Some more IIMA PGPX experience

I attended the high tea interaction later in the evening yesterday. It was a good discussion. Came to know a lot about PGPX. For some reason, all of the Professors were trashing PGP and its student, calling them immature and grade fanatics. One of the professor even went on to say that he did not teach PGP class for last 2 yrs and he is very happy about it and he called it a waste of time. The students waste his time to get one point increment which will not make any difference to grade.

PGPX students are matured and kind of know what they want and do not go crazy over grades (Well, what do you think - after 10 yrs in industry- who cares about grades). They have little ambigous grades non-disclosure policy. The adminstration does not reveal grades to recruiters but a student can volunteerily disclose the grade. Funny, doesn't it mean that high grade pointers will flaunt their grades whereas low grade pointers will not disclose. It might create an awkward situation.

The professors were very knowledgeable and down to earth. Amazing simplicity. This will be a key decision making point for me, if I get in, that is.

One thing though, the interviews were pretty ambiguous. I spoke to many people after interview and after the high-tea. No one had clue and it looked like these profs had not even completely read the application/essays. And it did not look like they are going to read. Not sure what will be their selection criteria finally. I hope they have some logic.

Still no news from ISB. They keep changing the date for announcing the shortlist for various places. They have their own weird reasons of releasing the shortlist based on interview location. Sound very funny, but anyway, thats Indian school. Sometimes they do things in certain way and you have to just go with it.

I am thinking of taking a break today and will start my haas app from tommorrow. I hope I will finish it by first round deadline.

IIMA PGPX interview done!

I had my interview today. Overall, I will say, it went ok. I will not say it went great, since I did not start off well.
They did not ask me to present, but gave me a case - some retail guy did not do well in the clothing and now is blamed for things. what will he do.
After that they spoke about my extra curricular, my job, my industry, my goal, indian economy.
Other than the initial case question - which I did not do great, and got stuck with one of the extra-curricular question, I did ok. But not sure, how they have perceived it. I will know it by Oct 31st.

The interview committee was very friendly looking, no stress interview or trying to stress me out. I smiled a lot and laughed at certain places as well.

I just came back to my hotel room to relax, but will go back there for evening high tea. On second thoughts, I am thinking I should have left tonight itself, as not many people are staying back for tea. I would have got some rest and start working on other apps. Will take a break on Monday and start from Tuesday.

ISB / IIMA submitted

Disappeared for long time. I was too busy working on the essays for these two schools, deadline fell on the same day. Barely submitted on time.

I wonder how so many people are managing their app process so well that they are submitted well ahead of time. But O'well, I am trying my best.

I showed my essays to current student in IIMA. He suggested some changes, but was very happy with the essays. In the end, ISB essays turned out well too. I do not think I could have done any better than that.

Writing for them turned out be pretty exhaustive. I have to start working on my US schools essays now.

Another thing I wanted to touch upon, Wharton was never on my list but somehow I am thinking hard on it. I am sure I cannot do its app by first round deadline, but probably will try 2nd round.

In the meantime, I attended mba tour in San Francisco and attended top5 info session as well. Good experience. Will write about them in some other post. Also, had chance to visit UCLA, although no class was in session and they do not plan to have anything before 1st round deadline, which seems to be crazy. Probably would submit my app without class visit. But the campus visit was very informative. Got some juice for my apps.

Now I am in look out for current and former students of various schools.

Let me know if you know anyone in haas, stanford or ucla.