Interview experience for PhD in management in SJSOM- IIT Bombay

I attended the interview process on 7th december, 2012. The complete process at SJMSOM was smooth. The only glitches were the delay in declaring the written test results and the long wait before the interview
This time (i.e. for the spring semester) SJMSOM gave calls to around 204 candidates and the turnout was definitely 150+
The whole process comprised two steps- written test (Elimination round) and the interview.
The written test was a simple aptitude test comprising four sections viz. quantitative aptitude, verbal ability, data interpretation and logical reasoning. Each sections had 10 questions and the test was for 1 hr. Moreover, there was negative marking and sectional cut offs. It started at 9 am sharp.
After the test there was a presentation on the PhD programme at SJMSOM taken by Mr. Mukundan. And then there was a lengthy procedure for travel reimbursement.
The written test results were declared at around 2 pm. And they shortlisted only 20 candidates. Fortunately, I was one of them
But this left many candidates agitated and they demanded to know the cut offs. It seems the sectional cut offs were quite high. On an average it was above 6 out of 10 in all section except Data interpretation where it was around 8 since the paper was on the easier side.

Anyways, after that there was a long 4 hr wait for my turn  since I was called last in my panel thanks to my application id (Actually, the 20 candidates were divided into 3 panels w.r.t their specializations and they were arranged serially w.r.t the application id). I applied for the 'Operations management' specialization and there were around 5 candidates in my panel.

The panel comprised of 4 faculty member. First, there were a few general questions, why phd?, why now i.e. after Btech?, Why leave corporate and a decent pay?, why you want to do research in analytics when u already are in that profile? I was able to answer all these to my satisfaction and I think they were convinced.

But then came the thunder, one faculty was not at all impressed with my research proposal and started questioning on it. I think this is where my inexperience in writing research papers was exposed. I tried to defend but in vain. And he clearly told me that I should have done my homework.
Then he changed the topic and started questioning on my work and the projects I have worked on. Then he asked a few technical questions related to my field, what is odds ratio, logistic regression and its applications, linear regression, logit,etc and I was able to answer all of it. And finally there was some positive comment from his side :)
Then another faculty asked me if I have read any research papers by one of SJMSOM`s faculty. Thankfully, I did and then there was a long discussion on that paper. Overall, my interview lasted 40 mins- in the first 20 mins I was badly screwed but the 2nd half was good.
Anyways, it was my first interview for phd/fpm and it was a good learning experience. So one thing was clear, that SJSOM stresses heavily on the research proposal and clarity in one`s career goals.

Hope this long post of mine would be of some use. ATB!!!