What is the purpose of a group discussion? Why is it a part of campus interviews?

A bit of clarification might help. Are you referring to admissions where its you (one singular applicant) who is being interviewed by a panel. Or do you mean where there are multiple applicants being interviewed by one person or multiple applicants and multiple interviewers. It sounds like the school is looking for Type A or more aggressive people. The class/school technique for teaching might be like the Socratic method where the students are expected to ask questions and interact. If you do not do that then you won't succeed. It could even be the nature of the job. Group discussions usually lead to a better outcome because people get their viewpoints out. If the discussion is dominated by one person then the decision is at best as good as that person, if its more equal then the outcome is usually better. I've seen this happen very often in my schooling. I've seen it happen in real life as well, where one person comes up with a key idea or takeaway that just changes the direction of what we're trying to do (it makes things better.)

As you have written the description of issue, one thing is Clear that you know english well. The flow of writing, clarity of thoughts and presentation of concept is good. So your real problem is just fear of public speaking. Also answering the part about importance of GD, See while companies hire you for any role they envision a leader in you, who will be taking important roles in due time.Being such important person you need to communicate sometimes with clients or team. Those communication will not be one to one. Most of tem will be group discussion. So by process of GD company wants to evaluate that a candidate is both good listener and speaker and if looking for leadership roles, one should know how to moderate the discussions, taking group to concensus etc. I am not expert on the subject but I can share some simple tips and tricks, most of which I have used myself like:   1) You must be having some close buddies, ask them to discuss some debate topics with you in english. Topics can be anything as general as whether "Dhoom 3 is a good movie" or "How is Mody govt. performing".  Talking on such chatty matters will help you come out of shell.   2) Read editorials of hindu and TOI and summarize them to yourself. Record the summary on cell and listen to it. Listening yourself gives confidence.   3) Watch http://Ted.com videos. There are some that deal with your issue and other generic ones are worth watching.   If you perform these three activities for 7 days, I am sure you will feel better. Please do share a feedback in comments :)   Thanks for A2A! Hope it helps.

A company usually looks for three categories of employees : 1. Employees with good communication. 2. Employees with innovative ideas. 3. Employees with high technical skills Lets go one by one what is the importance of each of them and why it is required. 1. Employees with good communication : This type of employees are required to communicate with clients and customers. Mostly service industry rely on people having good communication skills as well as technical skills. I guess mostly your campus interviews related to service industry like Infosys, TCS etc. They look for either engineering students with good communications skills or MBA graduates. 2. Employees with Innovative ideas : Many companies also looks for students with creative mind. You will find people who were just cracking around jokes, spontaneous are getting selected, and you will be wondering why. Company needs innovative people, even if they can't work but still they are filled with ideas and creativity. Many company takes such students into consideration. 3. Employees with high technical skills : Product based companies and startups looks for this kind of people. Even they do not have good communication skills but they need to be good in their technical skills. If you feel like you cannot be good in communication skills, you can try to be great in technical skills. Of course they should have bare minimal communication skill of writing mails and talking to team members. But they would not look for group discussion and all. In essence try to see in which type of employee you want to be and work hard towards it. Try to make yourself a person whom everyone would like to work with. Above all the interviewers are looking for team members and friends. All the best ! Thanks for A2A.

Purpose of a group discussion is very well defined by Sumit Tiwari. Why it part of campus interview : They are looking for skills in the candidates not only leadership but interpersonal, analytical, initiative, flexibility,  creativity. You have to relate these skills with your career. You should not be master at these skill but these would be looked upon. Other problems which you have mentioned are very common with any fresher.Only solution for these problem is practice. Join any personality development course and devote some time there. Do some mock discussions and ask for feedback. Evaluate those feedback and try to improve on your weakness. Take whatever experience you have till now and put them into box called A experience. Leave that box behind if you want to improve. This is how I overcame, and I am still trying to improve. :)

It's the same case of every other individual in college.... But it will help you in future , to prove your point in  this world. This helps you...

Group discussions! Group discussions! Group discussions! Group discussions! A important test which should be taken by the job aspirants because all the MNCs and other local companies also come to a conclusion about your communication skills through two things. One is personal interview and other is GROUP DISCUSSIONS.               Group discussions means speaking in/to a group relating to the subject that was going in the talks of the members of the group. Many people fear in this matter because some are in confident about their communication skills and some feel inferior and some others feel shy to talk in public. But it is very easy to talk in a GD.                 First we can practice GD at home by standing before a mirror and talking to ourselves continuously on any topic. During this we have to observe our facial expressions and our way expressing our ideas because if are perfect in these two then we will gain confidence and next thing is we will not feel inferior about our appearance or facial expressions. To remove the shy we have to think that there is no around us an should act in a very normal as we will act when we are alone. Due to this we will express out ideas very clearly and we will not forget any point relating to the given topic.                 Next is we should try to know more about all things which happen around us because if we have more command on the topic then our confidence will be a hundred times more. We should also give constant mental strength ourselves saying that we can do this. Because of this our confidence will be increased.                GDs help us when we talk with our higher officials because in many companies decisions will be taken by a group of people not by a single person. So if we manage to talk perfectly in a GD then we can easily talk in the board discussions or board meetings or project meetings or colleague meetings or any other official meetings.