost importance because Quant was doable even for the not-so-good-at-Quant students.

On the other hand, XAT maintained its usual standard and eventually was much predictable. I wrote 2-3 mock XATs and went for the test. The burden of expectations which an MBA aspirant has to carry while writing CAT was not there during XAT. So I could write it in a very casual mood which I had not been able to in CAT.

6)     “How to crack the XAT”….

CAT and XAT are different ball games altogether and will keep being more different henceforth (CAT solely focusing on speed with too many easy questions and less time. On the other hand XAT giving an ample amount of time solely checking your abilities with tougher questions).

 So, from now on, if you are too much focused about CAT concentrating more on solving easier questions with speed and accuracy than solving quality questions and thinking of cracking the XAT with the same, then you are in the wrong path. XAT will definitely need exclusive preparation at least in the Quant section. Apart from a clear idea of the basics, you must solve quality questions from every chapter and on a regular basis.

Another area of pain in XAT is decision making. This section is exclusive to XAT and it comes in no other MBA entrance exams of my knowledge. I have seen many students doing pretty well in other sections but fumbling in this one. So you must prepare this area at least in the post-CAT days to get a grasp in it. Solving last 5-6 years’ decision-making questions from XAT paper should suffice.

Lastly, in the verbal section, the preparation for CAT and XAT are pretty much the same.

7)    We tend to focus a lot on CAT,XAT and the likes. What has been your preparation approach for the WAT and GD/PI rounds?

The preparation for the personal interview generally starts after getting a call because it is mostly B-school specific. For example, why IIM B over IIM C, why XLRI HRM etc. Although you must have a clear idea from the start about why you are doing an MBA, where you see yourself in 10 years, your strengths, weaknesses etc. and you have to be ready with all the answers of the counter questions your previous answers may invite.

The preparation for WAT/GD must start from the very beginning of your CAT preparation. I have been following the news papers to keep myself in track with the latest changes in politics and economics. For GD, I only had a scope to participate in 2 of them during campus placements. The more GDs you take part in, the more confident you become. Even participating in debates, elocutions, on-stage hosting should serve the purpose.

8)    Apart from an emphatic achievement in XAT, you got placed in a company like PWC. How did you manage your placement preparation along with entrance studies?

I have never been enthusiastic about campus placements. I knew my limitations and my goal. Although I appeared in the recruitment process of some of those top-notch software companies, I also opted out from some behemoth companies like Microsoft, Adobe etc. PWC, being a consulting firm was a fascinating offer for me because owing to my interests and my abilities, if I were to choose something other than management education, I would go for a career in consulting or analytics. As I was an MBA aspirant, I used to get an extra edge over others in the aptitude rounds. Although for the interviews I had to prepare a little bit of departmental stuff like DS, DBMS, OOP, OS etc for a month. 

9)    Please tell us about your time spent in JU.

My life at JU has so far been awesome. I have got a big friend circle from not only my department but also from other departments. We used to have a multi-department group called ‘Chillar Party’ in the first year and we had the fun of our life. Soham, Aritra, Anish and others--I want to thank all of you for your constant support and motivation, especially Shruti and Debarghya – I owe you two a lot. 

10)    What are ways in which you think Jadavpur University can instill an entrepreneurial culture in its students?

As JU houses three faculties in the same premises, it has got an enormous opportunity to let students participate in exchange programs with each other.  The technical knowledge of the engineering students, the holistic economic views of the Economics students and the perspectives of the arts students can be put together in great use.  It will definitely open up a lot of ideas from promising minds of the JU students and develop an entrepreneurial culture in JU.

11)    If you were to sum up your JU experience in one sentence, what would it be?

All’s well that ends well.. no regret!

(Interviewed by Chandrashis Mazumdar and Soumik Ghosh, on behalf of Team JU IMG)