3 panelists: 2 Alums, one from Co16 and one from Co19, and one from admissions team (mute and camera off throughout) Scheduled time: 10 AM; Actual Start time: 10.15 AM; Duration: 44 minutes I shall try to recall as much and put down questions/topics in bullets below: 1) Interview started off with they asking me any achievement I’d like to mention upfront 2) A little discussion on my job and interests 3) Why MBA 4) A long discussion about the Industry I am targeting 5) A discussion on one of the courses I had undertaken during my undergrad 6) Questions for the panel Overall, the interview was conversational and I think that knowing your resume in and out and being ready with any specifics, apart from the typical questions should make your interview experience comfortable. Also, for the interview prep, I’d taken help from strategy4gmat.com . The coaching session and the mock interviews with Manan and other ISB Alums were spot on in helping me for the actual interview.

ISB YLP Interview, 25 September'21 A panel of 2 alums both were from CO'19 (1 Male and 1 Female) The interview went on for 35 minutes and overall had a friendly yet engaging tone, nothing stressful of sorts. Some questions I can recall: 1) Tell me about yourself 2) Current role in my Job, and my work profile 3) Since I was a YLP applicant and recently started my job, I was questioned about the trainings I had to undergo at my workplace 4) I mentioned strategy consulting in my application, therefore I was asked why I wanted to go in consulting, a few cross-questions on my justification 5) Why ISB and why now 6) Follow up on the major skills required for a strategy consultant 7) Backup plan if consulting fails 8) Some behavioural questions (Basic HR questions) 9) Positions of responsibility I held during my college 9) Conflict of interest I faced during my time I held the positions 10) Tell us something that is not written in your application For the interview prep, I took help from Preppie, they reviewed my application thoroughly and then asked me all the questions that could be possibly asked based on my profile and application. They were quite accurate I would say, as a lot of questions that they asked me were similar to what the interviewers asked me based on my profile. The feedback they gave me after the interview was very thoughtful and it even helped me frame some of my answers better; also helped me in aligning my story with my goals more efficiently. I would recommend Preppie for anyone appearing for ISB interviews.

Three Panelist (Two from CO'2019 and one from CO'2013) In the beginning, interviewers introduced themselves and ask me to introduce myself. Q1) What has been the most challenging project you took care of in your second job.? Followed by various cross-questions to check my knowledge and actual involvement. Q2) How would you tackle those challenges differently today? Q3) What is the one thing that you are looking out for from ISB? Q4) What was your learning during your international experience? Q5) What were the challenges that you faced in multiple countries you worked in? Q6) How can businesses prepare themselves for upcoming uncertainties similar to COVID-19. Q7) Many questions around curriculum publishers as I have an ed-tech background. It was a conversational interview where they tried to understand the depth of knowledge I actually had. My interview lasted for an hour. Also, for my interview preparation, I took help from S4G that is run by Manan. His team has amazing mentors who are ISB alums and who took my mocks and gave me school/profile specific feedbacks that really helped in preparing for my interview.

3 Panelists - All alumni from CO'11, '17, and '19 (1 male and 2 females). Interview went on for around 45 mins. 1. Intro 2. Talked a bit about my work-experience, my position in the value chain. They asked me a bit more about digital transformations since I had mentioned it in my intro. 3. Why MBA? - told short term goal is to become a product manager and long term is to lead market verticals and eventually become CTO or CIO 4. Cross questioning on why can't you do those things without an MBA. 5. Questions on leadership experience, what I bring to ISB, what will my natural career progression would be without an MBA, what motivates me at my job. 6. They again circled back to if you're so satisfied in your current job, and have received promotions, why do you still want to do an MBA - told them what I would miss if I did not do an MBA. 7. Leadership experience outside of my work. 8. Anything else you'd like us to know - talked about my beliefs on Stoicism and how it helps me cope with stress on my job. Further discussion went on to about the prominent personalities following Stoicism and how Buddhism is different from Stoicism. Overall the interviewers were very cordial and it felt like they just want to know more about me. For the interview prep, I took Preppie's help. They helped a lot from training to mock interviews, and helped me do some introspection and come up with a few stories before the interview. Would definitely recommend.

