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

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.

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)

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

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

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