Good Posts

1) Vatsa's advice for MBA applicants from the IT industry
http://vatsaview.blogspot.com/2006/08/five-thoughts-for-it-applicants.html

2) Reco Advice
http://foobarme.blogspot.com/2006/05/how-not-to-get-recommendation-letter.html#links

3) Adcom Panel Review
http://rungee582.blogspot.com/2006/08/review-of-adcom-panel.html

Finally, my targets!!

I think my last post on "Target or not", I saw a comments on "Why not Stern? or Chicago?" - when I saw these sites, I got the impression that these really good schools are very good for finance , something I that will learn about in MBA, but will not be focussing on a finance based career. Also , I cannot apply to all schools , can I ? :-)

So , here 's my target list so far, in alphabetical order

1) Haas
2) HBS
3) Kellogg
4) Stanford
5) Sloan
6) UCLA/Ross (may opt out if I don't have time)
7) Wharton

I am looking into social enterprise , responsible business, marketing , international focus as some of the key areas. Being a non-business major who has worked in tech industry and some non-profits, I like the general management focus that some of these schools have, that will definitely give me a foundation in varied business areas. As always, suggestions welcome!!

School - Target or not

This past week, spent some time going over websites of some schools, to reaffirm my target selection. This is my last chance, once I confirm my selection, I do not want to get randomized by going out and changing one or two, adding anything new or whatever. Here are some brief points on all the schools:

1) Carnegie Mellon : great for finance, manufacturing, brand name CMU, proximity to NY area (lots of NY companies flock for recruiting)
2) Columbia : finance, in the NY city (for Wall Street connections!!!)
3) Johnson, Cornell : geneal management, finance
4) Tuck: general management, small school/class atmosphere, strong alum connections (Tuck community)
5) Fuqua: general management, health care management, TEAM Fuqua
6) Sloan : innovate, entrepreneurship, a bit more analytical (strong engineering connections amongst other things)
7) Kellogg: Marketing, teamwork, Chicago (midwest area)


More to come ....

Leadership...

A very good article by Stacy on Leadership:
http://blog.stacyblackman.com/2006/07/16/what-is-leadership/

I am posting it here for my reference:

« From the Trenches: Insights from Successful Applicants
What is Leadership?

Stacy Blackman consulting reference:

By Jeremy Dann

You’re going to need to figure out the answer to this question very, very soon. Some applications—like Harvard’s—have explicit questions about your defining leadership experiences. While some others don’t boast a “leadership” question per se, the best applications will serve up a heavy dose of this particular “L word” in other essays on personal achievements, passions, etc.Applicants need to think through their past experiences to find the episodes that best illustrate their leadership skills. Sometimes, the best examples are not the first that come to mind. Many applicants automatically tag some of their greatest personal achievements as perfect examples of leadership. However, this is not always the best formula for a strong leadership essays.Your “leadership” essay will often be different from an “accomplishment” or “achievement essay. Just because you achieved something outstanding does not always mean leadership skills were involved, especially if you did most or all of the work. The work of the leader activates or improves the work of others; find anecdotes in your work and extracurricular history that illustrate this kind of pattern.What kind of experiences will make the best tales of leadership? Think about challenges where the following came into play:• Identifying/defining a problem• Articulating vision• Resisting conventional approaches; challenging status quo• Convincing others of importance of problem• Marshalling resources to address problem• Motivating others• Making good use of others’ talents• Being open to new information, input, etc.• Building consensus with appropriate stakeholders• Guiding strong mid-course corrections; overcoming mistakes• Building on successo Permanently upgrade organization’s capabilities; institutionalizing solutiono Illustrate methods for other individuals, organizations, etc.
And remember: leadership is not just about the titles. Some candidates build their leadership essays around the fact that they were selected for or elected to certain positions where they had a high level of authority and responsibility: editor-in-chief of a college paper, fraternity president, captain of the hockey team, director of product development, V.P. of marketing, etc. But what did you do with this position? An editor of a college daily could write about how she was constantly challenged to maintain high levels of editorial excellence, manage staff assignments and hit all deadlines. This is definitely an esteemed position with tons of responsibility, but Ms. Editor, if you describe your role like that, it sounds exactly the same as the role of the other 798 editors-in-chief of college papers. Define the leadership challenges you faced, not the management challenges. Did you have to deal with a certain writer who falsified interview notes? Was there a sticky campus scandal that forced you and your staff to walk an ethical tightrope? Did you have to fire student editors? Did you lead a transition from a weekly to a daily with all of the scheduling and human resources rigors that entails?Collecting impressive titles does not make someone a great leader—helping a team overcome great challenges does.

