Quality In Accounting Education: What Say The Academics: Fill & Download for Free

The worst thing about Indian education today is how it has turned into a business for some money-minded people and quality education has become so rare to find. I mean any random person is coming up with their own set of funda, opening an education company and looting money. They spend more on their marketing and promotion tactics rather than investing into good teachers. And two of the best examples that fall under this category are BYJU's and Whitehat Jr.I had written this article previously too but the Moderation here decided to delete that. It is very common on Quora to get your answers deleted if you bash either of these two companies which makes me wonder why are they sponsoring Quora to take down negative reviews when they could actually use that money to bring in some positive content and great educators onto their platform!Indians are very gullible and those who know that we Indians are gullible take the advantage of it. If you have been watching the television lately, you would come across advertisements of BYJU's and Whitehat Junior, where they explain how great their course content is and how every child should take up coding. Well, BYJU's is an education platform or at least that's what they like to call themselves which imparting video tutorials to school children while Whitehat Junior is a company owned by BYJU's which aims at teaching coding to kids. And they have making a fool of the Indian parents, the school students and looting them of money, wasting their time and making a joke of the entire system.The parent company BYJU's main business model is selling study materials to the school children. They employ sales agents who reach out to the parents trying to sell a subscription of their product. Since I had a friend who worked in this role, I know how this works. They praise the ability of the kid by saying that they have a huge potential to do good but somehow the tuition teachers or school teachers are not able to bring that out. They claim that BYJU's will help their kid and bring out the best in him. If an average student or a below average who has hardly received praises from teachers ever, hears such flattering words, he will automatically be inclined towards that sales agent for sure. The parents too will be convinced as they want the best for their child. They fall into these sugar-coated words and buy their course.Some parents and students are a little rational. They ask for some sample learning resources first. But here too BYJU's is one step ahead of them. For each class, they have a couple of topics which are actually explained nicely and in great details which is very easy for the student to grasp and understand. Impressed by the content, they buy it. It is only after that the course has been bought and the student goes through the videos that they realize the videos are of sub-standard quality and hardly provide any information.They also try to sell you a tablet device. This tablet will have all the courses pre-loaded on it, indirectly making you purchase an additional device that isn't necessary. One could have studied using the internet on their phone or computer but they trick the parents into buying an extra device and looting extra money from them.The last is the study material that they provide. All they do is club the material from 2/3 leading books in the market and sell them as one by adding their own cover. You can find quality material in the market at lesser cost but BYJU's make a fool of the parents and trick them into paying extra. They sell the online course, the offline study materials and then the tablet device and everything is below standard.But the BYJU management did not stop with one single fraud company. They launched a sister company called Whitehat Junior.Whitehat Jr is on a mission to brainwash the young kids and deceive the parents into enrolling their children into these overpriced courses. The teachers at Whitehar are not even qualified. They recruit teachers without any coding experience as it is evident from their job posting.Apparently no coding knowledge is required to teach coding. You can very well understand what your child will learn from them. They train their teachers on sales and marketing, how to convince the parents in buying their product rather than actually teaching them. This is the exact same thing, their parent company BYJU's does and Whitehat Jr is no different.As a computer engineer, it is really humiliating when some website comes up with an advertisement stating that some 6 year old Chintu can also learn coding and make their own apps. This kind of things put us in an inferiority complex and it makes us wonder what did we accomplish in engineering college? I had been learning programming since Class 9 in Java. Over the years I have learnt many more programming languages and built academic projects with teams of 2–6 people, personal mini-projects and I know how much amount of knowledge and team effort is required to do all these. And then suddenly one kid whose age is less than the number of years I have been coding comes up and tells they can learn coding from some website and built an app of their own. And apparently, angel investors will be fighting against each other in front of your house to invest in your product.Hence I decided to check how authentic this website truly is and the best way to test it would be to attend their class. But I know I cannot attend their class since I don't look like a school kid anymore. But my brother recently passed out from school and I made him my guinea pig. I registered him as a