Ahmedabad, DeshGujarat

Ahmedabad’s Rohan Desai is one and only Gujarati guy successful to get in to the IIM Ahmedabad’s flagship course PGP(G) this year. IIM Ahmedabad is world’s toughest management school to get in to. Read how Rohan got IIM Ahmedabad call in this exclusive talk with DeshGujarat.Com.

Childhood was just A wall away from IIM Ahmedabad

I am basically from Valsad in South Gujarat but born and brought up in Ahmedabad. My residence has a common wall with IIM Ahmedabad campus. I was observing this campus since my childhood. People used to say “This is IIM Ahmedabad which is toughest business school to get in to across the world”. I decided in my childhood only to get into IIM Ahmedabad.

School, College, Family

I finished my school education from Prakash School. Prakash is an English medium school with central board syllabus. I belong to a doctor family. My father Dr. Mahadev Desai is physician doing private practice. My mother Dr. Beena Desai works in Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad as an Eye surgeon. After school my obvious choice was medical line. NHL medical college which is affiliated with Vadilal Sarabhai Hospital (V.S.Hospital) is toughest medical college to get in to across Gujarat. I got an admission there and finished my MBBS last year in 2007.

A Doctor Appearing for CAT

After MBBS my one year mandatory medical internship started in V.S. hospital, Ahmedabad. I decided to appear for common admission test (CAT) that was compulsory to get in to the IIMs and other major management schools across India. My friend Dr. Purav Gandhi too decided the same.

It is interesting question that why I decided to go for cat exams and management studies after becoming a doctor. Well, commonly engineers and other graduates go for IIMs and management schools but not doctors. But this trend will change soon. You will see, in coming years, more and more doctors will join MBA. In fact when we two doctors from NHL(me and Purav Gandhi) appeared for cat, many junior doctors came to us and told, that their same intensions for next year. So “Doctors in IIM” will be a common scenario in near future and if that a trend, I am a trend setter.

These days, lots of corporate hospitals, healthcare industries, pharma giants, biotech companies are coming up with a corporate structure. They will prefer a doctor MBA combination if available to run their facilities in a better ways. If I am a doctor and I work hard, I can influence some patients but if I am a Doctor+MBA and suppose if I can administer a hospital or group of hospitals, I can surely influence much more patients and can make a greater difference. This is what I think as a medicine doctor who is going to study MBA.

Cat preparations

Preparing for cat was not very difficult. Data interpretation is inborn skill. Some may have it and some may not. Logic, people don’t find it too difficult. Mathematics, you can prepare in three or four months. English, you have to prepare well. One should start reading English well before at least one and half year. Read English regularly, daily, in whatever package, it can be a newspaper of magazine or novel. Practice of spoken English is must as well.

IIMs Calling: Essay writting in IIM Ahmedabad

After cat I had a call from several IIMs including IIM Ahmedabad. This was a great thing. To appear in IIM Ahmedabad interview itself is a great thing. IIM Ahmedabad has started essay writing session instead of group discussion from this year. Subject of essay “worsening male female ratio balance” was given on the spot to us some 35 youngones. For 150 words, we were given 10 minutes.

IIM Ahmedabad interview: The most exciting session in admission process

After essay writing it was a time for personal interview. This was the most exiting thing in IIM Ahmedabad’s entry process. There were three professors in the interview room. One more was sitting idle in a corner and he later on left the room in between. Professors started my interview with HR. This was a feel comfortable time when I was asked about my hobbies, my strength, weaknesses, who I am etc. Then there was a second section of interview which was about Academics. Professors asked me my college studies related questions. They did not ask a single question about school time. As I was a medical graduate, I was asked couple of medicine related questions. Next section was about General Awareness. I was asked general knowledge types of questions. They asked my say on Raj Thakre affair. I replied that whatever Raj Thakre’s ideology might be. His way of doing the things by use of violence is objectionable. As I was a medical student, they asked me about Dengue and NRI doctors’ issue in U.K. Next section was about my work experience. I had no work experience, so they asked some questions about my internship.

Stress session in interview: It was like a Pressure Cooker

And then the next section was the Stress section. They started rapid questions. Some questions like “define teamwork”, “define planning” were totally new to me. I could not answer some questions. I tried to answer some other questions which were rejected and in couple of cases ridiculed by the professors. At one point I felt that professors were creating an atmosphere that could have made me cry or angry. Soon I realized that this was a stress interview. I was in the trap. So I just maintained calmness, respect and humbleness in a pressure cooker type of situation. I continued to say “sorry I do not know the answer sir” in reply to their questions that were hard to answer. When I tried to give some answers that I knew but was not confirm about, they reacted “You know nothing, don’t you know even this much?” I did not protest and most of the time replied “Sorry sir”.

When I came out from an interview, I thought IIM Ahmedabad was a lost battle for me. I think 9 out of 10 young ones who appeared for this interivew were feeling same. I had interviews in other IIMs and XLRI too but nowhere had I faced stress interview session. It just happened in IIM Ahmedabad and believe me it was the most interesting one. I think they were testing how I would react in difficult times. Anger, protest, ego, passions, calmness, maturity, hypocricy all they wanted to observe and check while making me in to the pressure cooker like situation.

Finally I have got in to the management school of my dream. I just checked IIM website and receiving friends’ calls of congratulations.