Target Schools

So's here my almost list of target schools:

1) Stanford
2) Harvard
3) Wharton
4) Kellogg
5) Haas
6) UCLA
7) Sloan/CMU Tepper/ROSS ????

As of now, 6 schools selected, but may change in the next two weeks, which is my self imposed deadline for finalizing schools...

Countdown....

Harvard, Stanford, Sloan, Haas, .... They all have released their questions.. the countdown has begun. No more delaying now... This is what I must do .. get organized and get cracking on the essays... :-)

stanford questions for mine and your reference:
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/admission/essays_activities.html

More on Essay Advice

Reading a very good book currently. Could not help but jot down these excellent points for essays:

1) Why do you want to an MBA?
Think about previous experiences:PAST:
How have they prepared you for business shool?
How have they made you come to conclusion that you would like to pursue an MBA?
What skills have you gained that you could bring to this program?

Think about your current state:PRESENT:
Why now ?
Have you reached a point where you need a degree to advance?
What knowledge and skills do you hope to obtain from the degree?

FUTURE:
What are your future career goals?
How will you use your MBA for your career goals?
How will you use MBA in the future?

Be specific when you describe what you have gained from your workplace.

Q2) What do you bring to the school?

This question requires introspection, some thoughts about what make or break you,. If you described your work experience elsewhere, highlight your other aspects here. Your work experience and what you gained from it is one of the most important factors in business school. Think about the experiences that you have been involved in, experiences that you have had or some of your accomplishments, and the unique qualities that you can use to distinguish yourself from teh rest of the crowd.

Q3) Leadership Essay
In this essay, think about what you want to convey about your philosophy of leadership, your leadership style. Try to think about leadership at work if possible.

Give examples of how you led
Explain why you made the decisions that you did, especially of they were difficult decisions
Outline your approach to leadership and what skills you try to exhibit when you are a leader
Show how you have been a leader, how do you perform as a leader
Also, describe the results of your leadership - did your project complete successful, did your team work well together, provide tangible outcomes from your work however do not exaggerate your achievements

Q4) Achievements
(Most important achievement in your life etc) - could be personal or work related
Think about what you want to convey through this essay?
If you write about a non work related work experience, be sure to emphasis how that has helped you prepare for business school, either directly or indirectly

Q5) Overcoming obstacle or failure
Share your thoughts so that the bschool understands your motivations and why you are able to overcome a challenge , describe the strength that you gained from this and how you will continue to use this strength
If you made a poor decision, communicate what you learned and how you will apply that in the future

Q6) Team work
Explain the team interactions that you have experienced
How did you keep the team functioning and even pitfalls to avoid

Q7) Extra curricular activities
What do you enjoy, why, and what do you gain from the experience?
Whether you have learned perseverance from running marathons or something else, business schools need to know how you have developed through this activity.

Q8) Optional essay
Use this to write anything else that will add to your personality, a strength or a weakness

Excerpts from ACCEPTED! 50 successful bschool admission essays !! Tanabe & Tanabe

Blogging Goodness

I cannot but say how good it feels to be a part of the blogging MBA community. There's so much to be done in the whole app process, however long and frustrating the process may seem. You are not alone, Buddy, hang in there! One day, you shall cross the fence and be on the other side of the walled garden (bschool that is). Browsing through some blogs, I found a very good post on one applicant's entire app process and even another one . Thanks everybody for contributing your advice.

Time management , organization et al.

A key thing in the whole MBA application process is being a bit organized about the whole thing. This may vary from person to person, but it doesn't hurt to step back a bit, and sketch out either a rough timeline or a plan for your own approach. Depending on the person that you are, some people keep these things in their head and go on doing those things. Others use excel sheets, daily calendars, and what not. I like to do a bit of both. I tried to do a timeline approach. But with the hectic work and schedule, I am not in favor of that. The reason is that because, this will stress me out if I say that I need to do XYZ by a certain date and then I am not able to do that by the deadline. Rather, I took a look at the whole process and divided the finer granular goals into the following tasks. No matter, which school you apply, you have go through them.