Class 12 student and he did the rest. He created an account on the website and was looking to book a trial class.Now, do note that they advertise their free trial classes on the advertisement. But in reality, you cannot book that trial class. It shows that all the trial classes are booked and one had to buy the paid classes subscription.A very nice marketing gimmick to attract students to their platform and then redirect them to the paid courses.But I decided to explore their courses and take a look at what they offered. The first one that caught my attention was on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.Where on Earth would you find a course priced at Rs 1 lakh? Can you imagine paying one lakh rupees for an online course? I mean, there are so many free platforms like Udemy, Coursera, Khan Academy and of course, YouTube where you get far better content. And yet they mention this as their 'most popular' course, tricking the parents to buy this one!There was another course on the landing page next to this for Python.Eight classes cost Rs 6,000. What would they even teach you in eight classed? You'll learn absolutely nothing in 8 days. It takes a longer time get a grasp on a new programming language, specially if you are a school kid. I learnt Python during my second year of engineering from various online platforms but free of cost. And it definitely took me more than eight days. Truth be told, eight classes will cover nothing at all.My request to all parents would be not to fall for these gimmicks. I appreciate that you are concerned with your kid’s career and you should be guiding them on the right path but its better to watch for scams. Pushing them on the wrong path is even worse.

I am one of those data points. One of the plaintiffs sounds exactly like me: an Asian-American valedictorian applying to the Class of 2014 with a 36 ACT and several extracurriculars.Emotional anecdotes and knee-jerk responses are tempting. I indulged earlier (unwisely?), because if there is anything I feel I can anecdote about, it’s being an Chinese-American applicant to the Harvard Class of 2014, and growing up in an immigrant subculture that that is intensely focused on education and top schools.But now I want graphs. Tables. Numbers. A news article, while nice, is not much better than emotional anecdotes or stereotypes.It took me some time, but I found them!Primarily from the plaintiffs’ Statement of Material Facts and other documents. Harvard has some too. These sources are obviously biased — there’s some fighting about what subsets and controls to use in the regressions — but they include a lot of actual admissions data, so let’s dig into the numbers, shall we?Warning: Long answer with tables and charts. I have largely avoided the contested regressions and stuck to the actual data, though the plaintiffs have excluded legacies, recruited athletes, and Dean’s List applicants from their tables of deciles and Personal scores.(This answer is subject to obsolescence if new information is released in the ongoing litigation.)Here’s how Asian-American and White applicants stack up in four “Profile” categories, which are intended to be race-neutral (that’s right, this isn’t even the “Affirmative Action” part of the lawsuit):As you can see, a higher percentage of Asian-Americans than white applicants excel in Academic and Extracurricular, while the opposite is true in Personal and Athletic. Slightly more white applicants are “well-rounded” in three or more categories.What do these categories mean? Here’s what we know:Academic: “grades, test scores, and other typical measures of academic achievement, such as nationally recognized competitions or awards”1: “has submitted academic work of some kind that is reviewed by a faculty member”Only ~100 applicants per year receive a rating of 1.Aside: enough applicants have academic publications there’s a separate category for them?! This must be quite rare for a high schooler if they haven’t been coached by their PhD parents. On the other hand, I know a first-gen college student who joined a scientific mailing list out of personal interest and drew the attention of a local researcher, leading to first-author publications, so it can be done. A well-earned 1 right there.2: has “perfect, or near-perfect, grades and testing, but no evidence of substantial scholarship or academic creativity.”Interesting choice of words, “academic creativity”.Plaintiff and I are probably 2s. I scored better on some tests than them and other plaintiffs, but at Harvard, perfect and near-perfect merit the same Academic score. Tragic.Extracurricular: “extracurricular activities, community employment, and family commitments”1: [redacted, but probably international and national-level accomplishments]2: “significant school, and possibly regional accomplishments” — for example, “student body president or captain of the debate team and the leader of multiple additional clubs.”Athletic: “athletic achievements” [scores redacted, but 1 is probably Olympic- and international-level athletes; recruited athletes can’t be far behind]Personal: “a variety of ‘subjective’ factors,” including… “character traits”, “positive personality,” … “humor, sensitivity, grit, leadership, integrity, helpfulness, courage, kindness and many other qualities”1: “outstanding” personal skills2: “very strong” skills3: “generally positive” skills4: “bland or somewhat negative or immature”5: “questionable personal qualities”6: “worrisome personal qualities”There are case studies used by the Admissions Office and interviewers as examples of “distinguishing excellences” and how to evaluate candidates in the context of their