Group Tasks, though not as common as group discussions and WATs, present us with challenges of their own kind. A group task aims to evaluate the candidate on psychological parameters so that the evaluators can understand the candidates’ comprehension, communication, decision making, and leadership quality within the dynamic context of a group. Working in a group, the candidates also demonstrate their social and interpersonal skills to the panel. The objective of a group task is to perform a clearly-defined exercise within the stipulated time, by using the available resources and en

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Personal Interview Tips: I must have interviewed at least a few thousand candidates in my time. Every time I feel that I have seen it all and I have met them all, a Higher Power Up There intervenes and restores my humility by presenting a sample that I have never seen before. I share with readers these samples in the (absolutely vain) hope that they will not repeat these cases, and make their own new mistakes so that my life remains exciting. I just pray that you make those new mistakes in the mock interviews and not in the actual ones! Sin No 1: Negative Body language and Attitude: Thi

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Most of the questions that one encounters in a B-school personal interview can be classified into the following categories: A – Introductory questions B – Academic and work-experience related questions C – Current affairs and general awareness questions D – Personality-based questions E – Goal-related questions F – Stress questions Let us begin by looking at these types, and the common questions that are asked under each type. Please note that while most interviews begin with introductory questions, no particular order of question types is followed by the panel as regards

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Let us get something very clear at the start of our discussion on the personal interview round. PI is difficult. Very difficult. This is the first and the last time the college gets to interact with you before they take a call on your candidature. Therefore they will do whatever is necessary – including testing you in ways you simply have not imagined – to ascertain that you are the right candidate for a seat in their college. The greater the competition at a particular institute, the tougher the PI, and the more the unexpected questions. The second factor that complicates the

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Often after the announcement of CAT/XAT results, MBA aspirants starts getting confused regarding the B-school selection. A lot of data is available about Old IIMs in public domain regarding various parameters like academics, profiles offered etc. But in case of Private B-schools barring MDI, SP Jain, information on all parameters is incomplete. Situation gets even trickier when two similar colleges are compared. Aspirants log on to various MBA related websites, Facebook and Pagalguy group of colleges. These sources can be good for knowledge about institutes but they have a risk of objectivit

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First thing first, when it comes to essay writing, there could potentially be 700 deadly sins. However, space and time constraints dictate that I resist the perennial, evil temptation of writing another long-winded piece and confine myself to the top seven that lead the line-up. These seven mistakes feature routinely in majority of the essays that I assess, and often a single essay contains all of them in varying degrees. So here I go with the seven deadlies in no particular order of frequency or seriousness. Sin No 1: Irrelevance This one is a two-faced devil and both equally ugly. The

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When I said in the previous post that you must write at least 100 essays, I was not joking. There are a number of reasons why this must be done. First, writing, unlike speaking or reading, is not a natural process we follow every day. Therefore, when we sit down to write, we are filled with self-doubt. Second, every writer, on most occasions, needs to motivate themselves to write. In the case of a WAT taker, the perceived disincentive for writing a bad essay outweighs the perceived incentive for writing a good essay. In other words, most WAT takers feel that a bad essay can do more damage

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If we all had the right guidance, the requisite reference material at hand, and unlimited time to write and revise the essays that we write, quite a few of us would eventually be able to produce satisfactory essays. The same task becomes infinitely more difficult when it is presented in the form of the WAT, which must be accomplished in approximately 15 minutes, and which must be produced entirely from references in one’s memory. When we are ultimately faced with the final WAT assignment and a blank paper, several factors begin to weigh heavy on our minds. There is the complexity of the t

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Over the last few years, most of the top B-schools have switched over from group discussion to writing ability test (WAT). There are compelling reasons why this has happened. It will be prudent to understand them before we begin our preparation for the WAT. The most important reason, I feel, behind this change is that, unlike in GDs, in an essay it is impossible to borrow the content from anyone else or further develop someone else’s thoughts. You must entirely depend on your own content and reasoning. In fact, GDs are meant to test your ability to assimilate diverse points of view along

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Before we begin to talk about abstract group discussion, let us first understand what the word abstract actually means. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word as follows: Abstract: disassociated from any specific instance , difficult to understand: abstruse , insufficiently factual: formal Indeed, all the above definitions of the word are reflected in most abstract group discussion topics. Abstract topics can be single words, such as ‘Blue’, short sentences, such as ‘All crows are white’, or even images or pictures. What they all have in common is they do not have any c

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