Admission Story: Alankrit Shrivastava, IIM Calcutta, 99.69 Percentile, CAT

Alankrit Shrivastava is pursuing MBA from IIM Calcutta. He graduated from DTU and has cleared the CAT exam with an excellent 99.69 percentile. Alankrit has 3 years of industry experience as a software developer.

Alankrit Shrivastava Profile

Current institute: IIM Calcutta
Graduation College: Delhi Technological University (Formerly Delhi College of Engineering)
CAT score: 99.69 percentile
10th Percentage / GPA: 91.6
12th Percentage / GPA: 95.6
Graduation Percentage/GPA: 8.71
Work Experience: Samsung R&D Institute, Bangalore, 3, Software Development

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Alankrit Shrivastava Admission Experience

Did you avail of the benefit of any reservation?

Alankrit Shrivastava: “General (No reservation)”

Describe the general setting of WAT / GD (if any)?

Alankrit Shrivastava: “WAT was offline as it was the year 2019 when this happened. The time given to think was 5 minutes and for writing, it was around 15 -20 minutes (can't remember exactly). Around 300-400 words were the word limit.

Time given for thinking was very less especially given the intense pressure situation, so focus on the points that come forth in the first 1-2 minutes. Thereafter identify the view that you can present the basis of the points formed. Give special attention to the counter side to your opinion i.e. imagine what counter questions any reader could have in their mind if they were to read your article. Think of how you would address these counter-arguments (if you can't come up with a decent response to the counter-arguments then raise these questions themselves in your article with a focus on why it is difficult to address this and what instead could be done to mitigate the grievance of the counterparty).

Not all this will come to you in the time given for thinking but you should at least have a general idea of the flow of your article with at least 2 main points for elaboration and counterarguments each. Also, ensure that the article follows a logical flow. Anyone reading the article should get to a clear conclusion effortlessly.”

What was the WAT / GD Topic?

Alankrit Shrivastava: “Whether Bollywood has helped in national integration in INDIA and whether cinema should aim to influence public opinion.”

What were your answer/points put forward for the WAT or GD respectively?

Alankrit Shrivastava: “As word limit wasn't much (I tend to write long essays), my focus was to address my core opinion/view in the beginning paragraph. I had really strong points in favor of how Bollywood has helped in national integration in INDIA - wrote a little about how "ae mere Watan ke logon" sung by Lata Mangeshkar brought masses together after the Indo-China war of 1962. Keeping in line with this theme it made more sense to me to write in favor that cinema should influence public opinion. As there were a lot of points that could be thought of against this position as well, it gave me a lot of opportunities to discuss the counterarguments that could arise against my opinion.

One tip that I followed strictly - never project your opinion so strongly that you support your side of the argument blindly without addressing its weaknesses. If you can't figure out the weakness in your argument then it is not a well-thought-out article. Discussing the counter opinion and addressing it (with examples if possible) leaves the reader intrigued (they may not agree with your point but at least you showed that you are a thorough thinker).

For this topic, one counterpoint that I discussed was that in recent times movies like PK, Padmaavat seem to ignite religious disharmony. To address this I put forth the point that any idea has its opposers and that dialogue over a disagreement is the very essence of democracy. The fact that sometimes cinema incites violence exposes bigger weaknesses in our system (that people still lack maturity/education to react violently or that the IT laws aren't enforced strongly enough so as to deter nuisance elements from spreading hate/fake news and inciting violence) and presents opportunities for growth. Keeping silent does not foster growth as underlying issues go unaddressed and that the use of cinema had more pros than cons in most cases. Checks and balances must also be introduced (learnings from past mistakes) to address any harmful repercussions (similar to the smoking disclaimer that is shown before the movie begins to spread awareness about its ill effects even though the movie might contain many scenes of smoking). This can be in the form of a censor board with appropriate representations from each community to pre-check content before release."

Describe the general setting of your personal Interview.

Alankrit Shrivastava: “I was the first candidate in my panel. The panel comprised 3 members (2 faculty and 1 alum) Faculty members were from HR & Operations as I got to know later on once I joined this college. The mode of the interview was offline. The interview duration was around 30 minutes. It wasn't a stressful interview.

