The following is the transcript of my IIM Bangalore interview to the best of my memory. I'm a general male candidate and scored 99.67%ile in the entrance test. My panel consisted of two professors, while my interview lasted for slightly over 30 minutes. Both my panelists were very chill for the entire duration of the interview, and it often felt like a free flowing conversation rather than a pointed question and answer session. The professors will be referred to as P1 and P2 for the rest of this transcript, while any additional context or thoughts will be in italics.
Vivanta EM Bypass, Kolkata, 06/02/2026
(I walk in and ask for a seat)
P2 (Older of the two interviewers, mid-50s): Sure, sure, take a seat. I can see here (from the SOPs I had submitted) that you have a strong interest in economics. Tell me, where does this great fascination with economics come from?
Me: Sir, I find economics to be a very unique and elegant representation of human behavior-
P2: Behavior? That’s the domain of psychology and other sciences. How is that relevant to economics in any way?
Me: Sir, economics provides us with various models which can sometimes be too theoretical. Utilizing certain insights from psychology can help us refine those theories and make better predictions.
P2: Predicting human behavior is totally impossible. Even psychology cannot help us predict how people will react.
Me: We aren’t trying to predict exactly how people behave, we are only trying to analyze their reactions to certain incentives. Psychology broadly studies the brain’s reactions to certain stimuli and economics simply considers those stimuli which are monetary incentives. Professor Richard Thaler did a lot of pioneering work in the field of behavioral economics and won the Nobel Prize for his contributions.
P2: (nods) Thaler simply wrote very well for an economist. If you placed, say, Freud with an economist then he would probably psychoanalyze the other person’s dreams without leading to any useful insights. How does his work fit into the research of Keynes and Adam Smith?
Me: (smiles) Sir, Freud’s theories about the interpretations of dreams might not give us the most relevant data about people’s economic decision making, but leveraging certain insights from psychology can provide further refinement and real world accuracy to the theories of economists.
(*This back and forth discussion about behavioral economics continued for a while before P1 took over)
*P1: You have mentioned game theory and the prisoner’s dilemma in your SOP. Can you explain broadly what the prisoner’s dilemma experiment is about?
Me: Yes, Sir, the prisoner’s dilemma broadly tells us that when information asymmetry exists between two parties, they will each make a decision that is seemingly optimal individually, but the ultimate outcome will prove to be suboptimal for both parties.
P1: What exactly do you mean by this? How should each prisoner act then?
Me: Sir, in a scenario with no communication, each prisoner will logically act based on what they think is ideal for them individually, while the actual optimal outcome may be something else. Professor Robert Axelrod conducted an experiment where he discovered that a simple strategy of ‘tit for tat’- exactly matching your decisions with those of another party- is the best method.
P1: Can you explain this through a table?
(I constructed a rough payoff matrix considering the four possibilities of various combinations between cooperation and competition)
P1: (pointing to the paper) So can you apply numbers to this and prove whatever you said about the prisoners’ decisions?
Me: No, Sir, unfortunately my knowledge of game theory does not extend that far. I am curious about the topic and I would like to explore it further, but I am not yet aware of how to utilize mathematics here.
P1: (nods) Behavioral economics or game theory aren’t part of your 11th and 12th syllabus, so how do you know of these concepts?
Me: Sir, I am generally interested in economics and read about these topics out of my own curiosity.
(P2 takes over)
P2: So are there any other topics or subjects we can expect you to be conversant and comfortable with?
Me: Sir, you may ask me anything from microeconomics or mathematics, particularly calculus.
P2: Ok, calculus. In that case, find the integral of the square root of tan(x).
(Both P1 and P2 start working on their laptops. I attempt to solve the integral through a substitution, but cannot work out the resulting quartic equation through other methods)
P2: (noticing) It says in your SOP that you like to derive mathematical proofs from scratch. See if plotting the graph and summing up its area from first principles helps.
