Harsh's Corner

IPM: What You Need To Know

Posted on Sep 11, 2020

IPM, IIM Indore is an unconventional programme. In a country like India when most high school students think of engineering or medicine as the only possible career option, clearly an eclectic course like IPM will attract attention – and rightly so. However, being relatively new programme (less than ten years old), little reliable information is available.

Many aspirants of the programme have previously contacted me for “tips” to the entrance. Here’s an anthology of preparation that I usually suggest.

Note: Before you go further, I’d suggest you to take a look at the official website.

Entrance Exam

It is called IPM-AT. Questions are of two kind: verbal and quants. IIM Indore also releases sample questions every year (here’s 2019 paper). The sample questions will give you a clear idea of what is expected. If someone around you has a CAT preparation book, grab it now. The question pattern is largely the same.

Books and Online Resources

Books

The content of the books is largely the same. Note that, I’ve not read either of the books; they are the popular choices that my friends found helpful.

Online Resources (Free)

These are just few question banks I could find using simple Google search. If you need more, search.

Interview

Interview questions revolve around three things: culture fit (i.e. do you really want to pursue management?), learning ability (do you “get” what you do?) and general awareness. A majority of questions would be around your past academics; brush up your class 11th and 12th subjects. You can read my interview experience on Quora.

Essentially, you can do three things to prepare for your IPM interview:

  1. Catch up with news: read newspapers – online or offline. Know about regional developments and national economic policies. More importantly, have opinions about them (but don’t be arrogant about them).
  2. Get the dust off your class 11 and 12 books. Revise most conceptual things; theorems in Physics, basic algorithms in Computer Science, etc.
  3. Recollect your past achievements and prepare stories around each of them. You may have heard of Situation, Task, Action and Result (STAR) framework. Try to have most, if not all of STAR, in your responses. Don’t tell them A is the situation, B is Task and so on. Imbibe them in your story.

WAT

WAT is a relatively new addition to entrance tests — it wasn’t there in my time. However, from what I’ve heard the topics are fairly generic and aim to gauge your language abilities. They are not a test of your general awareness directly.

Here are a few online resources that might help:

For more topics, just Google.

IIM Ranchi WAT-PI Compendium

This document by IIM Ranchi should help you immensely in preparing for interviews and WAT.

Finally!

If you do need additional help — anything that’s beyond the content of this page – feel free to contact me or any current IPM student. If you don’t know them yet, LinkedIn is your friend.

Good luck!

My Thoughts on IPM

How being an IPMer helped me be a better researcher?

Added on May 19, 2022.

The courses taught at IIM-I were a valuable combination of fields. Learning statistics, economics and humanities together enriched my thinking methods beyond what a single class could do. Especially, Stat Methods 1 & 2, Economics Statistics and Econometrics have been handy.

The programming exposure to different languages allowed me to look beyond one specific language now that I code a lot. I use R and Python mostly these days, but little exposure to Java and C++ goes a long way in debugging.

Summer research in the first and second-year summer is not well advertised but you can do it. I used that option, though very few (if any) of my classmates even knew about this opportunity. CIS is one way to do research but has limitations. You usually do it for a term, can only do if your GPA is greater than 3 and can’t do it until the third year.

Summer internships go a long way. In my foundational years, exposure to pure statistics interested me in research.

The focus on projects is excellent too. We learn essential skills like collaboration (and how to manage social loafing) in group projects. Independent projects improve research skills and seed the idea of self-motivation.