IIM Alumuni Lend Helping Hand

Bangalore: Students who cracked the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2010 successfully now find mentors in their seniors who have gone through this grind. The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) alumuni have decided to lend a helping hand to the wannabe MBA’s.

IIM students offering help to their juniors for the next two stages i.e. group discussion, personal interview and essay writing is becoming a common practice in the IIMs. This student mentorship programme finds one PGP student mentoring three to four candidates who have cracked the CAT.

In IIM Kozhikode, 100 students take care of 3,000 candidates. According to the statement of Sharath Nair, a first year student, they advise them either through mail or phone. But, they are free to come to their campus to get a feel of the ground reality.

As per sources, IIM Shillong has provided all candidates a separate ID to send queries related to the next stages. They also upload personal experiences of students and preparation material that will help them. The queries range from how to fill a form, topics chosen for the GD to what to answer for specific questions. In IIM Lucknow, the students even conduct mock interviews through phone.

In addition, this is a students' initiative and is done free of cost. Abhiram R of IIM-L has said that there is a lot of information available on CAT and how to prepare for it. But, when it comes to GD/PI, a candidate is almost lost. Each IIM has its own style. That is when the seniors' advice helps.

Many professional coaching centres that provide training for various stages have IIM alumni taking classes on how to deal with it. Gautam Puri of Career Launcher, who is an IIM-B pass out has said that somebody who has gone through the process definitely has a better understanding. He added that they try to help students understand themselves as GD/PI are tools to assess their personalities. Agreeing with him, Ajaya Arora of TIME has said that they have around 35-40 faculty for GD/PI coaching and most of them are from the IIMs or other top B-schools.