(I was not sure how to go about this because I had been presented with an indefinite integral that could not be evaluated as a summation)
[Continued in comments]
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Me: Sir, I tried making a substitution, but I am unsure about how to proceed with this.
P2: (laughs) No, no, let it be, this was actually a trick question. Look it up after the interview.
Me: (relieved) Does a closed form integral not exist for this function, sir?
P2: Yes, it won’t have a simple antiderivative curve and is difficult to evaluate.
P1: Coming back to game theory, let us assume there are 100 mangoes and there are two people. The mangoes are to be divided among the two people, but one of them is in charge of distributing them. It is likely that the person distributing them will keep most for himself while giving the other person very few mangoes. Is this situation fair? How would you ensure that it is made fair?
Me: Sir, I recently read about an identical experiment that was conducted between two people using 100 dollars. When one of them would keep the lion’s share for himself and offer a very low amount, the other person would often deem it unfair and reject the offer altogether, even though accepting even one dollar would leave him better off than before. (P1 nods) However, to make this distribution equal, we could give each person 50 mangoes.
P1: That’s assuming you are distributing the mangoes. How would you enforce a rule that allows one of the two people to distribute the mangoes while still making sure that the process is fair?
Me: Sir, I would likely introduce a kind of penalty for retaining too many mangoes for yourself. If, for example, you have to offer a mango for every two mangoes you keep for yourself, we would arrive at a roughly 1:2 division, and having to offer one mango for each mango you keep would give us the same result of 50 mangoes each.
P1: Good, can you consider what would happen when dividing 100 mangoes among 0 people?
Me: (took a moment to think) Sir, that would logically not be possible, and in mathematics as well, dividing by zero is undefined.
P1: But we can divide by any other number with no problems. What is the intuition behind being unable to divide by zero?
Me: Sir, we can think of divisions as splitting a whole. When we divide by two, we split a whole into halves, and when we divide by three, we split a whole into thirds. We cannot logically split a whole with respect to nothing. Even in maths, we can only predict how certain functions will behave when variables are very close to zero through the use of limits, but the functions will be undefined at zero.
P2: Can you prove that diving by 0 is illogical?
Me: (had no idea how to go about this but improvised while writing) Sir, let us assume we have some real number k (I should have said non-zero real number to be more precise) which we divide by 0 to give us another real number x. Through basic algebraic manipulation, we can see that this implies that k = 0 into x, which implies that k itself equals 0. However, we established that k is already a real number, and so, k being equal to 0 is a contradiction. Hence, dividing by zero gives us an undefined value.
(I am not sure how valid this is, but both professors seemed satisfied with the answer and nodded)
P1: Ok, now consider a different scenario. A coaching center claims that their students perform 30% better than other students who have not used their classes. What are they trying to say through this statement? Is there any way this claim could be inaccurate?
Me: The coaching center is trying to suggest a direct correlation between the quality of their education and high marks in a certain exam, and they are backing up this claim through a statistical figure (P1 nods). However, it could be possible that this coaching center requires students to first pass an entrance examination to even be eligible for their classes. In that case, only the subset of already academically strong students will be enrolled in the coaching center. Because it is likely that they would anyway score higher than their peers on the final test, the role of the coaching center’s education cannot be determined.
(P1 seemed satisfied with this answer as well)
P2: These days, many students use LLMs to generate their SOPs and essay assignments. Do you think this is ethical?
Me: Sir, if the goal of the assignment is to gauge the student’s skill and level of understanding, then the purpose is completely defeated through the usage of an LLM.
P2: Do you know what kind of LLMs students use?
Me: Yes, sir, Claude, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini are some prominent names.
P2: Are there any methods for detecting their use?
Me: Sir, there are various websites that give an estimated percentage of how much text is AI-generated, however, different websites tend to give very different answers, and they often flag purely human written text as AI as well.
P2: (nods) Why do you think the usage of LLMs is incorrect? Previously, students used to frequently ask their parents or their elder siblings for help in writing.
