Wednesday, December 17, 2008

H K U S T submitted

It’s such a relief. I submitted my HKUST application today (my second app). In the beginning, I didn’t expect my essays to go really well considering the word limit of 200words/1200chars for each of 6 essays. But I am pretty satisfied with 5 of them.
It was the last day of first deadline. There are still 5 hours to go before midnight but due to time difference, it is safe to submit it early. The deadline is specified as 17-Dec and no time is given, i.e. HK time or GMT. When I submitted my application fee on the night of 11th Dec, I got a message on screen – “your payment has been received on 12-Dec, 1:43am”. So it must be HK time only.
I slept at 4 in the morning. Very tired.
Thanks to my B-San and my friends who reviewed my essays and provided valuable inputs.
Thanks

Sunday, December 7, 2008

GMAT – Step 1 & 2 - Registration & Collecting Stuff

This post is for my friends who have started thinking about an MBA in US.
If you are targeting fall 09, then you must have taken your GMAT by now. If you are targeting fall 10, then it’s a good time to start thinking about GMAT.

Go to MBA.com and take the date if you are serious about it. $250 is what makes you have thoughts like “Am I ready to take the test?” Take the date and you ll be ready in no time. Take the date now for Feb, March end or April first week so that you have good enough time for introspection and research about colleges after the GMAT.

3 months is a good enough time for preparing. I didn’t score the dream score of 770, just managed to score 7xx in 3 months. Someone can do it in 2 months and someone like me may not be able to do it in 6 months even. So it all depends on you.

So start collecting the stuff..
 GMAT 11th edition
 One more book you need - princeton/kaplan/etc ( I went for Kaplan and found it worth)
 Power prep tests (the very first thing you need to do is take these tests)
 Online tests for practice( I went for manhattan tests)
 Spidey’s notes
 Manhattan Sentence Correction (it’s a real good one)
 GMATprep tests (these you ll get from MBA.com once you have registered for the test). Save them for the end. They are really precious.
 And lot more..

Let me know if you I can help you with anything.. I have lots of lots of..... stuff

Make a folder in one of the drives of your laptop.
Put the stuff there ..
And get going..

More on how to go about it.. later
Ciao

P.S.
Feb, March dates are easily available. Just checked it on MBA.com. I guess there is fight for dates from May onwards.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Tough Times..

Just getting the taste of tough times. I always thought I will sail through easily.
Application process, work (a lot of), professional issues, personal issues seem to take a toll on me. And the financial turmoil had its first direct impact on me when I reached office yesterday morning. No no.. I didn’t get a pink slip. Each and every employee of the company is affected and is sad.It is something that can have impact on my full one year plans. Yes, I can feel the impact of financial crisis. Yes, I am hit too, Directly.
One major problem I am having these days is that sometimes in my dreams, I am writing essays and filling forms with million of other things. I watch/see hundreds of dreams every night. Its because I have been thinking about lot of things, and all seem to be important. I think I need to relax a bit. But after taking some time off every time, I think the same.

I am done with 3 essays of HKUST and there are 3 more to go. Then I have to get them reviewed and have to get my recos ready too.
Reco questions are a bit different from Emory so I have to ask my recommenders to think something different and nice again.
The good thing is that I do not need to send my transcripts to HKUST by post. They asked for only scanned copies and will be asking for transcripts at the time of admit. I will be more than happy to submit the original transcripts.
Need to get ready with essays before Sunday as I have to go to a marriage on Sunday and I cannot afford to delay it further. 17-Dec is the day.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Emory submitted, HKUST next

Yesterday, I submitted my Goizueta Business School application. My recommenders still have to submit the recos in a day or 2 and my application will be complete.
It is such a relief to submit essays. Thanks to my reviewers, they did a great job in pointing out gaps, mistakes in my essays and adding a lot of value.
It was my first application and I took a long time to complete the process. I hope that the process for next applications will be accelerated as I know things better now. I thought to take a day off and I did.
Due to time constraint, I had to push CEIBS to 2nd round :(
HKUST is next
But now I realize the next deadline is just 2 weeks away. I need to start working on the essays, though not from scratch but HKUST people are not very generous with word limits. There are 6 essays and word limit for 4 essays is only 200 words and for rest of them, its 300 words.
How am I going to compress everything to just 200 words?
I have got a bag full of things and I need to put everything in small pockets now. Lets see how things go with HKUST.
The first deadline for HKUST is 17-Dec. I will need to submit everything by 14-Dec so that my recommenders get good enough time to submit the recos.

