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.

UCLA Submitted

Wheew!! what a relief. Finally, I submitted my ucla application today. My first US school application. Finally, I am happy with my essay, showed them to a current student and an alum, and both appreciated them. I am quite confident of an interview call (80%) chance.
I think as told by both my reviewer and my own belief, my first essay turned out to be stellar. The audio part looked more conceptual, but I do not know whether anyone was able to put in example in 1 min audio. I am quite happy with the quality. Hope ad com likes it too :)

Among all this chaos, one place where I am struggling is IIMA interview preparation. I have it this weekend and I am not fully prepared yet. Too many things to know in current affair and I have yet not prepared my answers to regular question and not yet finalized my presentation. There will be few more long days/nights for me.

I am still debating on R1 application on stanford and haas. My heart still want to write Stanford essay, but my head is logically saying that I should only focus on one and I think one where I have good chances will be Haas. Anyway, cannot start any of them before Oct 13th, so have to wait.

Meanwhile, fellow applicants have started getting admits from Columbia - congrats to all of them. It really need that kind of drive to get an admit so early in the season. I really need to get some inspiration from them. I still have long way to go, as it always happens with me :) So far, submitted 3 apps, all on the last day of submission :) But kind of perfectionist I am, I think this trend will continue.

Bail out rejected

Dow tanked more than 777 points. My portfolio is down by 40%. Is the recession official now? The prediction for dow is that it will hit 8400. Not sure what I should do. Should I take the losses now and wait for it to plunge further to do my buy back?

I wonder how the jobs at the BSchools are going to be affected with this crisis. Banks all over the world are failing. Future is looking gloomy.

Anyways, lets see what future holds for us

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

Shayri time

Muskaan tere hothon se kahin jaye na,
Aansu teri palkon pe kabhi aaye na,
Poora ho tera har khwab aur jo poora na ho
Woh khawab kabhi aaye na

UCLA Essays

Today I completed draft of 3 essays. Still do not know which one of the 4th essay choice I want to speak on. I am leaning towards either a, but b is equally tempting, but I think I have addressed b in my other essays.
Now I need to gather my thoughts on entrepreneurship. And find out a way to do a audio recording. Any ideas for efficient and productive way to do the recording and create wav file?

Still haven't started preparing for IIMA interview. The world is getting crazier. My 2nd recommendor is very busy and wants me to create outline for the reco. This sucks! Already have so much work and I am playing a catching up game and here is another task :)

I sometimes wonder, I should use some essay writer! (anyone listening?) I will provide the content and they write it and polish it for me :) After all, this is another managerial skill to get the work done. Anyway, before anyone start bashing me up and call it unethical, I was trying to lighten the atmosphere and playing it silly to de-stress from the burden of doing so many things.

Haas Class Visit

I visited Econ class today. It was amazing. The professor was amazing and he explained about pricing strategy and how the demand-supply curve looks like.

The students were pleasant, however, looked little stress due to mid-term exam in the evening. There was not too much class participation. Perhaps, I should attend some case-based class to get a hang of how students interact in the class.

But overall, after attending the class, my desire for an MBA has increased. I have so much to learn.

I read an excellent blog by optimistic. Although he just has 5 entries, but they are very inspiring. I really feel the same what he has gone through: Career getting pigeon-holed and hunger to study and expand the skill set.

On my other apps, created draft for first 2 essays of UCLA. Really need to ramp-up my app process.

Haven't started preparing for IIMA interview. Heard from couple of interview experiences in Ahmedabad that ad-com are not asking to present. I wish, I also get that option :)

I have heard people started getting interview invites from columbia. Good luck folks.

Visited Haas

I visited haas on friday. Had a wonderful time. I had lunch with students and attended an information session. Everything was organized by student ambassadors and even information session was given by student ambassador with ad com member dropping by in last 10 min.

Overall, no special information, just the usual stuff about their culture and curriculum.

I am going to visit again on monday and attending one class. Will write more about it after I attend.

In the meantime, I tried to look for schedule of Stanford class visit and to my dismay, they are all full till the first round deadline. This is totally ridiculous. How can the class visit be so full even before it actually started. I got to register for monday's class in Haas on thursday. And here in Stanford, the first available class is Nov 6th or may be later. Why such demand? or do they just have very few spots open? Even lunch with current student is full. Whats up with people. I am not sure what is behind it, but looks like I might not be able to attend class inspite of being local before submitting my application in first round.

Meanwhile, got another setback and talked with few people and they questioned by long term goals and classified my short-term goals of being a product manager as too easy, and said I do not need an MBA to become a product manager. However, I have so many friends who became product manager after MBA and find it logical choice to a path to start a company.

Confused!!!

Time running away?

I think I have spent too much time writing ISB and IIMA essays that I am not able to start my other applications.
With time running so fast, I better get started. I pledge to start my UCLA app today.

I have written few points on UCLA first essay few days back, but not sure how much should I add and what should I cover in this.

In the meantime, met one UCLA student in bay area. A very nice person to talk to. An entrepreneur before joining Anderson, now wants to take it easy and do product management in big corporation with slow life. As per him, advantage is - the big corporations move so slowly that if you are even a tad fast, you are appreciated and since he has seen it all being in fast paced entrepreneurial environment, he is enjoying the accolades by working 70% his capacity.

Regarding MBA tour - I attended 7 schools presentation and though I like the first schools presentation, eventually I realized they talk same things. Marshall, Texas, Haas, Yale SOM, all talk about how collaborative culture they have due to small class size, accessible faculty and staff and the usual support for different kind of centers and clubs.
Interesting, Wharton also talk about same things and said, even though their class size is big - they are very collaborative contrary to popular belief that they have cut-throat culture.

I wonder,why school asks everyone to stand out, when they cannot stand out themselves. Every one had same pitch, same suggestions, same selling point. What is the unique selling point? Anyone?

I met Thunderbird school representative in MBA fair, and learned a interesting thing- they have a hospitality weekend on Nov 7th and all you have to do is show up, they take care of your lodging and food. I was quite amused and do not know any other school doing that. So if anyone interested in Thunderbird, go for it. It is number one in International Business and located in warm Arizona. I love Arizona :)

Anyway, have to get back to the apps - I plan to put together outlines for all the schools I am planning to apply in first round by this weekend - ucla, haas, stanford. Aaah.. what matters to me most and why!!!

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.