"Can you cook?"
"Can you dance or sing?"
These, reports TOI, are some of the 'unrelated' questions asked in recent admission interviews to institutes like NID, CEPT and Nirma - in order to test the candidate's character and personality.
"The questions are not meant to throw students off guard but guage their understanding, common sense and aptitude. With coaching classes available now, it is difficult to know the calibre and true worth of students," says Akhil Saxena, NID activity chairman for education.
I would tend to agree. The perfectly programmed and pantomimed answers to all the 'usual questions' often leave little scope to differentiate one student from the next.
IIM interviews have always been a little more edgy and asked these 'unrelated' questions. One of the IIM Calcutta interview, which was held in the commanding Hindustan Lever boardroom, asked things like:
* Can you recall a few lines from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
* Who painted the mural next to the library in TIFR
* What was the O Henry short story 'The Last Leaf' about?
Of course, these questions were not entirely unrelated.
All this info was listed on one of the candidates form, which lay before them. Luckily he could answer everything - although he messed up some of the routine questions (guess coaching wasn't as sophisticated back then).
But he must have done alright coz they sent him an admit letter.
As far as 'unrelated' goes, asking a physics graduate the principle behind the working of the ceiling fan may sound irrelevant to his or her aptitude for management. But what the panel is really checking for is how well you know your basics. Are you a thinker, or a mugger?
Believe it or not, many people cannot answer such simple questions because they have passed exams with flying colours through ratta. And they cannot 'think through' or connect the theory with the practical. Which definitely does not bode well for a future career in management! Or any other field, for that matter.
The other quality which gets tested in the process is integrity. If you say "I speak 5 languages" but are unable to actually do so, you will probably be dead meat. The only thing worse than not being able to answer is faking it. How can they tell?
Well, years of experience give these panels the intuition that Malcolm Gladwell described so wonderfully in 'Blink'.
Still, you might argue the 'cooking' is going a bit too far. I'm sure that's just one of the many they ask - and you won't be automatically flunked for saying you have never touched a stirring spoon.
It happens to be highlighted simply because it makes a good headline. But NID has given the following - valid - explanation: "Considering that students are overprotected by their parents, we want to see if they can do things independently."
No its not about selection procedures, for they can never be perfect. And those who get there are not far better than many of those who don't. Callibre and talent can not be judged. Under the current circumstances probably you can't do much.
The flip side is, there are snobs on both sides. I am not saying all are like that, but there are those who have made it and do not wish to understand and think about everyone who hasn't can be worthwhile. And there are those who haven't and hate those who have.
Now this whole thing of judging and grading callibre (in fact grading human beings) leads to this.
The problem?
The problem really is that we have not developed a society where everyone would be respected for whatever he/she is doing, whatever little he/she is doing.
That sounds more like an ideal, an ideal that losers talk about for the winners are too much into the illusion of what they think they have won. And that brings a stagnation. Things never change.
And its not just about India, that's how it is all around the world.
I as a kid had my own Ideas of scientific work being more "worthwhile" and "respectable". Today I find they don't do much. I mean what they do is not very different nor is that very difficult or complex. Anyone can think out of the box if one really wishes and at the same time a sweeper does work as mundane and as creative and has opportunities to do things better.
I have seen how, when a known scientist sends a paper for a publication to a referred journal of repute, it gets approved and how a little known research worker sending an account of the same work gets his copy back.
Are we really recognising work? Are we really recognising callibre and talent?
And then we have all the disillusioned "winners" and "losers".
We may be recognising and grooming some but we are not doing enough and those who think we are doing great need to really take a closer look at how things are.
We have grown up doing things for recognition and not for doing whats needs to be done. We have all grown up studying to make money. We have all grown up confusing recognition as success. We have never done things for the right reasons, and always done them for the attributes.
Its the same with our gods, its the same with our relationships, its the same with our love(s). Attributes decide. With the level of the entrance going down south, the students entering arent exactly meritous (is that even a word?) but mostly ratta people who ratta-ed well in grade 12 and in the coaching who were 'crackus' in most forms of things they did, are disappearing, and no one seems to realise that but the students stuck in the transisiton phase of IITs.
There were students who had loads of applied knowledge, but did not have the grades to show it. They have gr8 grades, most 8s and 9s but not the applied knowledge to prove that they are 'IIT-stuff' and the only 'non-worthy' students getting into IIT, thru the DASA feature, where NRI's sent their kids on dollar fees has been scraped, so not much of a cash flow exists now. I presume, soon there will be a time, when IIT will be a college living only on its name, coz the politics in this country is only reducing the level of the exam for the sake of keeping the kursi intact.
Through B school interviews and after that, the students feel that it is very much meant to put the student off guard...! And why not? A friend of mine was asked the following sequence of questions at the IIM B interview.
1) Are you a Bengali. Yes
2) Are you from Presidency College Kolkata. Yes
3) Are you a communist, aren't you? ...
Hearsay is that a bihari marwari guy was asked on his face what is his going rate on the dowry market.
In his interview, he was asked about 10 questions in a row on sports, and then, on the Jesse Owens/ Luz Long incident at the 1936 olympic, questioned on Hitler.....
Saw the trend? You are put on the edge. Put in the deep end of the ocean. Attacked at what you ARE, (be it your religion, be it popular misconceptions about your associative groups, or be it your raison-d-etre, which is quizzing) and then they see whether you swim or sink.
IMHO, for business, among other things, you need strong people, who can hold their own when off guard. So they are checking the right things. Sometimes it is alright and as for the ones who fake it and make it to the top institutes, they are good enough to fake it and make it in life. That too is fair, I guess.
Thus, cooking is fair. Dance or sing, is fair. Nothing is unrelated.
"Sadly, it's only a few institutes of great repute which can undertake such subjective interviews. Because in the general scheme of things it would most likely be 'hijacked' ie used to give backdoor entry to the less deserving-but-willing-to-pay ... "
Great repute? ha ha! Stanford is of great repute. Just look at the kinda ppl admitted there. Akshata Murthy (Narayan Murthys daughter), Mukesh Ambani ... i am not saying that they are dumb, but its abundantly clear that they are in Stanford bcoz they have shit load of money. Did i mention that Narayan Murthy is on the advisory board of Stanford? Its not hard to imagine what kinda advice he wud be giving them. I guess the next stop for Rohan from Cornell (yeah Narayan's a trustee there as well!) is going to be Stanford. Yeah!
So i think its a good think that in case of CAT atleast you have to have a 99+ percentile to get a call from IIMs. Then maybe all the flithy rich may try their contacts to get their kids in. But getting a 99+ wud be the most difficult thing then.
Except for the 2003 CAT leak , IIMs have done a good job so far (as in the leaks havent been publicised!)
Bottomline: Sadly, only a few institutes of great repute can undertake such subjective interviews. Because in the general scheme of things it would most likely be 'hijacked' ie used to give backdoor entry to the-less-deserving-but-willing-to-pay ...
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