HKUST Essays:
1. Please tell us your motivations to pursue an MBA program, and why is now the best timing to do one.

2. Please elaborate on your career goals. How will your academic training, professional experience coupled with an MBA education at HKUST help you achieve your goals?

3. If admitted, how can your participation at HKUST MBA enrich fellow students' experience inside or outside classroom?

4. Please pick and answer ONE of the two topics in the space below.
4a. Describe a situation where your initial attempt to solve a problem failed. Tell us how you get around to finally solve the problem.
Or
4b. Describe a situation where you created opportunities for yourself and led to a favorite outcome.

5Please pick and answer ONE of the two topics in the space below.
5a. Tell us a situation when you experienced challenges in team setting, and what you have done to help the team achieve its goals.
Or
5b Describe a situation when you got frustrated over differences in culture or work style. What have you learnt from that experience?

6. What do you want the Admissions Committee to know about you as a person?

Zaijian (Good bye)

Monday, November 17, 2008

First Interview Call

One must go to all the MBA fairs happening all around in Sep-Oct for many reasons. You get to know a lot more about the schools when you meet the alums, current students or some one from Adcom who come as a representative of the respective school.
I went to one such MBA fair at the Intercontinental in New Delhi, on September 27, 2008. It was great to hear from the representatives of the schools about the school, course structure, scholarships, fee, student profiles, numerous questions from applicants and answers. I met 2 of my batch mates too and we exchanged our phone numbers. :)
Because of attending just one fair, I got umpteen mails from many schools. 2 days back, I got a call from recruitment officer of HULT International Business School. He was calling from Boston, and at first I thought it was a friend calling from US :)
Then I realized it was someone else. So I apologized and started a conversation. He offered me an interview which was to be held today. I had heard about this school but had done no research. I accepted the offer as I had nothing to lose. If the school is good I would go for filling applications, if not then it will be kind of a dry run for things coming in future.
The time was set 4:30pm New Delhi time but I got a call at 4:38pm. I was told that we would be talking about my career till date and my short term, long term goals in the next 20 minutes. Simple questions were asked and I was ready for things to come thus did a decent job.
US schools and may be all global schools except Indian schools, want to know more about you, your goals, where as in India, their focus is more on asking questions like finance, current market situation, companies and their CEOs and they judge you on how much you know what is going on. US schools ( I have read so much on threads and blogs) ask about you, your goal clarity, why MBA and why their school/university.
I will not be applying to HULT because of many reasons but it was a good experience.

Emory still not submitted and CEIBS first deadline is approaching. m dead.

Zai Jian (its pronounced as Chai chian, correct me if m wrong)

Friday, November 14, 2008

Essay Reviews

Hey Guys...
Once you start writing essays, you will realize that its really tough to answer the simple questions. I wont tell more as you will get to know for sure.
Tip:
Get reviews from someone (read somemany) ..
You should get your essays reviewed from a number of people. My mentor told me this and I read it in a book, that there are 5 kind of people, you should get your essays reviewed from:
1. Your really close friend who knows (almost) everything about you
2. Someone who knows everything about the application process (current student, alum or even co-applicant
3. Someone who doesn't know anything about Bschool application process
4. Someone who has good writing skills and who can point out grammatical mistakes and can help you rephrase some lines/language
5. mmmmmm... who was that..? I guess it was who doesn't know anything about you and your profession.

These people will help you look at your essay from different directions. The thing is when you are writing and reading the same thing for days or weeks, you tend to overlook a lot of things. So these people will question you and tell you about things which you cant exactly see.