circumstances. The Casebook excerpts have been redacted, to protect the applicants and stymie zealous college preppers, but they reflect an obsession with using context and personal qualities “to distinguish among the many academically strong candidates in its pool”:Definitions out of the way, here’s the data.This a table of the percentages of applicants with “outstanding” and “very strong” Personal scores. You can see both the Personal scores assigned by the alumni interviewers, as well as those of the admissions office, which is based on the interview report (if available), personal essays, teacher recommendations, school background, and more. The data is arranged by race (columns) and academic index decile (top to bottom, worst to best). The academic index used here is not the Academic score, but calculated from only GPA and test scores, then used to separate the applicants into 10 deciles of about 13,000 students each.For reference, applicants of different races are not equally distributed across academic deciles, so the overall Personal scores are skewed accordingly:I also got really tired of squinting at these numbers, so I squinted at them one last time and made graphs:Takeaway points from this data:Academic index (used by the plaintiffs) is very different from Academic score (used by Harvard admissions).Comparing the first bar graph to last line graph, an Academic score of 2 (“perfect or near-perfect”) corresponds roughly to Academic index 6. That is, about half of all applicants have “perfect or near-perfect” GPA and test scores.You could almost fill the entering class (~1,600) by admitting only applicants with Academic index 10 (~4,000 applicants over 4 years). That group is a bit more than 50% Asian, 35% white, 3% Hispanic, less than 1% black, and the rest “other/decline to state”, presumably also white and Asian applicants.Harvard admissions does not officially distinguish between perfect and near-perfect GPA/SAT/ACT. Everyone over decile 6 is lumped into Academic score 2. (Academic score 1 is reserved for faculty-reviewed academic submissions.) Asian Americans are over-represented in deciles 8+, edging ever closer to “perfect”.Academic index and Personal scores are positively correlated for all races. Surprising — not what I expected from Harvard’s description. This suggests that Personal may actually mean something like “inspirational” and “talks/writes like an intellectual”. Personal != personality, unless you believe kindness somehow tracks with SAT score.Speculation: Is the bonus to black and Hispanic applicants in higher deciles in part due to “Wow, you’re so articulate”-style prejudice? Black and Hispanic applicants are less common in those deciles; they must really stand out to application readers.Speculation: Perhaps more whites and Asians “study to the test” to attain higher standardized test scores. This strategy can improve your SAT score but is unlikely to improve your ability to “talk/write like an intellectual”. Disproportionate hard work may put less-talented students in the upper academic deciles, where they drag down the Personal scores of everyone else. (Use of test prep services is not reported in application data, but in one of the voluntary freshman surveys, it was highest in Asians, then whites.)Oh alumni interviewers. I love you and your grade inflation. You basically gave half of all interviewees the highest possible scores on the Personal rating. The Admission Office was not nearly so kind.Most people are more personable in person. It probably takes a lot of writing skill to be personable in an essay.Different sources of data: The interviewer is evaluating their in-person experience, while the office is reading essays, recommendation letters, and the interview report. The office also has access to financial and high school quality information.Asian Americans have great Academic scores, better than whites — how can their average Personal score be lower?At almost every academic decile, alumni interviewers gave top scores to fewer Asian-American applicants than applicants of other races. (They come out slightly ahead overall because they have a high average academic index.)It was reported that the in-person interviewers gave Asian Americans better scores than the admissions office. While that is true, they also gave everyone better scores. They actually show the same trend as the admissions office.At almost every academic decile, the admissions office gave top scores to fewer Asian-American applicants than applicants of other races. The differences between races is more apparent in the admissions office.Taken together, there were ~4% more whites with high Personal scores from the Admissions Office than Asian Americans, while there are ~1% more among Asian Americans in the interviews. In the highest decile, the disparity is ~7% and 1%, respectively, in favor of whites.Racial disparities are larger in the higher academic deciles — the ones where Asian Americans dominate, and the ones where the serious culling of applicants will take place. The lower deciles are less important because almost no applicants (of any race) in those deciles had a chance at admission in the first place.I’d like to appreciate for a moment what an interesting strategy it was to publicly cast this as a battle between Asian-American and white applicants.When you look at those graphs, is it really the red and blue lines that seem the most different? This data is clearly far more damning to African American and Hispanic applicants.Edward Blum must have realized after the #BeckyWithTheBadGrades case that Asian Americans have great grades and white people are an acceptable target. Better