IIM Lucknow Interview Experience PGP 2019-2021

Interview Date- 26th March 2019

Venue- Monarch Luxur Hotel, Bangalore

Time- 8 am. 90 candidates to be interviewed by 7 panels. My last IIM interview for the year. Several candidates were missing ( more than 10 )

WAT- The topic was "Online education will soon outweigh on-campus education system". I wrote well, giving examples, maintaining good speed and hand-writing ( I do have a terrible hand-writing ), and also wrote various points, in the 15-minute time limit.

Interview- I forgot to get my original certificates in the interview room, so was asked to leave and get them ( maybe this slight carelessness will cost me a lot ). I entered the room again, with a smile on my face and sat down, confidently. There were 2 panelists- 1 male, 1 female. The male professor was from Operations and the female professor from Finance and Accounting.
Keeping my personal data form in her hand, the female professor asked me where I was from. As I mentioned Lucknow, both the panelists' eyes lit up and they asked me which area I used to stay in and how long had it been since I had visited Lucknow. This went on for 5 minutes.
The female professor then asked me what I did at work. I explained, but somewhere my explanation was not clear to her and the confusion spiraled out of hand. The other professor stepped in and said, "He does not know that because he works at the front-end." I agreed with him and told the female professor about my efforts in front-end development for a product and user experience improvement.
The female professor then asked me to write down an identity matrix ( I did so, correctly ) and then find the inverse of any 3*3 matrix. I started off well, laid down the process for her and started calculating. As it was taking time, she asked me to stop and questioned me about my very low graduation marks ( this might be the deal-breaker, IIM-L may not consider an academically irregular student for their famously rigorous PGP course ). I explained the reasons and what I had learnt from that experience ( not satisfactory ).
I was then asked by the female panelist about what was going on these days. I talked about Jet Airways, Mindtree acquisition ( asked what a hostile takeover meant, answered correctly ), Ayodhya mediation, upcoming elections.
The other panelist asked me how I read the newspaper ( they were not satisfied with my current affairs knowledge ).
He asked me about the number of Lok Sabha seats being contested for from Bangalore and from Lucknow. I could not answer both the questions and the panelist said, "Not interested in politics too much?". I said,"Not too interested sir, but I do happen to know major political parties contesting and the election dates for both Lucknow and Bangalore."
This was my one chance of impressing the panelists and I failed.

The interview ended there, I collected my documents and left. This was my last IIM interview for the season. It did not go too well. 

Expectation of result- I do not expect conversion at all. I failed to grab chances of impressing the panel and also appeared sloppy and careless in the beginning when I forgot to bring in the certificates.

Result- Wait-listed at 450. In short, rejected.