Had a 45-50 mins chat with 3 alums of different batches. The round included mostly behavioural and generic questions related to the corporate world (no technicals as the alums weren't aware of my niche), and quite a bit of discussion on my motivation and plans. Was a very chilled out sort of a conversation and didn't really seem like there was much grinding to it really. I went into it without any sort of directed preparation and had quite a fun time.

Panel - 2 alumni (males) + 1 adcom member (video off) My interview lasted for around 45 minutes. There was a 10min delay in the beginning but an ad-com member called to let me know. Both the interviewers introduced themselves first and there was some small talk before we started the interview. I wrote about a couple of leadership experiences in my essay and the majority of my interview was about one of those experiences. The interviewers wanted to know more about the situation, what my part in that work was and what leadership traits I exhibited and what I think is the best leadership style etc. There were multiple counter-questions on this particular experience. Then we moved on to my work and what I do in a day. They asked me about one difficult scenario in the past year and how I managed it. Another question was about the work I do currently and my biggest achievement. I talked about one project that I am currently working on. I also got a counter-question about what I would do differently about this project if I had a chance. Then there were the typical ‘Strengths- weakness’ questions. One tricky question they asked was - 'How will you raise the bar at ISB' instead of the usual ‘how will you contribute question’. This caught me off guard a little since they wanted instances of how I stand out specifically among my cohort. One day before the interview, I availed myself a one-hour mock interview session with Preppie. It was really helpful to tell my answers out loud to another person and get their feedback. Especially for the behavioral questions. It was great to get another perspective on how my answers sounded to the listener.

Hello! Panel # 2 (2006, 2014, 2018) Questions: 1. Tell us about yourself. 2. Goals? What motivates them? 3. Are you sure ISB will help you achieve your goals? 4. Give an example of a post-MBA company you want to work in. Why do you want to work in this company? 5. What has motivated transitions in your career? 6. What are your 3 biggest achievements? 7. How did you convince your last employer to hire you despite having no direct experience for the role? 8. How do you get clients for your current freelance role? 9. All the interviewers through multiple questions tried to find what motivates my goal and how convinced I am about achieving them. For the interview prep, I used Preppie's services. It was incredibly helpful. The feedback I received from the mock interviewer turned out to be a game-changer for me. The insights I got helped me better prepare in general and also prepare for some questions that I didn't see coming. Many of these questions were asked to me during the interview. I am happy with my interview.

Panel - 2 alumni (males) + 1 adcom member (video off) My interview lasted for around 45 minutes and was very conversational in nature. Both the alumni were extremely attentive and friendly. They introduced themselves at the very beginning of the interview. A majority of my interview was centered around my work experience. They asked me detailed questions about different kinds of projects I had worked on - my role, interactions with other team members, conflicts (if any), impact of the project, skills gained, etc. I even received a few counter questions on the work I had done. They then asked me about my short and long term goals and why ISB. They asked me a few questions about my family and a few of the extra curriculars I had mentioned in my application. The interview ended with them asking me if I had any questions. The overall interview experience was good. Both alumni made me feel very comfortable and showed a very keen interest in my work and hobbies. Prior to my interview, I booked an hour-long interview training session with Preppie. The training was really helpful as they provided me with specific questions to prepare well for. The one hour session with the ISB alumni was extremely useful since I received detailed feedback and tips on each point usually covered in an interview. The session prepared me to handle any curveballs that came my way. I would highly recommend Preppie for ISB aspirants

The interview was in evening slot . There were 3 panelist’s (2 alums and 1 adcom member) It was overall conversational where much discussion was on work experience and extra curriculars Pfb the questions 1 Please walk us through recent years? I explained my college journey and stresses on work experience and extracurricular as well 2 Then they asked about the project i had mentioned which i explained with example . 3.They asked about extracurriculars i had mentioned in my application and asked few situations around that which i explained as i had faced those. 4. Then i was asked about my initiatives in firm I showed how i contributed in extra work apart from my regular work 5 They wanted to know about my goals and how i aligned to it I stated my goals and gave them the reason for it and how isb will contribute to it with specifics of curriculum 6. There were few followup aswell which i answered Overall it was conversational and it lasted for around 35 mins. Thanks to preppie for helping me with the interview prep as it helped me get better insight for preparation. And the charge was also reasonable