The candidates from my group were seated together in a small room at the end of the lobby adjacent to the interview room. One of the faculty members came in and asked for my application form. Upon collecting it, he went inside the interview room but kept the door slightly open. Suddenly he began discussing my responses to questions in the application form loudly with the other faculty member and starting laughing (the candidates in the lobby could hear him laughing at whatever I wrote in my application including me). After a minute he called me in to start the interview. Despite this, I went in with a smile and answered all his questions as calmly as I could. At the moment, I assumed that this was his pressure tactic to make me and others nervous and I must not succumb to it. (regardless if my answers really appeared idiotic to him or not) "

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Mention at least 5 interview questions that were asked to you and your responses to each of them.

Alankrit Shrivastava: “Q 1: Introduce yourself. (Asked by Ops Faculty)

Ans 1: Briefly introduced my college, work ex background, and my hobbies. Ended with why I wanted to do an MBA. Spoke for about 1-2 minutes. My response included that I had 3 years of work ex in IT in cloud systems so he asked me to explain cloud computing in layman terms. Then the alum asked the next question.

Q 2: What exactly is the difference if a company uses cloud vs if they have the infrastructure in the house? (Asked by the alum)

Ans 2: Firstly I politely addressed the fact that a company could host the IT infrastructure in-house and yet be using the cloud (basically discussed the On-Premise concept). Thereafter, there were major differences.

Q 3: Why MBA? (Asked by HR Faculty)

Ans 3: Given the answer as practiced. Also touched upon the fact that I had calculated opportunity cost and yet why the decision to pursue MBA seemed lucrative.

Q 4: What are the 3 things about your workplace that you think must change? (Asked by HR faculty)

Ans 4: Told 3 things, one of which was regarding the rigid work hour policy of working for fixed hours per day/week and how there should be more flexibility.

The faculty then asked me to defend the counter position (I had written on my application that I won the best interjector in a debate in school). The faculty told me to think that I was in a debate and that I have to present points in favor of the rigid work hour policy and against flexible working hours. He told me to take a minute to think. After thinking for some time I told him I was ready with my response. Then told him 3-4 points in favor of a fixed work hour policy.

Q 5: You presented strong arguments in favor of the fixed work hour system. Why then do you want to have flexible working hours? (Asked by HR faculty)

Ans 5: Presented scenarios where the fixed hour system was detrimental. Also gave pressing arguments to show that the cons overweigh the pros based on my experience in the org for 3 years in contrast to that of my counterparts in other companies with flexible hours.

Q6: The rest of the interview was behavioral about the most exciting thing I have done in my life and what was my CAT percentile in each section and other interview calls I had..."

Mention 3 reasons why you chose this college over other colleges which you converted.

Alankrit Shrivastava: “My top 2 admits were from IIM Calcutta and IIM Lucknow. I accepted IIM Calcutta primarily because of the better brand image and standing among all other IIMs (being a part of the holy trinity of IIM A/B/C). The next factor was that IIM Calcutta boasted of offering the highest number of elective courses amongst all other IIMs. The 3rd reason was the alumni base. As it is the oldest IIM in INDIA so has a vast alumni base. Also on a minor note, 3 of my undergraduate batchmates were studying/graduated from IIM Calcutta and so I already had someone familiar to connect to regarding campus life.”

What was the reason for you not converting other colleges? (if any)

Alankrit Shrivastava: “Converted calls from IIM C, L, K and I, but got waitlisted for IIM Rohtak (didn't get calls from IIM A & B). IIM CAP interview hadn't gone well. I was last in my group which was already running late (was supposed to end at 12 but my turn came at 2 pm when the next batch of candidates was already waiting for their WAT). The interviewer started discussing my interests and then started asking GK questions on them which I did not know the answer to. After not being able to answer 4-5 questions in a line, I became a little flustered and answered the next questions wrong (in hindsight I should have admitted that I wasn't confident about the answers to those questions). Interviewers didn't waste any time after that and my interview was a very short one. (~10 mins).”

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