to have a weakly supported narrative about rescuing Asians from elitist racist white people than a stronger case pitting Asians against black people. No one wants to be rejected in favor of some rich white private school kid.Whatever. That’s not the point.The point is, they’re biased against Asian Americans and in favor of African Americans (and Hispanics and finally whites, in that order).Well, I could think of other reasons than bias.We don’t know what “Personal” means. Harvard’s redacted all those juicy details and suggested vague but value-laden traits like “kindness” and “humor”, which are very odd traits to be positively correlated with SAT score. Of course, they have to be vague, or they’ll see a sudden influx of applicants remarkably like the ones in the documents, but it sure looks bad if all you can say to defend yourself is [redacted].In the absence of confirmation from internal Harvard documents, but in line with what everyone already knows about writing a college personal essay, Personal probably owes a lot to Interesting or Unusual.This means you’re screwed if your profile (and background) looks too much like anyone else’s. That’s not fair. It’s especially unfair to immigrants and children thereof, whose characteristics tend to cluster tightly around the requirements for US visas and the cultural values of their communities.I don’t think the admissions office could ever own up to that. At least Americans generally agree on what it looks like to be artistic, humorous, confident, etc. Those things are usually considered important positive traits. Virtuous, even.But Interesting? How is it fair to use something so arbitrary to determine who deserves entry into the Hallowed Halls of Our Greatest and Most August Institutions of Learning™?Can’t you just buy Interesting, like going on a backpacking trip through South America while creating a documentary about migrant farm workers’ orphaned children? Woe to the ordinary, who lack the connections for an internship with a leader in [Something Cool], the money to go gallivanting off in pursuit of adventure, or the poverty for a heartwarming tale of persevering against all odds!What even is Interesting?Maybe an unusual sport or extracurricular, something that causes the reader to think, “I’ve never met anyone who _____ before.”It could mean rural or from an underrepresented state:It could mean that you’re interested in doing something other than the Asian-American favorite, “Medicine or health”, perhaps even expressing interest in the whiter “Government or law” and “Arts, communications, design, or social service”:While we’re at it, being an Asian who is dismissive of liberal arts education is probably not a very good way to get into a liberal arts school. It may reflect a fundamental disconnect[1][2] between what Harvard thinks a Harvard education should be and what the average Asian thinks (any) education should be. You’ll have an easier time getting in if your educational philosophy matches the school you want to get into. While laser-focused math/science types abound, they are much less common (and may have been subjected to more stringent selection) than well-lopsided students with a few different strengths.Or maybe they’re taking your family background into account, too, when trying to gauge your passion for medicine or science:But… Why are those things bad?Isn’t it crazy that the advantages our parents fought so hard for — getting STEM jobs to support us, buying a more expensive house in the right school district, making sure we did extracurriculars, cultivating our interest in STEM, paying for enrichment programs and all the activities we could fit in our schedules — that all those supposed advantages are counted against us, because they’re stereotypical, and we didn’t have as many barriers to overcome on our path to excellence? Is Asian American academic achievement less valuable because it doesn’t reflect innate intelligence, but parental involvement and hard work?Don’t you value parental involvement and hard work?It’s almost like Harvard favors people who excel despite their background more than people who excel because of it. Parental involvement and a good upbringing mask the underlying talent of the student. Meanwhile, the rest of the world usually cares about performance, regardless of the cause.Would the same characteristics be praised if they belonged to an African-American student? A white student?And after all that, then you have to prove that you’re unique and special, but if your application reader has already seen too many people like you, your specialness goes down.But surely there can’t be that many Asian Americans with similar profiles?These racial categories are so broad and artificial, they don’t even capture all the relevant stereotypes/archetypes.There is huge diversity in Asian Americans, though in conversational American English it tends to mean the plurality East Asian group, and in college admissions, tends to focus on Chinese Americans. (Thanks, Amy Chua.) So, are South Asians treated the same way as East Asians? Southeast Asians? (Data on Filipino-American representation suggests no: Filipinos are underrepresented at most selective of UC campuses, after the removal of race from admissions.)Almost 80% of Asian American adults are foreign-born[3], so their children will dominate aggregate statistics like these, but what about Asian Americans who have lived in the US for multiple generations? Are assimilated Asians scored similarly to white Americans?Are white applicants more diverse in life background and interests than Asian-American applicants?Don’t wealthy white kids have access to the same