29 August 2006

The Essay way

I know my essays are coming up very slow and I Hobbes, Juggler, Iday are already in lap 3 -4. Nevertheless,here is the humble start of the apping act.

I don't want to sound too gyani but this is what I have come to understand about Essays and I am going to stick to this approach for my apping this season.

Mega stubs
  • The Person Stub : Who are you ?
  • The Resume Stub:How have you progressed in your career?
  • The Goal/ future stub:What do you want to be,why , how and when ?

Listing all the happenings and the reasons under these would give me an exhaustive set of experiences that I can use in my essays. It is indeed a long and pain staking project.

I am already done with my Resume Stub, lisitng all my projects from the days of a Trainee till date and categorically noting down every experience. I will use this stub to create my skeleton of related professional essays.

The goals stub is shaping up slowly as it needs deep introspections as well as research into the nuances of my future career goals and personal aspirations. At times, one tends to digress. But yes I hope for this to be complete this week and i will have a draft and generic goals essay.

The personal stub is very haphazard and most of it is inspired of the essays questions past present and my own experiences. I feel this doesn't need to be very exhaustive either because at times its futile ruminating and jotting things which would seem not to fit anywhere.

Themes

There are mostly two or three virtu we all vaule most and are distinct in our personality and are roots of our hobbies. Identify them and paint all applications with those 2- 3 colours or themes. They could be any thing curiosity, compassion ( leading to non- profit), patience, etc etc ( gassy ).

Good writing

The economist Style Guide and my favourite The McKinsey MECE Principle.

Finally good Essays posts Vatsa's cents for IT Guys/Gals ,Axechick Goals rumination, UniQpath's Essay musings

The only rational is to write down all that has happened and then integrating the experiences to create a whole some picture. This will prevent me from being too overwhelming or too sublime. Secondy, it reduces the chance that I would miss something.

Was that too pontifical ? Eh !

Time to wrap. All suggesstions on essay thinking, writing and refurbishing are welcome.

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28 August 2006

Moving..

Its been a weekend to remember- moving my appartment ( through the week), chasing the broker and owner to return the deposit I payed on the previous apparment, settling the new place. Ah !!! I am content its all over now.

The new place is good to go now and I am hoping it would do me good. I spent the sunday hanging out with old friends from college ( not to mention the encounter with pune mamu's over my towed two wheeler)

The moving and other errands including some laziness. The progress on the essays is slow but i do feel like a daily diva having completed this moving project ( imagine a smug look here).

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23 August 2006

Chicago

Just began to pen my chicago essays and I realize that space is premium. Zipping is an art !

Something about chicago:

  • No question that asks you to describe a leadership experience or a failure.
  • No question that asks you about team work,ethics,

Interesting, isn't it ?. The whole packet boils down to a single question " Tell me who you are ( the 3 short questions ) and why you want an MBA and Why from Chicago ?" With such a simple question, its a science to reveal all aspects of youself to the admission officer.

Writing for Chicago is like riding the roller coaster in yourself over and over again thorough the 20 + x years.

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21 August 2006

Detour - Cars, Maximum City

Its an amazing movie for animation lovers. If you found Finding NEMO great, you ought to see this one. The whole concept is just incredible.

The last week and the week end and the whole week wasn't too exciting.While almost drowned in Maximum City ,I managed to write down some work and project history and interospect. (call is the start of apps),sorted out who would write my recommendations and now need to get heads up with the apps, talk to my recommendors and put together the drafts.
(Occaissionally, I do feel like a Indian with less than 7xx)

Such a long road !( At times I really am skeptical of seeing myself through the whole process).

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16 August 2006

Schools - and they are

I had a few schools in mind. After my GMAT, I got a bit demotivated and went back to my schools. After speaking to a couple of current students and getting into the details of each schools, I am down to

  • Chicago October 18
  • Tuck November 30



When I started off, I even had Darden in mind but now [ after a closer examination ],I am beginning to have second thoughts about it.

I am still investigating the teaching methods at Tuck. If any one has insights on it please pour in your thoughts !They do not have any student ambassadors listed on their site as yet. Guess I will have to wait a little for the concerns to be addressed.

Hass/Columbia.

Yeah that is what I am into at the moment! Comparing, contrasting and weighing.I am beginning to have this feeling that Haas is too selective ( being only one of top schools on the West Coast). I guess I wont be too competitive there with lots of techies running for it.