PGP-EEO (R2) -Interviewed by two Professors, both belonging to Finance. Greetings were exchanged, Questions:- Prof1:- 1.Professional Profile 2. What do you do as an IVR Flow Developer 3. What is IVR 4. Guesstimate on Tech Consulting Prof2:- 1. Why Tech Consulting 2. How did you go about setting up the basketball team at Osmania, any challenges you faced Later a very interesting and long discussion around mental health,TEDxOsmaniaU, etc. All in all, the interview was not a stress interview and was very comfortable. The interviewers paid attention,never interrupted and were very kind. I was able to answer the questions thrown my way due to the fabulous support and insights I received from Preppie and ISBMantra. They really helped me address the chinks in my application and helped understand how to portray my strengths. The various resources that were provided were relevant, diverse and were extremely helpful.

PGP(EEO)-Round 2 -2 Professors, both belonging to Finance. -Duration, around 30 minutes. Questions:- Prof-1 1.Professional Profile 2.What do you do as an IVR Flow Developer. (My role) 3.What happens in an IVR. 4.Guesstimate on Tech Consulting. Prof-2 1.Why Tech Consulting. 2.Question about setting up the basketball team at Osmania, a few follow up questions on that. A very nice and interesting discussion on mental health,foreign exchange,TEDx etc. The interview was not a stress interview, and was very comfortable. I was never interrupted, and the interviewers were very attentive and kind. I was well prepared to answer the questions I did, largely due to all the help and insights I recieved from Preppie and ISBMantra. They are the real deal and have amazing resources. They helped address all the chinks I had in my application and helped me understand how to portray my strengths.

- 2 Alums: Senior Consultant (Co’10) & Entrepreneur (Co’18) - Duration: 1 hour 10 mins (interview started 30 mins after scheduled time) Questions: 1. Let’s dive into your current experience - what does your current organisation do and what is your role? 2. Did you interact with farmers? What challenges did they face? 3. In light of the farm act, how is your organisation’s intervention going to help farmers? 4. How are farmers incentivised to take your help as opposed to approaching Mandis? 5. What learnings or strengths have you brought from your previous job that helps you with your current role? 6. Why did you transition from your previous organisation to your current one? Was it your choice? 7. What did you do at your previous job? 8. Your previous organisation has acquired an e-commerce platform - what are your thoughts on that? 9. Where do you think your previous organisation is headed wrt to the new verticals that have come up? 10. What kind of data crunching did you do in your sales role? 11. Did you manage a team? How many people? 12. Given that you worked with distributors from different regions, how did you measure the performance of your team? 13. What steps did you take to understand the different regions you worked in? 14. Case: if you had to launch a new product (eg:water) in Mumbai and Chhattisgarh, what parameters would you use to measure the consumer type in both regions? (Delved deeper into this case) 15. Given you’ve had this kind of experience, why do you want an MBA? Why not continue in your current for a few more years? What is your short-term goal? 16. What do you hope to take away from ISB and contribute to ISB? - I mentioned ELP and the follow up question was: you’ve had far more valuable experience than the ELP can offer so why MBA? 17. Specifically Net Impact and Marketing clubs - what do you hope to contribute and leverage? (I mentioned these two clubs) 18. Going back to your work experience, what challenges and learnings did you have in your first job? 19. What do you think is the pro and con of technology in education? (Question related to the sector of my first job - Education/non-profit) 20. Are you still associated with your first organisation as a volunteer? 21. Are you currently volunteering with any organisation? 22. Where did you grow up? How has that shaped you? 23. What are your interests? How have your interests changed you? 24. You said you’ve lived in Mumbai for the past 15 years - what changes have you seen in this city over this time? Are these changes good or bad according to you? 25. What questions do you have for us? The tone was largely conversational, I was asked a lot of questions around my current and previous work experience. One alum continuously interjected while the other one asked the main questions. I did not expect to work on a case but that happened during the interview and I took it as a learning opportunity. Overall, I was able to provide some answer for every question and I didn’t blank out or get flustered. I was a little thrown off by the case but I asked clarifying questions to get a handle on it. The case was specific to the regions I had handled in my previous role. The energy of the interview was positive from start to finish.

