Archit Jain
| Name: | Archit Jain |
| Course: | BE in Mechanical Engineering |
| College: | DCE |
| Year: | 2009-10 |
| Company: | Applied Research Intl, Reliance Infra, Aricent |
| Package offered: | Applied Research Intl – 4.5 <joined>, Reliance Infra – 5.5, Aricent – 3.5 |
| Preparations: | I must say I prepared quite a lot. Starting from July, I kept on going through my subjects, preparation materials and everything till the very last day. I ensured that I had an overview of all the subjects. At the same time, I suggest as I did myself to study at least two subjects entirely thoroughly. These two subjects should be of your liking so that you can easily comprehend and move ahead faster. If you are damn serious (and I am sure you are!), then go for exhaustive preparation, nothing is enough! Pick up a GATE preparation book, preferably by GK Publishers; they have hundreds of questions topic vise. Read them, understand them; not once but twice. |
| Books Reffered: | Among the course subjects, I studied Thermal Engineering including power plant engineering, thermodynamics, heat transfer and RAC. I would like to stress on the point that Thermodynamics and MOS are a must for all Mechanical Engineering students. |
| Website Reffered: | Whenever stuck, Google! Thats every students pet line. But make sure you dont go overboard stuffing yourself with information. Search everything about the company and show a lot of interest during the interview session. Your knowledge base should be such oriented that you impress upon the interviewer those skills and hobbies that suit the company profile. But there again, play safe; dont say something that you cannot support in your next statement. An interviewer might love to make you contradict yourself. |
| GD, PI Preparation: | I did not particularly go for Group Discussion preparations. But trust me, you have t read the newspaper daily and try to have healthy small group discussions with your friends. Help out each other in this regard. Point out theirs and yours good and bad points. It helps a lot. |
| Eligibility criteria and students appeared: | The GPA criteria laid down by ARI was 60%, Reliance 65% and Aricent 65%. Approximately 200 students sat for the ARI written round, 50-60 for REL and I really cannot remember about Aricent. |
| The Written round: | All the written rounds had core/technical questions. They also had aptitude as well as personality related questions. To be more specific, ARI had a long paper based on C and C++. They had output and pointer specific questions. In all, it was a completely language based paper. The Reliance paper had core mechanical questions based on thermodynamic cycles, MOS, KOM. All in all, it was a pretty easy paper. The Aricent paper was different. It had 3 sections. First section questions were very easy, quantitative types. Second was programming based. Again easy. The third was logical ability which was damn easy according to me. One question that I remember:Which of following is different: 1.3248 2.3248 3.3562 4.3248 |
| The Group Discussion Round: | There were topics like Education outside India, Privatization, and CWG 2010. Again I would say, always read the newspaper so that you may at least quote the facts! You will be given about 5-10 minutes to prepare for your GD. So be prepared! And ya make sure you dont turn GD into a fish market, our interviewer kept saying that. :D |
| The Interview: | And then comes the interview. Both technical and HR questions were asked.
In ARI, there were two interviews, both with similar patterns. I was asked to write some programmes. Then they discussed all cases that need to be tested. Further knowledge of C++ was checked. In the REL interview, they asked 5 power plant related questions. Also I remember being asked, about drain cooler and how it works. Then about a power plants flow diagrams and thermodynamic cycles. In the Aricent interview, I was asked to write 3 simple programmes. And well I showed some smart skills. Actually, I simply showed him my certificates without being asked. Sir please have a look. He was pretty pleased and it all ended soon. Here I would give a very valuable tip: simply gauge what the interviewer wants and if you have even a little bit of that, bring it out. In general you might be asked about yourself and why you would chose that company, why not the last company. Your strengths and weaknesses will be pondered over. In Aricent they asked about Why Mechanical? Be prepared with points you know about and you want them to know. Also try to answer questions with some relevance to your past. Quoting an incident from the past makes the answer more impactful. |
| Role of Internships and extracurricular activities: | Another point that people often miss is preparing their training/internships. This plays a major role, thats what I felt, especially for a core company.
When people ask me about the role of extracurricular activities, it is a bit difficult to answer. In my case I was interested in programming so such related activities helped me a lot. It doesnt affect so much but certainly creates an impression. It shows how dynamic and multi talented you are. When it comes to consultancies, they play a major role. |