So get a good review from some good reviewers.
I have got just a few reviewers and I would like to thank them, especially my mentor B-San. He has spent a lot of time with me, discussing things and re-reading my crude essays and helping me overhaul them. Thanks B-San. And thanks to other guys as well. I still need some more reviewers and if you think you are fit to be one, please do let me know ;)

Zai Jian ( m not sure how to pronounce this.. :) its Chinese )

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Final tentative list..

So for me final list goes like:
Emory - 2nd round and rolling :(
CEIBS - first round - 30-Nov
HKUST - First round - 17-Dec
NUS - its rolling so after HKUST, I ll try to close this one
Dropping Queens most probably, becaues its 2nd deadline is 28-Nov and its rolling as well. Moreover I do not have much time. CEIBS and Queens deadline is clashing. so will drop Queens most probably.

Other schools, I may think about if I submit the apps for above schools in time and am satisfied with the applications/essays I would submit
Krannert. Depends on when I take TOEFL
NTU - have to do the research
AIM - would not go for it because of the political situation there.. but would do the research.

Adios

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Sending Transcripts to the school..

Its important to do a good research about the Bschool, whether its about the faculty, ranking, placements or the admission process.
Admission process is the first thing.. so always keep a few things in mind. Go to the website of the school and Read carefully what are the things you need to send through by post and what are the things you need to submit online.
Some schools ask for: online application, online recommendation and only transcripts by post Example: Goizueta Business School, Emory University.
Some schools say that the full application bundle should reach their office. Take printouts of everything, fill them and then send.
So its important to know these things well before hand so that you can plan for submission date accordingly
It’s 6th November, 08 and I started the application process officially. Sent my first transcripts to Emory. When you spend some money, you get a feel yeah.. I have started something and now I need to complete it.
I am still a long way from submitting the full application. I have written 2 essays and struggling with 2 more.

Some important things you need to take care of to keep track of things:
- Talk to your recommenders well in advance. If your first round deadline is 30th, ask them to be ready with recommendations by 25th because once you submit your application, a link will be sent to your recommenders and then they need to fill the stuff. Your recommender may take a day or 2 to fill that and send that. Your application is not complete until and unless everything reaches the university. So if you submit your app. on 30th and your recommender fills and submits on 3rd of next month, it means your application was not complete in first round so may be considered in 2nd round only. In unavoidable circumstances, you can always talk to adcom and sort it out but when you know this and if you have enough time, try to submit it well before the deadline.
- Send your transcripts to school atleast a week before the deadline as in normal case it can take upto a week if you are sending an application from India to US. There is always an option to send the documents/transcripts in 2 days (DHL charges extra Rs 1250/- for that)

Save some money: Fedex and DHL both charge around Rs. 2000+ for documents (weighing less than 500gms). But DHL is charging giving more than 50% discount to all who are sending it to some school over there. So they are charging just Rs. 990/-. Tell them before you book an order.
For faster delivery (2 days) DHL charges 1250/- more but for students again, they are charging just Rs 500/-
Cheers to DHL..

I still have 2 essays left for Emory. I really need to focus. I really need a Click.

Ciao.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

NUS.. a bit of info!!

Application Deadlines:
For Full Time NUS MBA Applicants:
Round I: 01 Oct 2008 - 31 Jan 2009
Round II: 01 Feb 2009 - 31 Mar 2009
Scholarship qualifying period (only for the full time NUS MBA applicants): 01 Oct 2008 - 31 Jan 2009

There is no Application Fee. :)

Tuition Fee: Full Time MBA: S$50,000 (approx. 17 lakh INR, 1S$=34.19Rs) payable over 3 semesters

Recruitment stats and some insight:
I got this info from NUS site only.
About 64% of the batch got a job in Singapore only. Rest of them got in Rest of the world (obviously)
The highest % of people were employed in Finance/Accounting and got the highest package. So keep this in mind that if you are going for any school like NUS, HKUST Business school, and if you want your career in finance, you cant go wrong with that but looking at the current situation, I dont know if you should think about finance in the first place. But as they say, everything passes and these financial crisis come every 6-7 years, so hopefully things will be fine in next 2 years.
Yes the next question is.. getting a job in non-financial sector.. yes even I am looking for that and since these schools are good, hopefully we will be able to land in a good job of our choice.. cant really comment on this.

