B-school Entrance Process - Entrance Phase 2 (Personality Assessment)




	It's the personality assessment phase, the last lap of the race. Now your personality needs to do the talking. It's all about how well you know yourself.


	Second Phase: The Personality Assessment
	The objective is to assess your personality through tools such as Group Discussions and Interviews.

	GD & Interview
	The most common personality assessment tools.

	Different Institutes - Different Styles
	B-schools have developed their own unique ways of conducting this phase.

You are called for the Personality Assessment phase if you've secured the qualifying cut-off scores in the written test. All top B-schools conduct a written test before they make the final selection of students for their MBA program. After testing your aptitude through the written test, B-schools assess students' personalities by placing them in group situations and through one-to-one interviews. Different B-schools use different personality assessment tools, but the most common amongst B-schools is the use of Group Discussions (GDs) and Interviews.

Group Discussions

A "group discussion" is just that - a discussion by a group of people. Typically 8-15 students sit across a table and are asked to freely discuss a given topic, while a panel of evaluators observes their discussion. The discussion topic could be virtually anything of general interest and current affairs. The discussion normally lasts for 20 minutes.

Interview

Nothing scares a student more than an interview with a senior panel of experts! For most graduates, this is the first serious selection interview they face. And the pressure that a 'bad' performance can make all your preparations go in vain is enough to make most people nervous.
Most institutes follow a similar format for the interview. A panel of 3-5 interviewers meets the student in a closed room. Normally the interviewers are from different disciplines, most are usually professors at the institute and occasionally behavioral psychologists are involved to observe how you interact.

Different Institutes - Different Styles

You may find B-schools that don't follow the linear process in the second stage. Their second stage consists of various other tools. The table below lists some of the tools used by top B-schools to select candidates in the 2nd phase of admission for academic year 2006:

B-school

Process

MICA