advantages Asians are often cited for using, like pricey prep schools and SAT tutors? Is the admissions office also docking their points on Personal?What about children of African immigrants, who have similar opinions about education and STEM careers as Asian immigrants? Do people just assume that every African-American applicant had to overcome larger life obstacles by default, and thus get a higher Personal score?The statistician for Harvard added those “life background” variables (rural/urban, type of extracurriculars, parental occupation, school quality, neighborhood income, intended career) to his analysis, and came away with the conclusion that once you take those into account, race doesn’t explain the difference between white and Asian-American admission rates. It does still strongly affect African Americans and Hispanics, but apparently we’re not talking about them.But… when does using those “life background” variables cross the line into discriminating against a specific group (racial or otherwise) disproportionately representing a particular “life background”?What else?Culture shapes your personality, either in conforming to or rejecting it, as anyone familiar with the long history of Asian-American angst literature can tell you.Pictured above: prelude to Chinese-Canadian angst. See also the extremely heavy-handed application of Chinese-American angst in Paper Menagerie.I don’t attribute these differences to genetics or “race”. We know very well how upbringing can shape academic outcomes and personality. Anyone can be a Tiger Parent. We just have more of them.We’re also aware that stereotype also includes low sociability/creativity, even as we know many friends who don’t fit that stereotype at all.We can point to charts and surveys about differences in values[4], personality[5], social anxiety[6] , self-esteem[7][8], motivation[9][10], and so on. None of this Academic vs. Personal debate is new. I recall a lot of people being upset by Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, which I interpreted as “superior in some ways but not in others”.Those factors are also part of the ~4% difference in the average Admissions Office Personal score. At the same time, those factors might be an excuse.Here is what I sometimes suspect my face signifies to other Americans: an invisible person, barely distinguishable from a mass of faces that resemble it. A conspicuous person standing apart from the crowd and yet devoid of any individuality. An icon of so much that the culture pretends to honor but that it in fact patronizes and exploits. Not just people “who are good at math” and play the violin, but a mass of stifled, repressed, abused, conformist quasi-robots who simply do not matter, socially or culturally.I’ve always been of two minds about this sequence of stereotypes. On the one hand, it offends me greatly that anyone would think to apply them to me, or to anyone else, simply on the basis of facial characteristics. On the other hand, it also seems to me that there are a lot of Asian people to whom they apply…“There is this automatic assumption in any legal environment that Asians will have a particular talent for bitter labor,” he says, and then goes on to define the word coolie, a Chinese term for “bitter labor.” “There was this weird self-selection where the Asians would migrate toward the most brutal part of the labor.”By contrast, the white lawyers he encountered had a knack for portraying themselves as above all that. “White people have this instinct that is really important: to give off the impression that they’re only going to do the really important work. You’re a quarterback. It’s a kind of arrogance that Asians are trained not to have. Someone told me not long after I moved to New York that in order to succeed, you have to understand which rules you’re supposed to break. If you break the wrong rules, you’re finished. And so the easiest thing to do is follow all the rules. But then you consign yourself to a lower status. The real trick is understanding what rules are not meant for you.- Paper Tigers, one of the most prominent post-Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother thinkpieces of the Asian-American angst genre.Give off the impression that they’re only going to do the really important work. It occurs to me that it’s the kind of naive arrogance that could go over really well in a college essay. A shibboleth for the elite.Just because something is more common in one group [of surveyed college students] doesn’t mean you can make assumptions about individuals. If there are 4% more white applicants given the top Personal score, that doesn’t mean that all white people have 4% more “personality” than all Asian Americans. A statistical statement is not a categorical statement.We can’t make assumptions about people based on their race, gender, or any other adjective. We have to look at them as whole people, with their own backgrounds and unique circumstances. Unfortunately, that kind of thinking — those “unique” circumstances that overlap with other H1B visa holders — and all that space for subjective personal judgment and cultural preferences — is what got us in this mess in the first place. Even if you consider every person as an individual, without stereotyping, if there are average differences by race, the aggregate outcome will show average differences by race.Maybe we should just judge students based on the most meritocratic, objective, and unbiased measurements: grades and test scores [that my racial group is really good at, and correlate with income].But that just pushes the problem further down the road. Those subjective things like “leadership potential” and “communication skills” are important in real life. They will come back as a bamboo ceiling. We’ll have to deal with people giving us low Personal scores for the rest of our lives if we don’t have the cultural intelligence to improve those skills or advocate for our own cultural values[11].This reminds me of the gender wage gap[12], which can be explained by women’s job choices, personal values, childcare, work experience, flexible hours, maternity leave, and so on. We have a culture that shapes women’s personalities, leading to aggregate inequalities. Maybe the 20% gap isn’t entirely sexism. But biased attitudes are real, especially in institutions that feel no pressure to change.