[Continued in comments. Last one I swear]
Me: While that is true, it is likely that their help extended to giving others rough pointers for how to write something, not a complete word-for-word essay.
P2: That is only an assumption. There are many who would write an entire assignment for their younger siblings. How is that any different from using an LLM for the same task?
Me: (paused to think) Sir, someone else writing on another’s behalf would still carry a very distinct human and personal touch to it. By contrast, it is easy to tell that an AI generated writing had little human involvement.
P2: But where are LLMs trained?
Me: Sir, they are trained on pre-existing text on the internet that was written by people.
P2: Exactly, so aren’t LLMs simply a democratization of asking others for help?
Me: (paused again because that was a damn good point) Sir, the texts that LLMs are trained on have a very different writing style and syntax compared to day to day human communication. Many LLMs are trained on highly esoteric and rare research texts and academic journals that very few people will ever read.
(P1 takes over)
P1: Ok, can you draw the graph of |x-5|?
Me: Sure, sir.
(On the paper, I first divided the function for x<5, x=5, and x>5 and plotted it, explaining the reasoning while working)
P1: Is this function differentiable?
Me: No, sir, while this function is continuous, it is not differentiable at x=5 because the left hand derivative is -1 while the right hand derivative is 1.
P1: (nods) Ok, can you now plot |x-5| squared?
(I explained that squaring the equation effectively accommodates the negative portion of the curve to give us the same curve as (x-5) whole squared)
P1: Is this curve differentiable?
Me: Yes, the left and right hand derivatives are equal for (x-5) whole squared.
P1: Can you find the local minima for this curve?
(I initially took the derivative of (x-5)^2 and set it to 0, and said that its minima occurs at x=5)
P1: Are you sure about that?
Me: Yes, sir, the minima is at x=5.
P1: And how are you sure that it is a minima?
Me: (*I had a moment of brain fade before realizing he was asking about the second derivative test) *Yes, sir, actually x=5 is simply a stationary point. We can take the second derivative of this function, which is 2, and because this is a positive value, we know for certain that this stationary point is a minima for the curve.
P1: (nods) Can you explain the intuition for why a positive value represents a minima?
(Both P1 and P2 listened to this answer intently)
Me: Let us first assume we have a negatively sloped curve. (*I drew a line sloping downwards) *If the second derivative is positive, we can see that it increases-
P1: What exactly do you mean by ‘it’?
Me: Sir, that’s the rate of change of the function, which is the slope.
P1: (nods) Continue.
Me: If the slope of the curve increases from negative to positive, we know for sure that the curve will equal 0 at some point. Plotting this roughly (I drew a parabola), we can see that such a figure would open upwards while the point where dy/dx is 0 is its minima.
(Both professors nod)
P1: It says in your SOP that you have read Jhumpa Lahiri’s works? What books have you read?
Me: Sir, I have read The Namesake (*brain fade again because I could recall the name 'Interpreter of Maladies' at that moment) *and her anthology of short stories. (Professors didn’t seem to take note of this)
P2: Which one did you like more?
Me: Sir, The Namesake was particularly memorable because as a Bengali myself, Jhumpa Lahiri’s depiction of the Bengali diaspora in the United States had unparalleled accuracy. She beautifully captured minute details about our mannerisms and other traits. The Interpreter of Maladies was a great book as well (brain fade over).
(Here, P2 takes note of my home town and casually asks me about my school. The panel had already interviewed another person from my town before this)
P2: Good, good, you may leave now. Do you have any questions for us?
Me: Yes, sir, I was wondering, what are you looking for in an ideal candidate for this new program?
P2: It is a new program and it’s going to be very academically intensive and rigorous. We are looking for students who are sincere and capable and can keep up with the curriculum.
Me: (smiles) Thank you, sir, it was great speaking to both of you. You asked very interesting questions throughout.
(Both laugh, and I take my leave)