I strongly believe that life is a continuous learning path and there will be success and failures. One should learn from the failures and move ahead -

Priyesh Jaiswal’s journey has been a combination of both struggle and growth. With every failure he believes that he has set new challenges and taken pride in accomplishing them.  Priyesh hails from Lucknow and belongs to a middle class family. Born and brought up in Lucknow, he completed his schooling from Lucknow Public School and went on to pursue his Bachelor's in Technology from Institute of Engineering and Technology, Lucknow. He majored in Information Technology. After the bachelors Priyesh had a short stint with TCS for seven months. Priyesh Jaiswal is a 2012 student of the PGDIM programme at the National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai.
 
How was the selection process at NITIE? What were the topics covered, the kind of questions asked at the interview? Is there anything unique about the selection procedure that aspirants need to be prepared for?
The selection process was pretty smooth. The cut-off (in General Category) was 98.38. The questions were mostly related to check the interest levels of candidate with regards to the course. Some of them were like:

Why MBA?, Why did you resign from TCS?, Don’t you think you should gain more experience and come to a B-School?, Which specialization you would want to opt in MBA?, Why specifically this specialization? Etc. Some questions were directed to my Engineering degree, related to Information Technology.

The topics in GDs are very random and they mostly check your level of maturity, participation level at the time of Discussion. At the interview the most important question is about the final year project in engineering, around 80% of the candidates were asked questions about it and this has been a trend with NITIE in the past as well.

Did you face any hurdles or problem areas during your preparations? How did you overcome it?
I had started my preparation in my final year of Engineering, but unfortunately did not get many calls. I decided to give it another shot in 2009.

I was always good at QA and DI, as expected of an engineer, consistently scored above 95% in these two sections, but Verbal Ability was a problem. My scores in Verbal Ability varied from 60% to 90% and it always gave me sleepless nights.

My preparation plan was directed mostly towards solving various questions types in VA. I followed IMS for the questions in 2008. There were no results in the shorter run but my newly developed habit of reading and exposure to various question types helped in the mock exams. It took me at least 3-4 months to realise how scoring VA could be. At the same time, I also memorized few of the tough words from Norman Lewis. During my TCS days I did not practice much but religiously followed the Pagalguy website.

How did you decide upon NITIE as the institute of your choice? Tell us about your MBA decision, when did you decide to do an MBA and who influenced this decision? Also tell us about the MBA you are pursuing at NITIE.
Today Once in every two employees is considering a Job change. Career advancement is ranked the most appropriate reason for changing jobs by employees in India. I am no aberration. TCS did not offer much. I would be lying if I don’t say that my first reason to choose an MBA after engineering/TCS was taken in lieu of the Return on Investment.

I was not ready to pay much for fee, other than the fee for IIMs. My first shortlisted colleges were IITs, FMS and NITIE. I got 5 calls from IITs (through JMET), managed to convert 3 of them finally (My final converts were: IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Madras). In the meanwhile I also converted NITIE. The fee for NITIE was only 2.4Lacs for two years (Cheapest in India for an MBA after FMS. FYI, IIMs ask for more than 12Lacs and the ROI as per the placement reports is not much when compared with NITIE). NITIE on account of its geographic location, top-10 rankings, ROI and strong Alumni base of more than 40 years became an obvious choice for my MBA.

Currently, I am pursuing an MBA in the Supply Chain Management domain. I got a decent package of 65,000Rs/- for 8 weeks in a reputed organization through my summer placement and I am also the elected Secretary for NITIE

What are you looking to gain from your two years at NITIE? How do you plan to make the most of it?
I am looking forward to understanding the nuances of Business by understanding the various verticals involved (like Finance, HR, Marketing, Operations etc), from my stay at NITIE.

I am sure the kind of functions involved will help me in the long term to carry forward my dream of becoming an entrepreneur. In the short term, I am looking forward to joining a good organization, to which I can render my services in Supply Chain Management (my specialization).

Your parting words to all MBA aspirants…
I’d suggest all MBA aspirants to study hard, prepare thoroughly, revise the concepts, analyse the mocks and feel free while you are sitting for an exam. Remember it’s the journey that matters and for record we all have the capability to crack any exam any given day. You just have to prepare well and trust yourself.