FPM interview experience at IIMA

I applied for the P&QM (Production & quantitative methods) specialization mainly because of my work experience (Which was completely in the business analytics sector) and was definitely interested to learn more about this field. Moreover, the other most important thing I considered was the application of quantitative methods in almost all fields i.e. Finance, marketing, operations, etc. The application process mainly comprised taking a standardised test viz. CAT/GMAT/GRE/UGC-JRF,etc, filling the application form along with writing a 1500 words SOP (Statement of purpose) which should be a brief walkthrough of your profile and how FPM fits in with your career goals. Anyways, my profile was shortlisted and I was invited for the interview process on 12 march, 2013 at IIMA campus.

The first stage was a written exam. By the way only P&QM has an additional written test round, for all other areas there was only one round i.e. the Interview.It was a subjective test comprising 6 questions and duration was 20/30 minutes. The questions were higher level mathematics i.e from matrices, linear programming, calculus, etc. It was not very difficult but if someone has lost of touch of +2 maths then they might struggle. After the exam, they started calling candidates for interview as per their area i.e each area (finance, marketing, P&QM, etc) had a separate interview panel.

My panel had three professors, let me call them P1, P2 and P3.

Me: Good Morning sirs!!!
P1- Good morning! Please sit down.
Me:- Thank you sir!
(P2 was busy flipping the pages of my application form comprising my CV and SOP)
P1- So Sayan, I see you are working in the industry then why do u want to go for fpm?
Me- Sir! I have a diverse experience and as you can see I have tried lots of things in my brief work experience of 3 yrs i.e I made the transition from IT to the analytics industry (with the numero uno brand in this field) and then moved to a reputed consulting brand as an Analytics consultant and also tried my hands in academics as a part time faculty with the no. 1 brand in India for MBA preparation. So all these helped me discover my interest and gave me a brief idea of both the corporate and to some extent the academic world. I now know that I love analytics and want to explore more. But in Corporate the learning is limited and sometimes there`s no freedom which an academic world can give me and this course is a stepping stone for it. I want to make a career in research in the Analytics field (though I am open to both corporate and academic career post fpm) and FPM in P&QM will give me all the tools to learn and explore.
P1- Ok so if you are that interested in a career in research then you must have gone through some of our published research papers, so can you please tell us about any such paper? (Bouncer!!!)
Me- err... (fumbled)..... I have read up on one recent paper but I didn't understood the problem completely but it was interesting... it`s was something on single row facility problem.
P1- (smiles) So do u know who is the author?
Me- Yes it`s Mr. ----
P1- Can u tell me whether he is in this room?
Me- No idea sir!
(P2 smiles)
P1- (Pointing at P2 ) Well he is the one, so u can ask all your doubts regarding this problem to him.
P2- So tell me what did u understood about the problem?
Me- What I understand, it`s how you can arrange things in a single row by optimizing the distance between themselves e.g- cubicles in an office. Though it is bit different since all cubicles have same dimensions but this problem can be replicated for things of different dimensions.
P2- well that is the problem. So which part didn`t u understand?
Me- Sir research on this problem has been going on since 1960, so why is it still not solved? They have tried various methods like branch and bound algorithm and something on ant...
P2- ya ant colonization algorithm
Me- So why didn`t it work?
P2- well it`s not that it didn`t worked... we.....
P1- Ok! The interview should be this way (gestures) and not the other way round. I asked you to ask him questions but that doesn`t mean you will clarify all your doubts right here.
(Everyone laughs)
P2- So you want to do research in this topic? And you said you want to work in analytics and as you can see here which is a typical operations research problem, there`s no use of statistics at all.
Me- Sir I have not decided about that yet. I will do so during the course of my studies. May be after the coursework I will have more clarity on the kind of research I want to do. But I have interest in ecommerce and might want to do something with applications of analytics in the ecommerce domain.
P2- Ok! now I am confused! So u started with the single row facility problem and now u are saying that u r interested in ecommerce.
Me- Sir please let me clarify. What I meant was that I read up a paper on single row facility problem and I found it interesting but I am more interested in carrying research work pertaining to the ecommerce domain.
P2- Can u related single row facility problem with something in ecommerce? (yorker... clean bowled :P)
Me-- err.... (struggled.. said some random stuff on various parameters like ROI, clic through rate and tried to somehow relate it with single row facility problem with brute force and was grilled on it)
P3- (finally gave a hint) Well when I go to amazon website I see so many banners and categories, Do u think that there`s a scope of applying SRF problem there?
Me- (lightbulb on!!!) Yes sir even if you go to flipkart.com you can see there are so many offers and banners for different category and may be those boxes can be arranged in a single row to optimize the space and thus we have a SRF problem and moreover they can also be customized as per user historical transaction. There`s something called personalization and that can be more effective with SRF problem.
P2- But that is already there i.e. those recommendations/suggestions are there for different users?
Me- yes but there`s always scope for continuous improvement.
P2- hmm (asking P3) Is his explanation relevant to the core problem?
P3- (to P2) well he is close and his explanation has a mix of analytics here and there.
P2- ok!
P3- Well Sayan it seems you have worked in some consulting firms and you had worked on some kind of index and for which u are also in the process of applying for a whitepaper (I mentioned it in my SOP).
Me- yes sir!
P3- so can you tell me briefly about it i.e. the problem definition, variable selection, model building, techniques that u used and the final output.
Me- ... (Told everything in detail and all three nodded and P3 also asked me to justify on the dependant variables selected as a performance indicator and also on techniques like linear regression, etc. I answered all of that correctly. And P3 looked convinced)
P1- So you said that u want to do fpm because it will give you freedom (from a learning aspect) but have u even talked to any of our students. Just ask them do they get any freedom?
(everyone laughs)
Me- (smiling) of course sir! I know that`s not possible during the course. What I meant was freedom in terms of career path and work post completion of fpm.
(P1 nods)
P2- Thank you Sayan! That will be all from our side!
Me- Thank you sirs!
(stood up and left the room)


Verdict:-- CONVERTED!!! :)

FINAL EDIT:- March, 2017-- Last 3 years & 9 months at IIMA was awesome. I thoroughly enjoyed my research work and have successfully defended my thesis. Now a "Fellow" of IIM Ahmedabad. The convocation day was one of the proudest moments of my life and I will remember this experience for the rest of my life.
I would like to thank all the readers of my blog. There were many IIM FPM aspirants who contacted me after reading this post (some of them also made it to IIMA) over the years, I hope I was of some help!
I would be now signing off from this blog! All the best to all future FPM aspirants!