“Lean in” by understanding how your social behaviors will be perceived by others, and how to change them. But if you’re being judged by your stereotype, not your actual attributes, sue the hell out of them. (Bonus: This will demonstrate your assimilation to the ancient American tradition of litigation.)The two legal filings are basically in agreement that there are non-quantitative factors affecting Asian-American admission. The plaintiffs say the non-quantitative part is a racial quota enforced in part by artificially deflating Personal scores by race. The defendants come just shy of saying that the Personal score is a reflection of things like the above tables and that “uniqueness” is negatively correlated to the number of other applicants with the same background.It’s funny how they edge around it. Maybe they can’t explain themselves, because the explanation itself would sound racist. Or it’d mess up their legal strategy.This Personal score is just the tip of an iceberg. I don’t know how much can be attributed to bias rather than underlying differences in cultural values, or overvaluing unusual backgrounds. But if you’re worried about race in Personal, worry even more about race in the Overall score, where it’s explicitly allowed to be taken into consideration.I’ll be quite honest: my education would have been worse without intelligent classmates of all different perspectives. African Americans, South Asians, Europeans, and so on, but also people who were Republican, communist, atheist, poet, Buddhist, Jewish, evangelical, farmer, military, queer, Muslim, dancer, Kentuckian, Texan, homeless, sled dog caretaker, BDSM enthusiast*, whatever. (I met all of them and more.) *maybe not a good topic for your essay thoughAsian Americans have the rare opportunity to learn from the best of two cultures, if we manage to evade the worst of both. As a result, I believe that exposing students to different cultures is part of a world-class education. That means admissions will subjectively judge students on what their personalities and values might bring to the campus environment.But geez, Harvard, I wish you could do that without implying that our culture is the least special of all of them.Footnotes[1] Whither the Liberal Arts at Harvard? | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson[2] As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry[3] https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2015/05/21/113690/asian-immigrants-in-the-unites-states-today/[4] Career Development Attributes and Occupational Values of Asian American and White American College Students[5] Culture and Personality Among European American and Asian American Men[6] APA PsycNET Login[7] ACCULTURATION, COMMUNICATION PATTERNS, AND SELF-ESTEEM AMONG ASIAN AND CAUCASIAN AMERICAN ADOLESCENTS[8] PsycNET[9] APA PsycNET Login[10] Motivation and Mathematics Achievement: A Comparative Study of Asian‐American, Caucasian‐American, and East Asian High School Students[11] Cracking the Bamboo Ceiling[12] What is the gender pay gap and is it real?: The complete guide to how women are paid less than men and why it can’t be explained away

IIM Calcutta Interview: The Blood BathProfile: B. Tech. , Final Year, Electronics and Communication, Delhi Technological University (DCE).10th/12th/Grad: 89%, 88.8%, 63%, CAT: 99.84 PercentileThis is an almost word-to-word account of the experience. It's darn long because the interview was, well, darn long. But it's worth a read.This was by far the most helpless I've ever been in any interview. The interviewers were the most decent looking savages I've ever encountered. It was a true rapid-fire where I was cut after almost every sentence.There are three panelists, all males. Professor of Economics to my left (Econ), younger professor in front (Prof), alumnus to my right (Alum). I'm the second last to go in.Alum: So why is there an extra N in your name?Me: <Told> * He starts smiling*.Prof: So did your life change?Me: My life has been good lately, so I have no reason to complain. *All smile*Prof: *Looks at my form* Everything is fine, why 63% in college? (Damn)Me: Sir, only initially the scores were low, then they rose.Prof: Yes, but why? (I try to underplay and move on. He pushes a lot)Me: I was a topper throughout school, but there was resentment because of missing a seat of a decent course at IIT by a small margin, so I neglected academics. Later I realised my mistake, scores have been rising consistently, scored 78% in the latest semester.*I had planned to talk about the strong extra curriculars I developed initially, and about the tremendous growth I showed in the last year (always focus on how time was utilised, if not for studying), but I give in to the constant prodding and give them the reason that I didn't give a crap about academics initially (because I hated ECE). It's the wrong approach, don't emulate this ever. 9 days out of 10, it's a disaster.