1) Thinking : (and loads of it :-)

-Answer the main questions (a) Who are you? What are goals? What have you done so far? Where do you see yourself going? Why do you need an MBA for that? What are the elements that you are looking for in an MBA?
- Which schools will get you what you want?
- Application strategy after finalizing schools
- Finally, thinking and analyzing for the school essay questions themselves

2) Interaction: (Not to mention, while doing the thinking, you are not alone. :-) )
- Contacting students from bschool, alumni, school forums, your friends, bloggers and talking to them to find their experiences, to get their advice, feedback etc.

3) Reading (Of course, you read tons of material to make your decisions etc)
- Read the school website
- Read the school forums
- Read MBA books and blogs

4)Writing (You cannot escape this for sure!!!! :-)
- Emails, notes, blogs, ESSAYS, and APPLICATION

5) Travel
- Visting school, information sessions, meeting people

Qualities looked for in MBA applicants:

1) Wharton:
- in-depth work experience or school work - academic aptitude
-leadership qualities - confidence , discipline, willing to take risks
-self awareness - who they are, where they are, what their plan is

2) Chicago GSB
-Academic achievements
-Professional Development (work progression, career development)
-personal qualities (leadership and involvement in extra. activities)

3) U Michigan Ross
- wants to get a sense of app.' leadership potential and their ability to create results.
-What they have been doing, how have they made an impact to their organization, are they willing to take risks
-Michigan is known for its action based learning and the ability for students to build on broad
based curriculum and rest of the univ offerings to create a robust and customized experience


This is going to be more of an evolving post, as I gather more information about my target bschools :-)

Struggle

What have you done so far?--Where are you going? -- Why MBA? ---Why now? --What that university's MBA?

Time and again, many applicants, MBA students, admission committees have emphasized these key questions. A compelling story to these questions , filled with one's sweat and tears and smiles, will make a winning application. As I have put effort into understanding these questions for myself over the past few weeks, I have realized the part that I struggle the most with. "How do I link my "specific goals" to that university's MBA program offering? Points that come to mind are:
1) Core program curriculum - BUT , most B-schools have more or less the same type of courses in the core areas (finance, accounting, marketing, etc)
2) Clubs, Activities - BUT, most B-schools have more or less the same type of clubs (ASIA club, Enterpreneurship club)
3) Programs - Chances of some difference arise here. Most top schools offer a global practicum, b-plan competitions, case competitions etc
4) World Class Faculty - Hmmm, every school has its own cream
5) Commitment to Community - So many b-schools have started emphasizing this lately.
6) Student Culture/Personality - THIS one begs to differ. Each b-school has its own persona, that projects itself into the dynamic community that the school represents.

Are these the only elements to use to link one's goals to university X's MBA program? Also, what does it mean by "linking one's goals to MBA program"? If one of my goals is to learn about marketing high tech internet consumer products for start-ups and small businesses, is it sufficient to "link" this goal with the "Marketing for entrepreneurs" course at the university?

Thoughts on this very much appreciated.

Essay Advice

Some key points from various posts, blogs, articles, emails:

1) Your essays should reflect who U are? not just your work experiences
2) What results have you achieved because of who you are?
3) What values drive your life? What makes you unique?

A great essay advice post from Dave's blog: http://daveformba.blogspot.com/2005/01/application-essay-advice.html

My Haas and Stanford Visit experience

My Haas and Stanford Visit experience

Overall I am impressed by both schools. I have been to SF, Berkeley, Palo Alto. I don't want to write text on why those areas are popular. :-) . Also, I don't intent to compare these 2 vists or schools , each school has its own personality. So here goes visit experience:

Stanford : I started the day with a visit to Stanford GSB- class visit. I had picked up a class at 10.00am, arrived 10 minutes before the class started. (the traffic in that area on a monday morning can really get to you). Anyway, I soon met up with my class visit buddy, who gave brief about the class. (Organizational changes).

In the class, I get a brief intro (name, place where I come from). There were couple other visitors as well. This class session had case studies related organizational behaviour for (1) a steel company (2) eco tourism company. I haven't read the case study myself, but what was amazing what the amount of class participation and interaction that happened. The students even quoted their personal experiences to analyze and draw conclusions. Not to mention, that the prof also cold-called some students to share their viewpoints. The class size was small , may be around 60 students. The prof raised different points to discuss, the students followed with their viewpoints. Even though I am not a student of GSB, I could understand a few things, and derive a few conclusions. I spoke to my class buddy at the end of the class, asked him a questions about how are the rest of the classes are. His response: class are usually small and there is a lot of learning from the students in the class. I proceeded to a tour after this.

Stanford has great courses in leadership, management, amzing resources for areas that I am aiming for -high tech entrepreneurship , strategy.

