The IIM K GD - PI

The IIM Kozhikode Group Discussions were the first to start. Apparently they hand out a number of calls and hence their rounds last a while. Mine was on the 12th of February in the afternoon. The venue for the IIM K calls is Dadar Catering College also known by some freakish long official name.
I had a quiz in the morning, which meant that I had to rush to Dadar thereafter. The cab was pricy and I ended up paying through my nose. The K call letter had a set of 4 questions to be answered. Due to quiz mugging I could only manage 2 until I landed inside a cab. I never appreciated the smoothness of the Eastern Express highway as much as ever before nor did I realize how much could be written in a minute of red signal stillness. I reached just in time for the attendance. They had 3 panels of about 9 each. I was the 4th in the panel 3. They started delta late and called our panel to a room.
We were to be watched over by 2 profs. P1 - wearing denims and sneakers, who did most of the talking and P2 - who seemed very observant. The GD topic was given on a paper and wanted us to discuss whether UGC should introduce Astrology as a subject in universities. I made half a dozen good points. The GD went on well with most points being covered. At the end of it I was satisfied :-) They asked us to leave our forms behind and step outside. So far so good.

The waiting area was a corridor with a single file of chairs. I felt stuffy and had a walk around the college. The interviews before mine were turning out to be a mixed bag of acads + workEx. I made a few conversations but largely kept to myself. Each of the first 3 guys took an average of 20-25 minutes.
I went in with my file and an unusual perkiness. They didn't ask for file and the other thing put them off!!

P1: How do you calculate the distance between 2 points?
S: In what dimensional space [...]
P1: Choose something
S: under root of square of blah blah
P1: So if I give you a distance matrix between 20 points can you determine their co-ordinates?
S: If there is a solution, there are infinite.
P1: many questions abt. the same thing. It seemed like a favorite questions with him. He had asked a few other people the same question. I don't know what he was trying to get to - but I seemed pretty confident that it was a simple question and not much could be different. Went over the basics of co-ordinate geometry, whether translation / rotation happens and how.

P1: Moving on. If I want to host a website how do I do it?
S: blah blah abt. buying webspace, setting up server etc.
Each time I didn't say something - he would prompt me for it and I would with time figure out what he wanted. I said everything (right and wrong) that I knew about hosting web pages, internet connectivity, DNS, Apache servers, IP addresses and allocations etc.

Having spoken about these main headings he abruptly said I could go. I was surprised since he hadn't had a look at my form while that was the only thing P2 did. P2 didn't say a single word. They didn't ask for my file - which I presumed was a routine. The overall experience lasted barely 10-12 minutes so I really don't know what to make of it. Either they have a strong reason to take me or they thought I was too arrogant and anyway wouldn't join and hence have a strong reason not to take me.

However I did meet a few people who I think am gonna be meeting often in the coming few weeks. The indepth knowledge of the procedures and technicalities that they have awed me. To sum up, it was a decent experience but not as much a preparation for IIM A as I had hoped. Thankfully, the return ride fare was shared !!