IIM KANPUR INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE
About IIM Kanpur-
The Department of Industrial & Management Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur offers a 21-month full-time Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. The 21-month full-time program spreads over four semesters and a summer term. The course work includes compulsory and elective courses along with a capstone project in the area of participant’s interest. Specializations offered in MBA include sectorial areas of Manufacturing Management and Service Management besides the functional areas of Operations, Systems, Marketing, Finance, and Human Resource Management.
Qualifying Examination
To apply for the academic session of 2019-2020, an applicant must appear for the CAT 2018 examination conducted by IIMs.
Real Interview Experience
Written Test:
Each question carried 3 marks, a wrong answer fetched -1 marks. There were a total of 50 questions from ENTIRE GATE Syllabus except Software Engineering and Web Technologies with a lot of emphasis on Discrete Mathematics (Almost 50%)
Some questions:
- N mod 10 = 9, N mod 9 = 8, … , N mod 2 = 1; What’s N?
- A couple of arrangement questions
- Mathematical Logic-based questions
- Find the output of given C Programs
- Time complexity related questions
- One question from sorting
- Questions from Automata Theory (Ranging from Type3 to Type 0 grammar)
- Question from Lexical Analyzer, Ambiguity, LR/LALR Parsing
- Data Flow, Sliding Window, TCP/IP, Congestion Control related problems
- Questions from Concurrency Control, Normalization
- The pipeline, Cache related problems
Group Discussion 
Average Duration : 90 secs. per person + 5 min. for Group Discussion
No. of Panelists : 4 (3 evaluators + 1 student moderator).
No. of Participants: 12 to 15
- A person has been working with a company on contract for some 3-4 years. Now, he is recruited by the same company on a permanent position but the company says he will not be entitled to all the benefits and perks that a permanent employee receives until he serves 1 more year with the company. He is already 35 and his family to support including wife and daughter. What should he do?
- A case study on a manager unable to achieve production targets because of old machines. If he installs new machines production will have to be stopped and the company will have to incur the cost of new machines, but this process will be beneficial in the long term. Also, the continuation of production is critical to the company, what should he do?
- A case study on a woman with small children and family to take care of being transferred to a location far away from her hometown. It is important to take up this job as a post away from home towns assist in promotions. The lady is in a dilemma about whether to take the promotion and get transferred or join a new company. What should she do?
Group Discussion (Case Study)
Average Duration: 90 secs. Per person + 5 min. for group discussion
No. of Panelists: 3 evaluators + 1 moderator
No. of Participants: 12 to 15
- MBA in India is highly overrated.
- Management of Agro Businesses in India – A Key Perspective
- A case where 25 years experienced employee injured himself while working on an electricity pole without electric safety equipment; key issues & challenges.
- Are we ready for our own management? (The case about a company trying to encourage its own employees towards the managerial position and not hiring anyone).
Personal Interview
Average Duration: 15-20 mins
No. of Panelists: 2-3
Excerpts From Interview 1 :
What is your favourite subject? What programming languages do you know? Which other programming languages do you know? Do you know Pascal? But, Pascal is very old, how did you learn it? Don’t you get bored with coding? Why do you like C? Really, So, can you cook with C? How do you write a pointer to a function which takes integer pointer and returns nothing? How pointers are stored? And how the compiler handles various pointers? How does Printf function work? How compiler figures out the data type of pointers passed at runtime? Do you know computer graphics? Can you explain the various algorithms that you used in your project? What are the optimizations that you looked into in your project?
Excerpts From Interview 2 :
Where did you spend your one year? Tell me which is your favourite subject? What is the equivalence relation? Can you give an example of that relation which is not reflexive but symmetric and transitive? The given graph with N vertices and M edges, how many min and max edges can be there in spanning tree? Can you define the relationship between geometric mean and arithmetic mean? Tell me what is geometric mean and arithmetic mean. Is it correct, odd numbers square are also odd numbers? Can you prove the addition of two odd numbers give you an even number? Can you tell me an algorithm to find spanning tree from a graph? What is the 2PL protocol? Can you get conflict serializable schedule with the basic 2PL protocol? Do you know what is deadlock and starvation?
Personal Interview
Average Duration : 15-50 mins.
No. of Panelists: 2
: (A 84.74%iler in CAT, with graduation in BE (CSE) with 6.74 CGPA, 63.61% in 12th and 83.38% in 10th). Why so low marks in graduation? +2 level math questions? Draw a graph of log cost and logyex. Probability: 5 Blue, 3 Green, 2 Red Balls are there in a bag. What is the probability of drawing out 2 blue balls? What is your favourite subject? Write an algorithm for cypherization (locking and unlocking of messages). Why the units in the computer language are in the form of 2n?
Excerpts from Interview 2 : (A 95.2%iler in CAT with B.Tech background and academic profile as 93.6% in Graduation, 86.8% in 12th and 92.2% in 10th). Who did you vote for? Academic profile? The file was asked and observed. Favourite subject: Applied Thermodynamic. SI units for measurement time etc. Basic definition. First law thermodynamics. Refrigeration system – draw the graph. Questions about extracurricular activities.
Excerpts From Interview 3 : (A 98.52%iler in CAT with 21 months of work experience in Infosys with academic profile as 69.23% in B.tech, 75.4% in 12th and 83.4% in 10th). Introduction. Technical Aspect. 11th and 12th physics questions. Circuit Diagram – explain. What is the significance? The circuit diagram was a simple diagram having a voltmeter, resistor, key, etc. Why MBA?
Excerpts from Interview 4 : (A 95.85%iler in CAT with academic profile as 72% in Graduation, 82% in 12th and 83% in 10th). How does AC work? Draw the AC cycle diagram? Humidity control in an AC? How is achieved in real? Industrial Project related questions.