3 Alums (2002, 2004, 2017) The interview was very interactive and a fun experience. Questions: - Tell us about yourself - I had mentioned about my love for fashion, so a woman from the panel asked how am I planning to inculcate in my career. - Why ISB and why now? - Why can't I just continue with my job and maybe my company will sponsor my education further and reach where I want to? - Quite a few questions on my long term goal, how is that going to make a difference. - What role does relationships play in a woman's life? - What are the challenges faced by women in our society? - My current role and how does it make an impact on the bigger picture. - Two negative experiences. - What is the different quality that I bring to the table. - Asked about a automation tool which I made at my work - What do I think consultants do? The interview ended with, do you have any questions for us. I am not sure how did the interview go but I certainly enjoyed it. I took a mock interview from Preppie which really really helped.

Interview Time: 12 PM Panel Members: 2 Alums (CO'13) + 1(Video Off) Q: Tell me about yourself. Q: How did I help my previous firm grow (picked up from my essay) Q:3 Follow up questions on the answers I had given to understand the details of it Q: How did I bring a degrowing category in growth in my current job (picked up from essay) Q: Follow up question with the answer I gave; To consider them as my management and pitch in the changes which I suggested Q: Difference between UAE retail market and Indian Retail market (based on my work experience) Q: How would MBA help me in my short term goal which I had stated in my essay Q : Follow up questions with how would I not able to learn those things while working in my current role also Q: Plan B if it does not work out for the short term goal I am striving for Q: Any questions for us? Q: Before ending Do you play any instrument or sing (picked up from my hobby) The interview went on for about 30 mins. The interview was conversational. They were keen to know about projects undertaken and my role and how will an MBA help me achieving those goal, it was not stressful at all. I think it went well. I had my answers ready to their questions and they were asking a few follow ups. I had taken help from Strategy4GMAT for mocks and they helped me understand the prospective of the interviewer and how to structure my answers to make them impactful, took 3 mocks from them and each one had different questions and it helped me quite a lot as I already had answered the questions asked in the actual interview and with the feedback in mocks was able to make them a lot better. Fingers Crossed

Interview Date: March 13 Interview Time: 11 AM Panel Members: 4 Alum + 1 ISB Adcom(Video Off) Interview Type: Conversational Q1. Tell me about yourself Q2. Follow up question on my diverse roles and what work I did, impact. Q3. Follow up question on revenue recognition and a project experience on it since I was working as a Project Manager. Q4. Why do you want join ISB - why MBA? Q5. Why not pursue your post MBA goal within your current company since I have transitioned across roles? Q6. How would ISB enable you? Q7. Question from Essay - a life example that I mentioned Q8. Question on initiatives that I am running(I mentioned in my essay) Overall Interview experience was okay. *My panel didn't introduce themselves so I greeted them individually when they took turns questioning me* Sources used to prepare for Interview: Preppie(Mock)