*Alum: What missed, you mean you didn’t get a rank? What did you get at IIT?Me: Metallurgy at IIT Roorkee.Alum: So, Delhi Technological University. Admission was through rank or board exams? I tell AIEEE. He asks rank, I tell.Alum: Which calls do you have?Me: C, L, I, KAlum: So Calcutta is your best shot.Me: Yes, sir.Alum: Okay tell me, will the normal curve touch the x-axis?Me: In the graphs we see, it does. May I use the notepad?Alum: You’ll make the graph touch now. What’s the point?Me: Sir I’m writing the equation. *I write the equation* It has to tend to infinity, so it'll never exactly be zero, so no. Alum nods.Econ: What is the standard form of Normal curve?Me: Sir, N(0,1). Both nod.Prof: *Stares at me deeply as if he can see through my soul* So, Why MBA?Me: I want to have a venture of my own down the line. Given my experience from my internships, I would want to get into the social sector. So immediately after education, I want to get into business consulting to gain insight into the industries, gain exposure on solving problems, blah, blah.. *Prof literally rolls his eyes*.Alum: Why not invest now? You'll invest Rs 10, make it 100. Turn 100 into 1000. That's what an entrepreneur does.Me: Sir, chances of failure are much higher without proper education and experience.Alum: But you'll lose only 10 Rs.Me: Sir, there is an added cost of time and effort. And I still feel that I'll be better off with proper education.Prof: What are the qualities an entrepreneur must have?Me: I start listing, he writes them down as I speak. First and foremost, Resourcefulness. Leadership. Creative thinking. Specialisation in a field. *Alum cuts me*Alum: What is leadership?Me: (After thinking): Sir, leadership is the art of extracting the best out of people based on their potential, and helping them align with their goals.Alum: If you get an on-campus opportunity to pursue entrepreneurship from DTU, will you take it?Me: Definitely not sir. I want to gain experience first.Alum: That's talking like an employee, not a leader.Me: I wouldn't want to take a hasty decision without equipping myself with the required skills. *Nods.*Alum: Give an example of specialisation helping an entrepreneur.Me: After thinking 5 seconds. I briefly cite the example of Elon Musk, his specialisation in physics, his education, his work on electric cars and space tech.Prof: Give me an example where someone created something after creative thinking.Me : (I begin to give the examples of Uber and Zomato, Deepinder Goyal being a strategy consultant.)Prof cuts in: Tell me a tangible item. You are also from transport business (father's business in form), you know these are aggregators.Me: (I give the example of wearable tech for women security by a startup of our college.)Prof: What if I hug the girl and the device gets pressed?Me: Sir, the device needs to be pressed twice in quick succession. So that's highly unlikely.Prof: Yes still, I hug her and it gets pressed twice?Me: There wasn't any solution yet while I was working with them. Later it must have been solved. Probably the distress signal can be cancelled by the app to prevent hoax calls. That's a viable solution. *Alum nods*Alum: Is there any tech which revolutionised the electronics industry?Me: Sir, transistor. When in 1920s they were developed, *Prof cuts, says don’t tell stories*Me: Sir, it is because of transistors that we have such high computational capacity in our devices today.Alum: I think it's the bulb. It doubled your day. Without that, transistor would never have been made.Me: Sir, transistor could have been developed... during the day also? (Both smile) Transistor would have come up later, but it would have.Alum: Bulb made people develop and use electrical energy. Without it, electricity wouldn't have been used. *Some more discussion follows*Me: That is true. In that case, I agree, sir.Prof : *Goes through my form thoroughly. Visibly annoyed at college marks*: Everything else is fine. Tell me why academics are low. This is an indication that you'll not do well at Calcutta.Me: Sir, I agree that I went wrong. In the first half, they were low. Later I picked up and put in efforts. Scores have risen.Prof: Show me your marksheets.*Fuck. No. That is the only thing I've dreaded for a month. A part of me dies as I hand over the folder. Prof takes out every single marksheet from the folder and scans.*Prof: What happened in 3rd semester. What is all this? What, 42%?! 46% in 4th?!(I quickly tell that it’s 60% in both now, since I cleared the backlogs, embarrassed at myself as I say it.)Me: Sir I genuinely didn't think these subjects would help me. I didn't see a future in them, so I didn't study. I did realise my mistake later. I retook the exams, studied over and above the academics, made my base strong.*Alum asks the subjects with backlogs. Probability and Stochastic Processes is one. Econ says I won’t survive C without maths. I say my maths is strong. Full marks in 10,12th. Had a backlog in Probability and Stochastic Processes, so studied again. Additionally, studied stats for 6 months separately from edX and Coursera.*Alum: So your base is strong in PSP now that you've studied? Shall I ask questions, will you be able to answer?Me: (I nod) Yes sir, I should be able to.*By now, I realise the interview is tanked, there is no coming back. I have to say yes, that I'll be able to answer.