Haas experience:
At Haas I started with the school tour and then proceed to the class visit - Global Marketing . This was a second year elective , the class strength was therefore about 20 students. The prof had already given a class case study in the previous class. So this was more of a presentation slide lecture, which describe some marketing facets. What was interesting is that the prof was linking all those factes to his previous case study. The students discussed their view points amongst themselves, drawing on examples from different courses. Haas also has unparalled resources for high tech enterpreneurship (including the Haas business plan competitions)

Overall, the classes at the bschools are very interactive, dynamic and require prep work on part of the students.

Companies & business schools: Which companies recruit where? http://bwnt.businessweek.com/recruiting/index.asp

Here's a brief list where McKinsey recruits:

1. H/S/W (obviously, in huge numbers)
2. Sloan
3. Columbia
4. Haas
5. U. of Chicago
6. Ross (8 for class of 2005)

Some good questions to ponder

I have been reading Dave's blog for quite some time now. He is even good at answering some questions that I had. I wanted some advice regarding matching one's personal/career goals to an MBA program and why choose an MBA. Some very good questions that Dave sent my way that I would like to share here: (Thanks, Dave)

1) What have you done in your life as a habit that show your passions, courage and motivation towards your goals?
2) Why now and not later?
3) Why couldn't another masters, internship or other venture provide the same result?
4) What makes you think that the MBA is all that important to what you know now and what you hope to learn?
5) What is the definition of an MBA in two sentences?
6) Why are you a better candidate than xxx?

Things to ponder ....

Some key points from an podcast the by Admissions Director at Haas business school: (I found it easier to grasp info from the podcast than to read from a website with many pages :-)

Haas's admissions criteria:
Academic Aptitude - undergrad, GMAT score , GPA
-how well did you do?
-why performance degraded?
-quantitative proficiency - if you were not good at this during your undergrad, take a local college courses.
-Have you gone out of your comfort zone to take other classes?
- As an engineer - took some courses in other areas outside the comfort zone GMAT - only one part of the admissions puzzle
- GMAT in conjuction with the GPA - Each of the three subscores are considered. Because the first year has a quantitative curriculum, the quant part is important.
Take a look at the school's median GMAT score. middle 80% range 660 - 750 (10% below and abovE)

Professional accomplishments and leadership -
-Work experience not just in the number of years, but quality of the experience - very diverse fields - traditional and nontraditional
- richness of the experience and the impact of the progression- why you have transitioned within the job and your promotions etc?
-Each job title should be mentioned on the resume -leadership potential in candidates - do not have to directly supervise
- may have managed a process or managed a project
- have an idea and did some thing about it - list on resume

-recommendations
-should be professional in nature
- current supervisor - key client - individuals worked closely and will provide specific examples - consult past performance evaluations - title of the letter writer is not as imp

Personal qualities
- we want to get to know as a individual
- extra curricular acitivities during and after college
- depth and breadth of involvement
- those that are contribute to the life of the school - personality

Essay questions -
For example, we ask dinner with whom?
- do not second guess the person
- act as if you are writing in your journal
- share their personal side as well
- longer essay questions (why MBA question, why MBA from the school)
- what are your goals ? (a very good case should be done)

Each school has its own strengths and weaknesses
- Research the school, speak with an alumnus , visit the school
- why is the school a perfect match for you?

Interview
- very significant role
- level of confidence
- interpersonal skills

Top Bschools comparison

Came across a very good link:
http://geocities.com/topmbaprograms/mba.htm

My GMAT 2-cents:

I had finished the GMAT in September. To people applying in the future, I would like to say that it is better to finish the GMAT by June/July of the year you are applying. This will give you some time to kick off the next stage - preliminary university research, essay drafts, visits to schools, etc.

Anyways, here's some advice I had posted in a GMAT forum about my experience:

Here is a brief recap of my exam and prep:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My test began at 4.00pm. I prefered a morning time, but there were no other slots in september for the test center closest to where I stay. I reached an hour before the test, finished all the paper work. The administrator told that I could start right away, but I decided to wait 10 minutes, just so to cool my nerves.

AWA. simple topics, both of which I had prepared before, so that helped me relax for the remaining portion of the test. I took the break after AWA and splashed water over my face. Felt much better and ready for the grind.

Quant:-
Much tougher than ETS OG 10, OG 11 and even Kaplan. Almost al the questions test your quant basics in a variety of ways.
Started with PS (percent increase/decrease, then moved to some probability, geometry etc) and then finally some DS. The section that I most feared was the GCD/LCM/remainder area in Number Theory. I had easy questions in that area. But I had some difficult function questions.