By function, only 8% people got a job in Gen. Management and only 6% in MIS. while industry wise 21% people got a job in tech. industry ( I am looking for a job in tech sector only.. 21% looks good but am not sure about the profile or anything.

Function wise MIS peopel got the lowest package and industry wise tech people got the lowest package.
Highest package we know - financial services, consulting services, and real estate.
So apart from finance, the school looks good for consulting as well.

69% got placed by the time of graduation and number rose to 93% within 3 months of graduation.. so job placement wise, NUS looks promising..
mind you.. most of the people got job in Singapore only.. people come back to India as well but after working there for few years.

Avg work experience is 5 years. Dont worry if you have less experience. What matters more is the whole package and I would say, the most important part (i feel) of package is your essays (for most of the schools in the world)

In MBA Recruitment Partners list, I could see some names (of my interest) like Cognizant, HCL Technologies, IBM, Oracle, Motorola among lot of Investment Banking names (big ones)

So it gives me (and probably you guys) an idea about NUS. Read some blogs, some forums to know if NUS has what you are looking for.

I am contemplating about applying to NUS.. Since the first deadline is 31-Jan-09, we have got some time.. but I have no idea if NUS has rolling admissions like Queen's. If thats the case, hurry up. If anyone of you has any idea about, do let me know too.

Ciao

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Queen's School of Business, Canada

Queen's School of Business is one of the premier business schools in the world.
Founded in 1937
Courses:
Full time MBA, Executive MBA, Cornell-Queen’s Executive MBA, Accelerated MBA
Here we will talk about the Full time MBA only as I am looking for full time only.
#1 in Canada
Queen’s full time MBA is an intensive 12 month program, focusing mainly on team work and leadership.
3 highlights of the program:
1. Focus on personal assessment and personal development. A personal coach will guide you through out your MBA and even after that, helping you enhance and fully leverage your strengths.
2. Focus on team work. Learning more about teams, developing your team and leadership skills
3. Personalize your MBA through international exchanges, elective streams and earning professional designations during MBA only eg. PMP and CMA (these certainly will add to your profile)

Positives:
- 1 year course so your time away from work is less so investment is relatively less
- Smaller class – more attention/interaction with profs and faculty
- Tuition fee – CAN $65,000 (+ around 20-25k for living expenses) so its quite less expensive than most of the US bschools
- Major + is that you can apply for PR in Canada and your 1 year will be counted in for 3 years requirement

Negatives:
- one year course, less time in college so I guess less learning time
- smaller batch size means less people which means less knowledge sharing (may be) some people like smaller batches and some don’t..

The deadline for first round is 28-Nov and I was surprised to see that quite a few guys have already been offered admits. I didn’t know Queen’s have rolling admissions. I thought I had some time but every passing day means chances are becoming lesser (even if by .001%)
So all of you guys who are looking forward to Queen’s, get going and get faster.. there is not much time left. But again I would say, submit your app. only when you are fully satisfied.
Best of luck.
Ciao.

Introspection and writing essays..

You want to apply to a B-school? Are you sure?
This is important. Because if you are not sure, be sure first and then start the process. Or may be start the process and then you will have a better idea.
When I started this whole process, I didn’t know anything (obviously). I started with talking to my mentor – B San and reading random blogs. I was amazed with how much people knew about their future goals and about themselves. You know yourself? Really?
I didn’t. I didn’t know where I was going and what I really wanted to do. Ask yourself – where do you see after 5-10 years. I was always blank after asking myself this question. Of course I always wanted a good life, money, a big house, financial stability, international trips and so on. But I could not see myself in a career after 5 years. Of course I wanted to lead, be important but where and when and how. I didn’t know much.
But since I have started writing some essays, I have started knowing myself better and now I see future.. not literally but ya, now I have some idea about, not what my future will be, but how I want it to be.
Writing essays.. its gonna be a bumpy ride.. but trust me.. this is one of the most important phases of your life. I would suggest, go on and write some essays even if you are not planning for mba in near future.. after writing the essays.. may be you will.
hasta luego..