ISB Actual Interview Debrief: There were two alums, one who had switched his camera off and another who had her camera on. Both of them were very friendly and started with the below questions - Tell us about yourself - Tell us about your role? How many people do you manage? - What is your most significant achievement? - What are your future goals? - Why MBA? Why ISB to achieve your future goals? (A lot of time was spent here) - What would be your dream companies? - What is Your Plan B if you do not get into your dream job? - There are few placement opportunities at ISB for People & Analytics Strategy roles how will you get placed? - What type of work would you do in P&A Strategy roles? Elaborate? - Asked about my biggest takeaway from my international experience - What would I do if I don't get into ISB? - Any questions for us? Overall the interview went well and I think I only stumbled on the section around 'What type of work would you do in P&A Strategy roles? Ellaborate?' Aside from this thanks to Preppie I was mentally prepared for all the different ranges of questions and most importantly if I did not know about something I confidently answered that I would learn this in ISB. I was confident and smiling throughout the interview which showed a positive vibe and i think helped me ace the interview. Please see below for how Preppie helped in the preparation for interview: I was jumping with excitement when I received the notification from ISB for an interview call, but what worried me the most was that I had only those 4 days to prepare for my interview. ISB was my dream college and having cleared the essay round, acing the interview was a very significant step which would bring me closer to living my dream. I scouted through the GMATClub website to see if I could get a Mock Interview within the 4 days to see where I stand in my current interview preparation and stumbled upon great review about a team called Preppie. I contacted them and immediately obtained a response - please see below for the experience: Interview Preparation and experience with Preppie: a. The Preppie team were so well versed with the state of mind of the applicant and comforted me at first go that its possible to prepare for the interview within the 4 days. b. I was contacted by a member of the Preppie team, Nishchay who guided me through the whole process. Nishchay was a thorough professional, whose candid and friendly guidance made me believe that Preppie is the right choice for practice interview. c. The Preppie team without further ado immediately fixed the time slot, provided a consolidated ISB mock interview packet (included 60-70 common questions that are asked in the interview) and provided a link to join the call for the Mock interview. Note: I wanted to highlight that due to some personal reasons I had to reschedule the mock interview 3 times. The team was extremely accommodating of my requests and immediately worked another solution and time slot for me. ISB Mock Interview Debrief: a. I had a small chat with the Alumni who would be taking my interview. She was a previous batch pass out. She immediately put me at ease and spoke were gently to calm my nerves. b. The Mock interview began with the below set of questions which were very helpful: - Tell me a little bit about yourself? - I am from Engineering background so she focused a considerable amount of time to understand why engineering and why MBA after engineering? - Future goals? and why MBA now? - What do I do in my current role - How is my experience going to be relevant in my future goal? - Lots of behavioral situation based questions. e.g. What kind of a leader am I? If ISB was to select me why would they do so - give me three reasons? How would you convince your cohort to include your proposition instead of her/his for an ISB project submission? What is your biggest weakness I did stumble upon two of the behavioral questions and the interviewer ensured that she poked me a little more there to give me an actual interview experience. This ensured that I was prepared for the myriad of questions thrown at my way and how I should make my answers crisp and short. Feedback from Preppie: - The interviewer was most detailed and spent 30-35 mins providing feedback and helping me clarify a few questions. She asked me where I felt I did well and where I felt I could improve on. She focused on 3-4 areas I need improvement on and how I can tackle the answers better. She was appreciative when it came to the good points. It was definitely helpful that she was a recent ISB alum which ensured that she was upto date with all the recent trends of the ISB interview, having gone through one on her own a couple of years ago. Overall it was a great and well rounded feedback session. Thank you Team Preppie for the wonderful guidance which definitely contributed to getting an admit from ISB.

Mode: Zoom Scheduled Time: 12 PM Start Time: 12:15 PM Duration: 30 mins Panel - 01 Female Alums (Co 2003) and 02 Males (Co 2018), another person who was on mute with video off throughout. The Alums were very friendly and made me feel comfortable. Q: What does the company do? What was your role? What did you do? Q: Work related questions and follow-up questions. Q: A challenge you faced at work and how did you resolve it? What was your learning? Q: Why did you move from the corporate sector to the development sector? Q: How have you grown in this job? What have you learned? Q: What are your short-term goals and how will ISB help you achieve it? Q: What is your Plan B? Q: There are few placement opportunities at ISB for development sector how will you get placed? Q: What about ROI because you will move to the development sector post ISB? Q: Any questions for us? The interview was not stressful, revolved majorly around my work. They were keen to know about projects undertaken and my role. It was conversational. For preparation had reached out to alums and current year students. Understanding about their interview experience was very helpful. Also questions posted on this forum were helpful. Took a 2-on-1 mock from Preppie and they gave me detailed feedback. Would highly recommend it. I had prepared for some work-related examples, basic questions about why MBA, why ISB, short-term goals, long-term goals, challenges faced, leadership displayed, teamwork displayed, initiative taken.

