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New IIMs Interview Experience - Shweta Arora
Updated: May 3, 2020
I appeared for the IIM CAP Interview in 2018. Among all the interviews that I appeared for, CAP’s interview was the most lenient in terms of the questions asked. It seemed that the panelists genuinely wanted to know about my profile and gauge if I’d be joining or not. Some of the questions asked were:
Q - “Introduce yourself”
A - I ended on my interest in marketing & advertising
Q - So, which advertisement is your favorite?”
A - told about Cadbury’s ‘Kuch Khaas Hai’ ad campaign and how it shifted the target segment of Cadbury chocolates from children to adults (coincidentally, I got to intern at Mondelez later to know much more about that campaign from my manager)
Q - “Have you heard about the ‘Dove’s Real Beauty’ campaign that was recently in news for being called racist?”
A - Yes, I talked more about it.
Q - “Have you heard of ‘XYZ campaign’ (I couldn’t get the name despite asking twice)”
A - I apologized and shared that I hadn’t heard of it.
Q - “Which subject did you like the most in your undergrad?”
A - I said marketing
Q - "What is the difference between sales and marketing?”
A - I told, they seemed satisfied and had no other follow up.
Q - “Is there any other subject we can ask you questions from?”
A - I showed them my transcript and said you can ask questions from any subject.
Q - “Which subject did you like the least?”
A - Accountancy
Q - "Let’s see if that is so (they gave me a balance sheet problem and asked me to solve it)”
A - It was a bad debt problem and we had covered it in our courses, so I solved it.
Q - “Do you know any other way to solve this?”
A - I knew that there were two methods to solve it but I forgot the other one. Said so.
Q - “What are intangible goods?”
A - told
Q - “Can you give some examples?”
A - gave 3
Q - “How are they depreciated?”
A - talked about amortization
Q - “What is the difference between revenue expenditure and capital expenditure?”
A - explained.
Q - “What is a deferred revenue expenditure?”
A - told, gave an example
Q - “If you know Accountancy, why did you say you didn’t like it?”
A - I said that I didn’t like it among all other subjects, but I knew the concepts.
Q - “Okay, can you tell us any significant achievement of your life?”
A - talked about Intl’ Space Design Contest and how it gave me the exposure to represent India at an Intl’ stage plus the problem statement itself was so interesting that it got the entire team thinking out of the box.
Q - “Who all are there in your family?”
A - told.
Q - “Have you always been in Jalandhar?”
A - told that I’m now staying in Delhi for graduation but have always been in Jalandhar before that.
Q - “How do you find Delhi different from Jalandhar?”
A - talked about 7–8 points of difference and how Delhi provides much better educational and career opportunities over Jalandhar.
Q - “Which other calls do you have?”
A - All IIMs and FMS
Q - “Which interviews have taken place already?”
A - This is the first one
Q - “Which IIM would be your first priority & why?”
A - I gave an honest answer. Said IIM Ahmedabad because of its quality of teaching especially in the marketing domain.
Q - “How do you know about the marketing taught at IIM Ahmedabad, what if you don’t find it to be as good?”
A - told that I’ve some seniors who gave this feedback about the marketing courses. I also shared about 2 marketing professors who recently presented at a convention and talked about their inputs and how they really inspired me.
Q - “If you get selected in the newer IIMs, which one would you prefer?”
A - told and also mentioned that it is one of the most developed among the others (I don’t remember which one I mentioned)
Q - “Do you know which states are all the new IIMs from?”
A - I smiled and named the states. (was so surprised at this question, later found out that this was asked to every candidate as the last question).
Q - “Do you have any questions for us?”
A - No, thank you.
The interview lasted for about 15 minutes. It was pretty easy-going.
Verdict - Converted all new IIMs.
You may also like my IIM Ahmedabad Interview Experience, my IIM Bangalore Interview Experience and my IIM Calcutta Interview Experience. If you're a CAT aspirant, I'd suggest you to read about IIM interviews here.
Personal Profile - General | Female | Fresher | Non-Engineer
Academic Profile - X - 10 CGPA | XII - 96.2% | B Com (H) - 8.96 CGPA (till 4th sem) from DU
CAT 2017 Percentile - VA & RC - 98.29 | DI & LR - 99.17 | QA - 95.58 | Overall - 99.09