P.S.
After writing just 2 essays, I feel like I have done a lot .. but still I am no where and still have to do a LOT.
I have miles to go before I sleep..

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

HKUST - still Not Out!!

I looked into HKUST more and some guys on pagalguy.com gave me real insight into the school. No doubt, the school is great for Finance and HK is the hub for financial institutes and since HKUST is ranked 17th globally by FT and 11th by … (I don’t remember), you cannot go wrong with HKUST if you are a finance guy.
But the school offers quality education in other functions too and since I am somewhat inclined towards asian market and also considering the cost and ROI, I am still considering HKUST.
I am looking for a career in Information Management/Systems or General Management. Not at all interested in Finance(as of now) and Marketing requires you to have good Mandarin speaking skills if you are targeting China for that matter. So as of now I am considering management career in Tech companies only.
Any insight from any of you would help and will be appreciated.
HKUST – still there. :)

While reading about HKUST, I thought about NUS as well. Didn’t go deep into that but got an idea that NUS has majority of Indian students, that is what I do not want. A single HKUST batch represents at around 21 countries. Wouldn’t that be great listening to someone from Japan, Thailand, Russia, UK, USA, South Africa and so many other places. Diversity is one thing I am looking for.
Will do more research on NUS though.

chao

Sunday, October 19, 2008

HKUST out: Lesson learnt. Do the research early.

What you want and what a college offers should be in sync.
Everywhere they say, do the college research and see what a college is offering. But most of the people do not look deep inside the college. Most of them are not even sure about what they want. And I am one of those people only. But going through this, I have realized that going through the admission process only, tells you so much about yourself. If you don’t know what you want in life, go through MBA admission process and you will get to know more than you ever knew.
From the very beginning, I know at least that I do not want to go in Finance. I am thinking about going in either Management in IT or Marketing.
I had shortlisted just a few collges. HKUST, CEIBS, Krannert, SP Jain and a few more but every day this list is getting shorter, and I do not have much time to research more colleges and get one of my choices, and then apply.
From the very beginning I have some inclination towards Asian Bschools. And HKUST seemed to be a good option. Expenses play a very important part in the school selection and that’s the main reason I have not selected many US B schools. The total expenses including tuition fee and living expenses go upto $100,000 for most of the schools. Moreover they ask for a Loan Co-signer. And the schools which didn’t ask for a co-signer earlier are now asking for it due to the recent global turmoil.
So due to above reason, HKUST sounded even better to me. Total expenses (Tuition + living expenses) go upto $55,000, as mentioned on its site.
Today I sat to dig more into HKUST Business School. And within some time I realized that the school is good but most of the recruiters were from finance sector.
And fortunately I got more clarity on this from some guy who was considering HKUST at one time. Thanks to him, he replied instantly and gave me more insight into the same. He has been in Hong Kong and that part of the world for long now and he suggested that one should only look for Singapore or Hongkong B schools if he is interested in Finance as career.
So despite of my proclivity/predilection for Asian Schools and Asian market and because of my disinclination towards Finance, HKUST is out from my list :(
So do the research early. It’s really important.
Chao

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Krannert also requires TOEFL..

Krannert is one school I am really looking forward to and will definitely apply.
Today i got a news. Krannert also requires TOEFL scores.
http://www.mgmt.purdue.edu/programs/masters/Degree_Programs/Full_Time/Admissions/requiredapmaterials.asp

I dropped Kelley just because I can't take TOEFL as of now.
But for Purdue, i guess i have got some time.
Lets hope for the best.
Am still reading blogs and some books to know more about schools/culture/essays.
One of the best blogs you can read is i4iday.blogspot.com
This guy is in ChicagoGSB. you must be knowing him, if you are a regular blogger and applying to a bschool.
He writes really well