3 Alumnis (2003 (super-entho and asked alot of questions), 2012 (asked alot questions in the start) & 2015 (not much from her, asked only her prepared questions, i'm assuming)). All of them were product/marketing managers. The sequence of questions wasn't that surprising. - They started with asking about a project I'm most proud of and one project that was a failure. I had this prepared so went well. - Then they followup with leadership and learning related questions on projects mentioned explained earlier. - They dug further into my leadership style through behavioral questions. - Then they moved on to more behavioral questions about project management/event management/ my industry/ how covid has impacted it. - Then the why MBA, Goals and what am i looking to get out of ISB. - After this they were mainly digging into why I want to move industries/roles. They thought the role and industry/role I'm in is quite exciting and hand-on but my goals are more strategy/backend/thinking work. - At the end they asked me if I had any questions. The interview went on for 35 mins. The 2003 and 2012 Alumni were the ones asking most of the questions after the prepared questions were done. They had definitely decided amongst themselves as to who will ask what, barring the followups. Interview was super conversational and wasn't as stressful as I had built up in my head. Till the time your story from now, to MBA, to goals is making sense you should be able to handle the interview. For me I think it went well. I has answers to all their questions and they were asking quite a few followups, which I think is generally good. That said, the panel was putting quite a poker face and I didn't get a clear sentiment from them. Fingers crossed

The panel consisted of two alumni and one person from ISB's admission committee. Panelist 1 introduced both him and the other panelist and asked me not to be nervous, as this would be a discussion and they just wanted to know me better. This set the tone of the interview and helped me a lot. They started with my most recent job and asked about my role there. I talked about it briefly. However, they insisted that I further deep-dive into my role as this would help them understand better. I explained about one of the projects that I completed, being as granular as I could. Few more questions about the project, challenges, etc. What could I have done better? Learnings for the future? They seemed to agree with me. They then asked me to take them through my career journey as I had 8+ years of experience. why I choose each role, what factors did I consider while choosing these roles? I explained in detail. Here I also aligned this with my short-term career goals and how MBA is gonna help me achieve that. As I had worked with multiple startups, they asked me about what works well with startups and what doesn't work well? What are the major mistakes that companies make? I shared some of my observations from my tenure at different companies. They were convinced. I had mentioned a challenge faced during one of my jobs in the essay, they wanted to know more. What I did to resolve that challenge. Further questions on my profile and a suggestion around an alternate role. I justified why I wanted to pursue the role of my choice. Finally, they asked if I had any questions for them? They ended the interview by saying that it was a good conversation and that I was a strong candidate for ISB.

3 Alumns - 2004, 2013, 2016 batch 1 good boy, 1 bad boy and 1 neutral (who was supposed to be just the tech guy but ended up asking the most questions) Grilling, Kind of stress. On top of it they were really short on time. We started with me explaining my career progression with my current entrepreneurial experience as a focus. Few cross questions here and there. Grilled me a lot on Entrepreneurship. Why MBA suddenly after just a year of entrepreneurship. What did you learn through this journey. What conflicts did you go through. How would you handle conflicts with your peers during your MBA course. -- "Bad boy" wasn't convinced with my answers. What is the one thing you would take from PGP at ISB - I mentioned Credibility - They respected this honest answer What Else? I said Networking - What kind of people would you look to network with - Entrepreneurs, Mfg/Operations guys, those interested in Adventure sport activities. What is that one thing looking at which one would never say this task has been taken up by me. - Inventory Management Are you a loner? What would you say you are - introvert or extrovert? I said - Extrovert of all the introverts - which they liked :) What kind of legacy would you leave behind - Friendships A lot of cross questioning on my long-term goal of Electric Vehicles. We literally finished on an agreement that the interview was intentionally made stressful and that I handled it well. :) My experience wasn't as similar as to other guys but could be because I have more years of experience but you never know. Not practicing does help I guess.