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14 August 2006

Why MBA ?

A long time ago I wrote on this PG thread about why people want MBA, It was basically frustration of aspirants over the highly comptetive CAT. Makes a light read though !

While returing from Bombay I found myself lost in that thread again. Most of us, young and ambitious want an MBA for a varitey of reasons :

  • Bored with my IT job , hitting keys and moving mouses.
  • More money, fast money.
  • switch career and get a better job [wait a min What is a better job? Its relative ]
  • Start my own venture [makes sense ]
  • Skip a few steps of the coporate ladder in my industry.

Might sound cynical, but aren't all these ephemeral ?

Isn't an MBA is more like IT , an enabler rather than an end. Just a catalyst ? If MBA is the 'end', its the worng end. The end is 'I'

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08 August 2006

Of GMAT, GPA and brands

  • Through out the last weekend I was pondering on my to-be /not-to-be case.Surfed the forums to know how different ad comms treat a 690-Indian-IT- female and even wrote to a couple of ad coms.
  • While Wartonites tell me the score is good enough, GSB Chicago was of the opinion that I should increase my score if possible. I had also asked them " When does GMAT surface as a differentiator between two applicants ?". The answer to this questions was vague. I also asked them what the GMAT meant to recruiter ?( Yeah ! IB and consulting firms looks for GMAT while recruiting) and I could not get any further insight into it either. The Hass ad comm as pretty vauge in addressing the 690 dilemma.
  • I had this notion that the schools also take into consideration the 'brand' of you undergraduate university ( college ). This proved wrong. Both Wharton and Chicago did not belive in brands, they are actually concerned with "what one did with his/her education" instead of the brand on your transcript. The adcoms say that since they are in constant touch with alumni and current students , they are aware of competition at the universities in non-US countries and hence can fairly judge a person's GPA irrespective of the brand.
  • Hass differs !.It does consider the comparative quality of your undergraduate education. In his podcast the addmissions officer says that they do consider the competitive nature and rigor of your undergraduate study . That means a 3.8/4.0 from a not-so-known college is not very outstanding. A 3.5/4.0 from IIT would be good though !
All in all, things moved a bit in the past week but not as much as they should have.
So, should I put the BSchool dreams on the shelf for now and start all over again for 2010 or should I try my favourites this year ( Hass, Stern, Darden ). I am still thinking !!!
And Yeah ! I am going to devote some time this week for non-MBA activities which include appartment hunting, catching up on my long left Glimpses of world history ( in parallel with Maximum City ) and paying off the bills.

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04 August 2006

My GMAT Day !!

I reached Pearson Centre at 8.25. There were few test takers at the centre already and a couple of them were ostensibly tense. After We checked in, came a very elderly person at the centre. I initially thought, he worked at the centre. It was later that I realized, he is test taker too!! Boy at 51, uncle had thought of writing a GMAT and going to B School. Truly enlightened soul he must be !
The AWA was interesting. The first thing that showed up was the argument . It was one of those easy things were a I was required to present a critique on a work-from-home policy adopted by a company. I finished it with 5 min to spare and revise. The second essay required me to present my opinion on globalization. That was interesting too. I finished that one with 5 mins to spare.
10 minutes break !!!! - I told myself Don't repeat your Quant disaster from GMAT Prep2.
The Quant section( my bad ) was a roller coaster ride. I was dumbfounded on the second question itself. But worked through it some how and moved to the next. ( I guess I got that one correct),the questions grew harder progressively and I found myself running short of time. At the fag end, I had 10 min to spare and 10 questions to go. I guessed the last 5 questions. By the time it ended, I knew, I had messed it up everywhere. I was dreading the 40-41 score again !
Again 10 - mins break !!! - I told myself to forget the Math and hit the verbal head -on.
The Verbal started with Sentence corrections. Though I was doing good, a part of me was succumbing to the Quant disaster. I kept telling myself to hang in there for a while. It worked for a the first 25 questions. I sailed through the RC's and CR's well but a the SC's were a pain at times. By the 30 the Question I was exhausted of the ruminations and hanging in. I had subconsciously surrendered to a 660- 650 score but managed to finish the verbal with 40 seconds to spare.
Then came those things where one fills all personal information. And the final score dawned at the click of the next button. 690 ( 46, 39 ). I was amazed at my quant score and aghast at the verbal. The only relief was that I had a balanced score. With both percentiles > 80, I felt just relieved ( Its over, though it didn't end as well as I wanted it to)
There is this distinct thing one feels when one looses to the winner by a fraction of a second or by a millionth of an inch. The last I felt that was when I wrote my Securities Markets certification exam. I passed by .03 marks. I knew how good it feels to cross a dreaded barrier. This time around, I was on the other side of the barrier.
I was neither elated nor worried. I was just blank. I understood it was just a matter of 3-4 questions as I had been suffering from this 'just-missed' syndrome for the last whole week.
I knew I didn't do as good as I should have or as good as I could. There could have been a lot of reasons to it, but what mattered then was the result. I knew, I had given it my best and hence didn't attempt to find any reasons.
In minutes I was calling people to report my score and Sid calls me saying, "Hey what's up with the Canada MQ ?I don't find a head and tail of it." He he.. Back to work. I spend the next 20-mins 'on-call'