I almost ran out of time in the Quant section, but managed to finished it with 2 seconds to spare. I was very careful in the first 15-20 questions to avoid making a silly mistake.

Because i thought the quant was very tougher , I thought my score would be like 45-46. But was relieved to get a 49.

Verbal:-

In alll practice tests, my verbal performance was between 44-47. So I felt relaxed about verbal. That must have backfired. Because I got very tough SCs. RC and CR were OG level.

Verbal started with a SCs in the first few questions. Then I had 2 back to back RCs. My first CR appeared at question 14 or Q15.

I had read Spidey's notes and referred a grammar book (SAE) to polish my SC skills. In my powerprep and gmat prep tests, I had no errors in SC. However, I could not apply any of the rules in some of the SCs in the test.

I think I spent too much time on those SCs and hence my time management suffered in the Verbal section. As a result, I had to click through 4 of the last questions in Verbal. I am sure that impacted my score negatively. And I got a 35. I am sure that I can perform better than that.

Quant: 49 , Verbal: 35


PREP:

I did a solid 2.5 months of prep, slow at the start but picked up in the middle and towards the end - about 2-3 months after on a weekday and then 10 -12 hours on the weekend.

After going through the kaplan and princeton books, I did some GMAT test and found out my weak areas :- Number theory, Geometry in Quant, CRs in Verbal. Then I made a weekly plan to attack those areas.

FOr Verbal, I was really scared of the CRs, so I did the OG CRs twice, made my notes about the patterns I found in the OG CRs. And even did the OG 11 CRs, and CRS from the 1000 CRs doc.

For all the practice tests and the exercises that I gave, I made a note of all the errors, and then went through in through detail. After I got a question wrong, I do not jump to look at the explanation given in the book. Instead I try to see why I got the question wrong and see whether I can come up with the correct answer. After enough trying, if I cannot get the correct answer, then I looked up the correct answer. That process helped me a lot in understanding the finer details.


In quant, I made a lot of silly mistakes. I decided to speak the process while solving the problems and that helped me to reduce the number of silly mistakes in the Quant section.

Also, when you go through your error, in addition to understand why X is the correct answer, you should also understand why Y and Z are the wrong answers.

Based on my experience, here's some suggestions:

Resources: OG (THE BIBLE) - master this
Quant:

Kaplan Book , Kaplan 800, OG 11 (mainly last 150 problems) , problems from the Kaplan tests , atleast 10 problems from this forum everyday

Verbal:
Standard Grammar book
Princeton Verbal Review (the verbal section at the end of the book is good)
Kaplan 800
OG 11 (must do)
1000 CRs (must do)
1000 SCs (must do)
RC doc floating on this forum (must do)

For additional practice, you can do the 9 ETS paper tests and even the LSAT CR and RC sections.

For the pratice tests, here are some of my scores:

1. Powerprep1 (no OG prep) - 720 (Q46, V45) - lots of silly mistakes in math
2. while doing OG Prep, ETS paper test1 - 760
3. while doing OG prep, ETS paper test2 - 770

4. After OG prep, I gave a Kaplan test - got some 600 odd score, but focused on the mistakes instead of the score

5. After OG,
GmatPrep1 -730 (M 49, V 44)
GmatPrep2 - 750 (don't remember the split)
Powerprep2 - 760 (M51, V46)

Some ADvice:

1. After going through the basics, do one test per week till the end. This will build your stamina for the actual exam
2. Don;t leave the powerprep/gmatprep till the very end. Give one in the beginning or the middle. this will help you understand your weak areas from the ETS point of view
3. Powerprep tests repeat questions after 2 attempts. But GmatPrep tests can be given about 3-4 times totally before they start repeating questions. Use that to your advantage
4. Master OG
5. Don't study on the exam day and a day before the exam. Very important that your mind stays fresh for the exam.
6. If you get very complicated equations while solving the problems, then you have messed up somewhere. I realized this during the gmatPrep tests. ETS tests your math basics and therefore they do not have problems with complicated techniques or equations on the exam


Again, the sure thing to crack the GMAT is to focus on your areas one at a time, master them. and then as you give the tests, work on your weak areas and minimize the number of mistakes.

Above all, enjoy the process and don't get frustrated. Although this is easier said than done. Think of the verbal section as if you are a MBA student analyzing lots of business data and the quant section as if you a MBA student doing finance work.