I ll get back to the reading stuff.
Chao

Monday, October 6, 2008

Dropping Kelley :(

Kelley, Indiana University, needs TOEFL score as well. I was pretty impressed by Kelley in the MBA fair in New Delhi, on 27th September. Kate O’Malley, Associate Director, Marketing was representing Kelley in MBA fair held in Intercontinental Hotel. Once I started listening to Kate, I realized, how much a B-school like Kelley adds to your personality. She was repeating the question first, asked by someone standing over there, and then giving a very sensible answer, addressing each and every person standing on that stall. I listened to other representatives and alums but I was very impressed by Kate, representing Kelley and Veronica Ho who was representing USC Marshall.
Moreover, the Kelley curriculum is really impressive. The real time industry experience while you are still in college adds so much to your personality and profile. Moreover Kelley Business School is very well known for Specialization in Marketing.
I made my mind to apply in Kelley. I did a good research on Kelley. But Kelley needs the applicant to take TOEFL as well. The first round deadline is 15-Nov-08. I have time but I will not be able to manage taking TOEFL and writing essays for Kelley and other schools, so I am dropping Kelley for now.
I have not started writing yet. So I better get back to the thinking process.
Chao.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Loan Co-signer..

When you are applying for a Bschool in USA, or I should say when you start thinking about applying in a Bschool, there are lot many things you should consider before applying.
Generic things like – what do you want out of a 2 year MBA course, which school you want to get in, which function/industry are you looking for after your MBA.
These are the things, everyone thinks about but there are few things you need to care of.
My mentor ‘B San’ kept on telling me this and today I really took care of it.
There are a few schools for which you need a Co-signer to get a loan for your Tution fee + expenses. There are some schools which don’t need any co-signer upto your tution fee and if you need loan for your expenses as well, you need a co-signer and third category is the best one – No co-signer needed for a loan upto tuition fee + living expenses.
I have a very close friend of mine in US and I was counting on him. He had asked me not to worry about the monetary matters and concentrate on my GMAT and application part.
Now I am done with my GMAT and trying to work upon my applications, so I thought I should talk to him :)
So I talked to him. And now I am applying to the schools which do not require any co-signer up to tuition fee. Expenses will be taken care of by him. Thanks bro.

I could not sleep last night. All the time I was thinking about essays. Some schools are asking me about –
• my career objectives
• my 5 year plans, 10 year plans
• What are the 2 or 3 strengths or characteristics that have driven your career success thus far? Do you have other strengths that you would like to leverage in the future?
• What do you expect from your MBA program? How and when will you measure the return on your investment in the MBA?
• Briefly describe the career path you intend to pursue immediately after b-school. Explain why this career option appeals to you and why an MBA is appropriate at this time.
• Describe an ethical dilemma that you faced in your professional career. How was it resolved and what did you learn from the experience?


And the most interesting one from Kelly, Indiana University
• Suppose you had to choose three people people alive now or people from another era to travel with you on a cross-country automobile trip. Who would you choose and why? What would you hope to learn from them? (Think carefully about the company you want on those long stretches through Nebraska or Kansas.)

Come on man. I feel like I don’t know myself. I know what I want 10 years down the line but these things are not specific. I do not know which industry/function I want to work after my MBA.
I really need to think, think and think.
I hope putting my thoughts over here will keep me on the track.
Chao

Saturday, October 4, 2008

've you already thought about it?

I am sitting with a laptop, thinking deeply about what I really want in life.

“What do you want?” this sounds very simple sometimes, if you ask someone or is it being asked from you. What do you want?

Answers can be infinite varying from anything to everything. But when it is asked by a Bschool, you just can’t go on and say anything. You got to be very clear about what you want in your life because an MBA is a big investment of your life whether it be the money, the 2 years or the hard work you are putting for getting into a bschool or the hard work you are going to put during those 2 years.

The very first question any Bschool asks is – what is you career objective?

If you have never thought about it, it’s the high time. It’s the time for, as one of my friends says, Self Realization. It doesn’t matter whether you are 21, 25 or 28 years old. What matters is do you know yourself.

Ask yourself,

What do I want?

What am I going to do after a few years?

Am I going to work at the same place?

Am I going to do the similar kind of work?

Will I get a break I am looking for?

When will I get that break?

Am I looking for any break btw?