19 December 2006

I can't describe

what i have been going through since yesterday evening and now and every moment. The feeling of logging into my Hotmail, refreshing the pages.. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!Every moment my heart seems to skip a beat. The anxiety does not reduce if I switch to the Messenger.

Yea Yea.. that happens when you are eagerly waiting to hear from a school and you know that the Chicago Adcom has started to send out Admit calls.
Neverthelesss, my Wharton essays are done and sent - just in time before any good/bad news pours in. I am pretty much happy with the way they have come out and I am hoping that in the next few days, I will replenish my creative juices and shade the essays well.

For all who are waiting, I know I know its difficult.. I hope there is somewhere to for every one to go and freak out.

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14 December 2006

In the middle of nowhere

I thought I'd re-do my Wharton essays but I just couldn't get myself to do anything productive at all, though I had all the office hours and the day thereafter to my disposal. All I did was ponder over my Chicago and Tuck applications. I hear that Tuck R1 interviews( post- application review) going out for international students and I couldn't help but think and then think and then think about what was happening with my Tuck application. On BW, I read some days ago that Tuck doesn't user the 'apply yourself' for Status update notifications, so ended up refreshing my mail twice every hour until 11 to see if Tuck sent anything. ( I really don't know how true this is)

I wanted to go home and read something different but to my sheer disappointment ,I just could neither watch TV nor chat with my roomie. Just to kill this dis-orientation,I opened my box of origami papers and made some things out of it, fixed my blog feed( that was screwed after I switched to Beta.The template still needs to be fixed) and went to sleep. It wasn't a good day yesterday :( (Call it a waste of 8 hours). Occasionally, I guess, the system of applying itself forces an impasse on you.

On Tuesday, critically analyzed my Wharton essays and I found out so many things that I could add. My Candidature has changed a lot in the last 2 months with significant happenings at work place and in my responsibilities, which have brought a lot of ethics substance , dilemmas and failures. A large part of my essays need to change and I am hoping I would do some of it today. The idea is to get this done before I go back home for a day on Sunday.
Now I am going to tune the chords again and not waste today.

Disclaimer:
This is not meant to be a rant post, rather a one that reflects the emptiness and mind block of an applicant during a long application process.

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07 September 2006

A little delay

I thought yesterday would be a nice day for my essays since it was a holiday. Well not entirely !

I have been busy with work ( including a little yesterday ) and down with a little fever ( fatigued) so most of the evenings have been less productive. I could not get my Recommender's kit ready by Tuesday evening. I rescheduled meeting my recommenders to the next week and that allows me to create kits for both my recommenders. Since I was not in the right spirit, I took to filling out some Online forms and got my transcript ready.

I am done with the Chicago essays 1, 2 ,3 a, b. The 3a is a real reilef and I am finally happy that I have it on paper now. I just have 3c to be penned now ( which should be done today because I have my matter ready ).

As planned I also reviewed the Goals essays and could polish it to an extent. I am still working on this until I get it right. I also started with doing my resume and I hope that should be done fairly fast.

This weekend I planning a trip home and before it I should have my reco kits,essays v1.0,resume v1.0 ready so that I have a complete Chicago package ready. My most important task for now is getting the reco kits ready and reviewing my essays.

I hope that's everything for a school

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04 September 2006

So much covered so long to go

My last post seems to have spurred a Debate. Well ! I'd say all's well that ends well. Whatever approach one takes, one has to come out with a crisp and well founded personality.

I did quite something this weekend.

I broke the ice with one of my recommenders over a cup of coffee I agreed to write my recommendations. Guess what , he too plans to go back to school but to get a Phd in Physics. Since both of us have a good rapport and similar interests, I am hoping for him to pen good letters. I am planning to meet him again on Wednesday ( its a holiday) to talk over other applciation aspects.

I had been writing my Goals since Wednesday and by Thursday evening the "description of the path" was over 1100 words ! I knew I was not getting anywhere with it. I felt like I was writing a chronologically elaborated resume. I stopped- took to some serious thinking and pondered on what was going wrong. I talked to a friend about it. He categorically distinguished all my why's frm the What's. I realised that all I thought was cause was in fact just an event. Substantial reasons were missing. I knew where I lacked. My whole stub seemed like only a lot of what's , without significatnt why's , how's and what change it brought.

I scrapped the whole thing and began afresh. I sorted out a few 'what's' that where important to me and wrote out all the why's and how's. I didnt start writing until I had the right balance. Next I set out to write it and I now am ready with a fair draft of it . I still need to imporve the 'why school x ' part. There are a couple of lose links and holes. I still am not satisfied with what I have produced so Iam going to sit with it today again ( now that i am in a different frame of mind )

I also worked around the 2 smaller essays for Chicago and the second essay is roughly done. The one thing I have been thiking quite seriously is " What is one thing that most people do not know about you?" Ah ! I have thought of a lot of options but none seem convincing enough. I know iIwill get there soon so just hanging in for the moment.

Among other tit bits, I figured out who would do my final reviews, broke ice with them and gave them a tentative schedule of when I could get drafts on their desk, created a check-list of all I need to give and convey to my recommender on Wednesday.

Having done it all, I spent the sunday completing the final exit formalities of my old apparment, shopping for music and watching Forrest Gump and Derailed ( you'd want to see Clive Owen !)
Like Forrest I have ample time for detours.

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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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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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15 June 2006

School School

When I first started to contemplate MBA as the next carrot, i was just belwildered with the information available on the www about International MBA programes. The whole MBA sphere was full of ranking, glossy brochures ( i ended up reading a whole bunch of them ) and school receptions. The ones i attended in '05 were Wharton and Stanford in Mumbai. Boy! They were just more than marketing acts ( It was an experience in itself though it did not help me get close to the schools, which is what the committe claims it does). After months of going through the rankings and the beautiful websites, i still found myself lost.

Humm ! The first thing i asked myself then is, " why MBA?" ( after all i needed to find the correct anwer to this and present the same (sell rahter) to ad-comm on a A-day). The answer didnt come instantly but finally it did come ( career-switch ) and this one answer helped me a lot in structuring my thought process about shortlisting schools.

First thing i did was ordered the bibles

How to get into the Top MBA Programs
ABC of Getting the MBA Admissions Edge

The first one helped me a lot in comprehension of the rankings and What to look for in schools and where ( I have not adopted the read first approach for Mountak, I am going to use it as refer when needed ).

After reading parts of the Mountak i was back to my investigation ( and talking to friends ) about what schools. Brand name or Program quality ? Location or Money ? Teaching or Placements?

Being an Indian with limited International experience, visiting the schools is tough and reliance on published material increases. How will i get the right fit ??

From all sources, ( exculding visits ) i have come down to

Berkley, Hass
Dartmouth, Tuck
NYU, Stern
UVA, Darden
Chicago GSB
Columbia
Wharton

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