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The take on retake

I'll blabber a little later, first its time to thank everyone for their wishes and encouragement. With work and the GMAT, the blogs and mint tea's kept the sane in me alive.

So I ended up scoring less than 700. Disappointing Indeed !!!!!
And as I have felt after every major test, I feel "I can do a lot better than I did yesterday ".

The take on retake

With R1 deadlines in early October and November, a retake means, I need to cut out a lot of application effort and paste it into a better GMAT score. However, I don't think I have the bandwidth to retake it in a month. With work piling up at office and no possibility to take time-off from work, a retake within a month ( with the same work schedule and same level of preps ) would not add anything more to the score. Additionally,I checked up the dates and there are no dates available until September 28 now. Isn't that's way too late ?

Now,What does the GMAT score mean in the entire application ?
  • I know, GMAT is just a part of the whole application and the ad-com uses it to assess the applicants academic potential in conjunction with the undergraduate GPA ( which > 3.7 in my case ) So, how strong is my academic profile and what are the implications of the GMAT score ?
  • My quantative and Verbal percentiles both exceed 80, so they are acceptable at schools, but I belong to the challenged Indian IT pool. Is 690 competitive ? Do schools look at 690 applicants in the same way as they look at 700, 720 applicants. Will they look at the fact that the score is balanced ? Will they see that the total percentile is still 91.
  • Doesn't the score go against me ; an average Indian GMAT score is about 720-740. However strong I put up my essays, will they offset my GMAT score ?
  • Most schools have an average score of 700. But isn't the average misleading ? (The schools never publish the standard deviation). Now, Even if 80% of the scores fall in the 650 -740 range ( Tuck, Stern,Chicago) , Does that provide enough information to access the competitiveness of a Indian-IT-690 applicant ? I guess, no.

Though my score won't send my application to the bin at Stern, Tuck, Columbia, Chicago, Hass, Darden, will it boost my application? I am growing skeptical about my candidature All in all ,Hamlet's dilemma dawns -To be or not to be.

What does the 'voice of bloggers' say ?

What ideas do fellow applicants have ?

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Posted by Inblue at 8:46 AM | | Comments

03 August 2006

Done with the GMAT

Its done. The unofficial score report says 690 ( V 39 Q 46)
I know its not a competitve score. I know i could have done better than this.
The only better part is that i am over 80 percentile in both the sections.

At present i am just blank with the score. The problem is it is not too bad and at the same time it is no where near where i wanted to be.
More thoughts later.

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01 August 2006

The final blow of GMATprep 2

This one rocked me !
680 V41 Q42 was what turned up.
Goes without saying, I am more than skeptical and demotivated rite now.
The Quant was challenging. All through the section, I just kept the focus high but the DS some how got tougher and tougher. I timed the quant section real bad. I had to guess the last 5 questions blindly without reading the questions. I was my worst Quant perofrmance till date.
I am absolutely clueless on the cause of this debacle. May be I spent just too much time on the first couple of questions.
Verbal was good. I got a total of 10 incorrect and that took me to 41. I hit the wrong circle on a couple of SC and RC's out there. The CR performance was great. I didnt not falter on a single CR.
Now with less than 48 hours to go for the test,I am full of doubts and ???. I know I can't turn the world upside down in less than 48 hours and the only thing I can do is to put all my energy and will int0 those three hours at the test centre.
No further thoughts. Period.
PS :
Now why do I always get a stupid 680 or a 710 .Dont other GMAT scores suit me ?

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