*Econ: *Asks 2-3 basics. I answer correctly* What's volatility?Me: I don't know sir.Econ: But you've studied stats. Wasn't this there?Me: No sir, I've never studied volatility.Econ: But you've heard stock market volatility. (I insist I don't know. He pushes further.)Me: If you'll allow me to make an educated guess, it could mean the tendency of the stock to deviate from the mean.Alum: Does the stock market have a mean?Me: Yes sir, it should have, mean reversion is a method used in algorithmic trading.Prof cuts: Isn't deviation from mean standard deviation? So how is it different?Me: I talk about SD. Then say I'm sorry I don't know about volatility, though they should be related.Prof: So for you, volatility and standard deviation are the same.Econ: Then how is stock market index calculated in Sensex?Me *recalling what I had read. I checked this specifically, but forgot*:Sir, I think it’s based on indices of top 30 companies. They are dynamic in nature. etc etc. (I know I went wrong somewhere, waiting for them to point it out.)*More discussion follows*Prof: That's comparing apples and oranges. You can’t do that.Alum: Are you guessing or do you know it?Me: I’m guessing sir. I don't know about stock markets. (Shit. Sounds like the last nail in the coffin.)*I feel like a chimp, may I leave? Can we start this all over again, is there a reset button? I thought I was better than this.*Prof: So what are your hobbies?I’m glad they didn’t end the interview. They’re asking more, must mean something. Or they’re just getting sadistic pleasure. I’m clueless.Me: Playing chess and watching movies.Alum: So in chess, (I'm hoping he'll ask a game related technical question). Why is a rook called a rook? King is king, queen is queen, why is rook a rook. (Stop this shit now)Me: *Giving an I-don't-know, I'm-thinking-deeply look*Alum: There must be a reason.Me: Sir, it should have to do with the king's army, considering rest of the pieces. Alum nods. I know that the 8 pawns have professions farmer, doctor etc.Econ, Prof smile: Oh, we didn't know that! Interesting!Alum: So why is there a bishop in the army?Me: Sir, historically priests and religious people have had influence over kings and queens. They have been the right hands of the royalty.Alum: Do you know anything about European history?Me: Yes sir, the church was powerful. (Thinking chess should be older, and it originated in India, not Europe. But the form we play today was developed in Iran or Europe, not India. I keep shut)Alum: And they engaged in wars.Me: Yes sir, the Crusades. *Nods*Prof: What type of movies do you like?Me: Sir, almost all genres.Prof: Which movie won the most oscars?Me: Titanic…Prof cuts: How many?Me: It's either 9 or 11. [It's 11]Prof: Is it the only movie to have won that many...9 or 11?Me: There's another one. Either Ben Hur or Casablanca [There are 3- Titanic, Ben Hur and LOTR, 11 each]Alum: What's the oldest movie you've watched?Me: 12 Angry men, 1957.Alum: Have you watched Mughal-e-Azam.?Me: Yes sir, as a kid I did. (Almost immediately regretting saying that)Alum: When was that released?Me: I think early 1940s.Alum: Sure?Me: I think so, but not sure. [It's 1960]Alum: Isn't that your oldest movie then?Me: Smiling. Oh, yes sir. He smiles back.Econ: Wasn't it in colour?Me: Initially it was black and white with one song coloured. Later it was released in full colour.Alum: Where did you do your industrial training?Me: (I talk about my internship at CIIE, the business incubation centre of IIM-A.)3-4 questions follow. They keep straight faces, don't seem impressed.*At this point I simply want to leave. But I pray they don't end the interview here. If they ask more, means I'm going right somewhere, I got something going for me. I don't know what, but something*Econ: Gives a math question while other two talk - Sum of N terms without formula.Me: Sir it was a method famously developed by Gauss when he was a child, write series in reverse and add. *I write it and show. Econ cuts, okay okay fine.*Prof: Can you add N^2 series.? I take 2 minutes. Prof joins back in. Econ tells I solved the first one.Prof: Have you read it before (Sum of N)?Me: Yes sir.Prof: On PagalGuy?Me: No sir, long ago I read it generally.I'm still stuck on N^2, trying to solve it using cubic series . Econ says it's ok, and tells me to leave it.Econ writes fibonacci series, asks me what series is it its significance.Me: Fibonacci series sir. (You're mocking me now?)Econ: What is its significance?Me: *I recall the spiral photo made with the series… Of a girl splashing water with her hair in that fibonacci spiral*Sir, it makes a graph like this. (I draw) It's a logo also that I saw. [Dept of Stats and Data Sciences at UT Austin used it.]Econ: Yes, right. What is it called, some significance?Me: *I think and think and it hits me* Is it ...the Golden ratio?Prof: Leave it. We asked this yesterday too. You’ve asked someone.*What the fuck. You’ve got to be kidding me. I prepared for a year to get this interview, and it has come down to this? I somehow manage to put up a helpless smile.*Prof: I think we're done. Do you have any questions for us?Me: Sir, I'd just like to say one thing. I know my college academics are low and I've faced the brunt for that. I’ve had to work extremely hard in the last 2 years to make up for it. I made a mistake once, so I know not to make it again. I'm not going to squander an opportunity again and I’ve learnt that.Prof *Much more calm tone now*: See, we're here to select people, not reject them. It's all relative. You'll not get a 3rd semester again at IIM. You can’t make a comeback. But we believe life gives a second chance (I nod).Alum: Do you have any questions for us?Me: No thank you sir, nothing as such.We exchange pleasantries.Prof: You've been smiling all through. Take a toffee.I thank and take.Prof: Uhh, take another one!Feels like he's absolutely pitying me by now. I smile and say it's okay.Prof: Take It.I take another, thank them and leave.Verdict: Selected!