Ding from ISB

Looks like my dream of returning to India is not going to happen soon. ISB declared its R1 result today and I am NOT in!!!!
I do not know what else I can do. My interview went well, except one estimate question. I am really really sad today. I think I should change my blog url from happylibran to sadlibran.

This has created a doubt in my capabilities and do not know whether I have it in me to do an MBA.
I do not know what is missing. Whoever looked at my essays and profile, gave me thumbs up. I even spoke to few current students and alums and they were pretty happy with my application. Only ad com does not seem to like me. First IIMA and now ISB.
I used to be a good interviewee. I have cleared all except one(that too missed at the last stage) of my job interviews so far. But this application season, I failed 100%.

I know its not the end of the world, but I really feel sad and am cursing my luck. Another gloomy day.

I seriously need to look for R2 application which I thought I will skip if I get into ISB. Now even ISB did not admit me, donno what will happen to US schools.

When will my day come? God, are you listening!!!

ISB wants to talk to me

Finally, after a long wait, got an email from ISB and they want to interview me :)
However, unlike others, they gave me a very very short notice of 3 days.
Aah, another mini battle within this MBA battle. I wish it was after 4th nov. But anyways, I have to live with it.
Some will say, what will you have to prepare for ISB. Well, I think it's just the mind-set. Writing Haas essay, I am totally in Haas mode, but if I need to take ISB interview, I should show my passion for ISB as well :)

My Haas essays are coming along well. I am fine with the content of all my essays and they are not in bad state anymore. All are around 80-90% complete. Need to polish them to make it 100%. I finished writing about my supplemental questions as well. I think I will complete the online application today. I missed out on one critical and dear to heart community service stuff. Did not find appropriate space. I am right now in dilemma about using optional essay. I love UCLA and Stanford essays. They gave me lot of space to write about my passions, and my community service (my strength). Did not get that opportunity to discuss in Haas essays.

Anyways, all I have to do for next three days will be to polish the essay and prepare for ISB interview.

I think I am learning much needed time-management skills even before going to B-School.

top mba tour

I visited QS MBA tour last saturday. A much shorter event than the MBA tour I attended couple of weeks back. The event started with long queue for registration, even when I had pre-registered. There was a session from 2-3pm with panel of ad com members for georgetown, cornell, babson, and unnamed school. They gave usual jibe on application process, recommendations, essays etc. The room was pretty small and half of the audience had to stand.
The fair started at 3pm and I visited quite a few schools. Most of them were friendly and good to talk to. I spoke at length with UCLA ad com member and an alumni.
USC ad com was little on rude side. Somehow, did not like their attitude. And they are hell bent on TOEFL score.
Also spoke to ISB ad com member - found her quite unprofessional. But again, this my perception. She usually avoided tough questions and was busy selling numbers - heard her say umpteenth time that 230 recruiters visit the campus and all fight for the day zero spot :) Many of her answers were inconsistent with what other member on pagal guy forum is saying.
Another alum who worked in TCS before and again joined TCS after ISB spoke positively and was very polite and authentic in his replies.

On application front: I am still not going anywhere. To make the matter worse, I am quite sick and suffering from severe cold and headache. Looks like I will have to drop Stanford from my R1 list and keep Haas. I am not sure I can do both. Some people will question my logic of postponing Stanford to R2 as people target top-tier and first preference school in the first round.
I have my own reason - Stanford is highly comptetive in any round, and I feel I have better chance in Haas than Stanford. So I prefer to try for the school where I have better chance in getting admit in round 1, instead of waiting till round 2- when it will get much more competitive.

Still not happy with UCLA essay- Showed my first draft to a friend and he trashed it. The second revision of 2nd and 3rd essays are looking better. Lot of work needs to be done on 1st one. Haven't even started the 4th one. With deadline only 10 days away - I have uphill task at my hand. Wish me luck

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.

IIMA application submitted

I submitted my first application of this application season. The application interface is pretty bad and I wonder if this the best IIM A can do. Why don't they outsource is to some other agency such as Apply yourself.
Another thing I did not like was it only works on IE. grrrhh.. I am a big fan of firefox and with firefox 3.0, I do not even want to look at IE. But they left me no choice! So much to sacrifice for this application season. :)

Also, there were few confusing things and no proper instructions. What do we fill in asset under management or annual turnover. Well I had difficulty in identifying the turn over since my company was never publicly listed and later it was acquired by another company. Though our HR is from bigger company, our payroll still runs with the smaller company. Anyway, just put the estimated amount.

With one thing off my head, and this helped me creating my one page resume as well. So worth the effort. Now I am going to start working on the essays (yeah, I am optimistic for getting shortlisted). Also need to start working on ISB essays. I am not getting thoughts for the case essays. Any ideas?