It's a well-accepted norm that a business school’s reputation is built on the quality of its faculty and students. Popular ratings assess the quality of faculty by their qualifications (read PhD) and their publishing record. Teaching ability or being able to deliver in the classroom is seldom considered as important in any of the B-school ratings. The quality of students are assessed in terms of the intake ratio (number of admits to number of applications). The tougher the odds are for an applicant to get admission, so much better the quality of students.

There is no real need for competition among the premier business schools in the country for getting good students, though in reality business schools behave as if they are in a highly competitive world. Hardly any cooperation takes place among the top schools. The top schools (say top 15) can accommodate about 3,000 to 3,500 students per annum and it is about 2 per cent of the number of people who take CAT or other such entrance exam.

The selection process varies across business schools but some of the essential features are GD, interview, psychometric testing, etc., after taking the test. The weightage for each of the individual components, of course, could vary from one business school to other. Previous academic record and work experience are also given some kind of weightage.

Top on the list is of course your performance in the entrance exam. Almost two third to eighty percentage weightage is given to the entrance test performance across the top business schools. How appropriate is such an overwhelming importance to the entrance test which mostly checks out your ‘IQ’ is a debatable point in itself.

The next major obstacle for a prospective applicant is the interview process itself. Sometimes it involves a GD plus a personal interview. GD is generally used for cutting down numbers for the personal interview stage and hence is mostly an elimination stage.

Group Discussions

What one assesses through GD depends on whether it is an elimination round or not. However, the factors that are generally looked at are

Some of the obvious ‘don’ts’ in a GD are monopolising the time, interrupting others while they speak, talking in a raised voice or shouting, not listening to others, and being generally aggressive and trying to dominate others. There is a big difference between being assertive and aggressive. Being assertive is to ensure that your views are heard and understood but being aggressive leads to ignoring others views.

In my view, GD as a format is negatively used by most business schools. It is used as an instrument for finding out why somebody should be rejected rather than trying to find out why someone should be selected. Of course, business schools have their own argument in terms of the high number of applicants to be screened. But the result is that most of GDs turn into fish markets where aggressive candidates get heard and others who may be very good but cannot or do not want to shout might get rated poorly.

Some of the business schools, more notably S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai had given up GD as a tool for assessing prospective student for the same reason. S.P. Jain conducts a group interview which sometimes consists of a guided group discussion. A topic is given and people are asked to discuss, and the faculty keeps interjecting. So if someone hasn’t spoken, he/she can be asked to speak and can also be cross-questioned on some of the points raised.

General awareness, clarity of thought, logical thought process, confidence in one’s knowledge and communication abilities are some of the important ingredients to do well in a GD.

Personal Interview

Again, there is a range of criteria that are assessed during a personal interview. Some of the common parameters across business schools are personality, communication abilities, general awareness, etc. Most of the business schools use interviews to assess the subject knowledge and/or job knowledge of the candidate. Some leading B-schools are known to use the interview to assess your alertness, presence of mind, IQ, etc. In an interview by a top school, a candidate was asked how many switches there were on the switchboard on the wall (behind the candidate) adjacent to the door through which the candidate entered. What such questions try to assess is anybody’s guess.

One of the hazards that a prospective candidate has to be prepared for is that some of the panelists might try to display more of their own knowledge or try to find out what the candidate doesn’t know rather than focusing on what the candidate knows. The CEO of a leading credit rating agency, a regular MBA recruiting company, recently mentioned to me about how they selected a candidate who answered ‘I don’t know’ for most of the questions put to him. But what ever questions he chose to answer, his answers were on the dot. He was selected, and he turned out to be one of their best employees. In my view, what the candidate displayed was ‘character’.

Some schools do focus on aspects such as maturity, character, attitude, etc., the reason being that an MBA degree and the associated knowledge one gains only enables a candidate to land a good job. Progress once inside the company depends so much on attributes such as maturity, attitude, etc. What is expected of a candidate in such circumstance is sincerity, honesty and a proper understanding of one’s own strengths and weaknesses. The interviewer is looking for consistency and clarity of thought. What you try to project of yourself and what you have written in the form has to be consistent with what you really are. ‘Smart’ answers won’t get you far but honest ones will.

Do’s

Don’ts

What I have mentioned above are general guidelines and one must use common sense to judge what would be appropriate in each situation. There is no fool-proof formula for ensuring success all the time, but if one follows these guidelines sincerely, their chances get enhanced.

S. Sriram is executive director of Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai. Prior to this, he has worked for 15 years with SP Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai, as a professor in the area of strategy. He was also chairperson of the executive MBA. For seven years, he was in charge of admissions at SPJIMR. The views expressed in this article are personal.