The Waiting Game

Day by day i'm losing my confidence and plunging headlong into deep depression. Every post in the forums and blogs mentioning interview invites is making me more melancholic than the previous moment i endured.
I hope the bschools will soon release their results and put my mind to peace, one way or the other.
I've lost interest in applying for Haas, and the thought of applying for Harvard at my present state of mind is well beyond my capabilites.
With all due respect, i've not even heard from Ross, so i'm almost at the brink of altogether forgoing my chances at all other schools.

I desparately want to go to school, and i want to go now, to start out soon as a clean slate in my professional career. But these bschools and these waiting games are not making this any easier.

I hope i was able to write my essays as fluently as i did this post....gosh...Time is Irreversible

I hope my attempt at humor with Essay 3 for Chicago would not cost me my admission :)

That Weird Feeling !!!

yeah...i feel weird to be back on my blog after a gap of 2 years. Now i find some of my fellow bloggers (of old times) have gotten admits and are now 1st years students in top univs. Even in my professional network i find some people, whom i never suspected to have had a MBA dream, had gotten admits and are settled in their 1st year at school. My congrats to all of them.

Last year i had gone through thorough introspection on what i want to achieve in life, and getting a MBA from a top univ seems to be the right answer for my aspirations.

So i have decided to give myself a new hope and get on with the applications. This is the 1st year i'm applying to any univ, Hope the lady luck would favour me, and i too would get through this year.

I'm back !!!

I've also decided to be a part of the MBA craze thingy and have applied to some of the schools in R2. These are the schools i would really love to attend if i get an admit.

Wharton
Ross
LBS
Chicago
MIT

and though i've missed the rolling admissions start date for Columbia, i'm seriously planning on submitting my app soon. Hope they dont think i was not being serious enough.

Would have loved to apply to Harvard, but i was seriously out of time (courtesy...my laziness and late start) and had to drop a school. Also i could not readily find a 3rd recommender for HBS out of professional setting, so had to forgo that app. Maybe just to satisfy myself, and to extract myself from my guilt, i'm still thinking of applying to HBS in R3. Call me crazy if you will.

If nothing goes well, i'm keen on applying to INSEAD (Jan Intake). As i'm planning to make a career switch, i dont think going for the Sept Intake will do me any good, as there is no possibility of doing a summer internship in my target industry. Does anyone (esp alumns) have any comments on that school, and importantly the differences between Jan & Sept intake?

All the best to all fellow applicants, and those who have already been admitted in R1. Please do say a little prayer for me

Now, let me get on with my Columbia app.

Wharton Reception!!!

ttended the Wharton Reception yesterday. It was conducted by two 1st year students of Wharton. They provided an in depth explaination abt the life in Wharton, the academics, extra curricular opportunties etc. I should say it was way better than the other info-sessions in which one simply gets to listen to the presentation by Director of Admissions and others.

Nearly 15 to 20 ppl turned up for the event. As usual my inquisitive self used the opportunity to get some of the doubts clarified. Infact after the event i found out that i was one among the few (nearly 4 or 5) who were prospective applicants and that all the others present were actually R1 admits :) Also heard an unofficial info that nearly 14 to 15 ppl (from india) were admitted in R1 to Wharton. Great show guys. Hope the same trend continues (or gets better) next year too :)

But i should say i was a bit discouraged that none of those admits who turned up were from the same field (IT) as mine. I found that everyone was doing something related to finance or accounting before their admits. Now I sincerely hope that atleast some of the other admits who didnt turn up for the event belong to the IT field :)

After the session i'm really impressed and i strongly feel that i shud apply to Wharton next year. But the problem is after attending any such receptions/info-sessions i'm getting impressed with every school :) ... I guess something is really wrong with me somewhere. Have to start judging schools by their CORE and not by their external put-up appearances.

Darden Reception !!!

Attended the Darden Infosession. Meet the Dean and the Director of Admissions there. Personally I like Charlottesville the most. Even during my UG days I wanted to apply to Darden for my MS. But cud not get a chance to apply as some of my classmates,with better CGPA than me, applied there.

I know clearly that Darden follows a Case Based approach in teaching in which management concepts are taught side-by-side as the students try solving the case. It is a different approach from those of most b-schools. But i dont know for sure whether it is my cup of tea. I feel i can handle the rigours of academics in Darden, but i'm sure whether Darden is exactly the kind of school i want to go to. I still have time and i will learn. No need to hurry.

I was not impressed with the type of presentation given by the Dean. He was mentioning something about "High touch, High Tone, High Octane" etc. What he was saying was very vague and it is not what one wants to hear from the Dean of a reputed school. Instead he could have effectively utilized the time in stressing on the uniqueness of Darden. Overall i was not very impressed with the infosession. I liked the one by ROSS very much. It is sure that i'm applying to ROSS next year.

The same old MBA story...

No i didnt get any admissions yet...but i have decided to (kick?) start my MBA journey. Wait..that too is not true, as i have already passed the first hurdle. Yes, i'm done with the GMAT. Now i dont have to worry abt those silly grammar mistakes and can write whatever i like and however i like ;-)

But it is true that i enjoyed my GMAT preparation. To tell you the truth, infact i enjoyed it too much that i was into it for the past 10 months...wierd huh?. But it is true. Infact if i have to give anyone one advice on GMAT, it will be to keep his/her preparation short & intense. Know the GMAT format,common patterns etc well and then attack it. Most guys (including me) have difficulty in the SC section that they go abt memorizing/ understanding all the exotic grammar concepts. Some even lose their sleep & hair worrying over that one difficult-to-understand grammar rule someone explained in some damn "forum". Guys, leave all these to rest. Concentrate on the basic errors tested in GMAT and you will be fine most of the time.

Well, now i guess u will be curious abt what my profile is and what score i actually bagged in GMAT. Right?. Well my profile is what follows now.

Indian/24/Male/IT with 2.5 Yrs of Work Ex. No stellar UG (Comp.Sci) grades but managed to scrap through with a "First Class" from one of the TOP engineering 5 Engineering colleges in India. (No, I'm not an ex-IIT-ian). GMAT in 700+. Average extra-curriculars & community involvement.

Currently, I'm planning to applyfor fall 2007 class of some 5 or 6 US & Europe univs. But the above said number cud increase or decrease as i go thru my MBA research this year.

From time to time i will be updating this blog on the happenings from my side. Do pardon any grammar mistakes u happen to come across in this damn blog of mine. I dont want to be on the watchout for these kinds of errors while i put my thoughts in this blog, otherwise it would look like i'm writing some goddamned essay for some univ, which is a really SCARY thought :(

Where am I?

I've not suddenly vanished from this planet. I'm very much alive and kicking. But i'm currently in Blogstipation mode. So i won't able to post regularly, (or even post something) , for some time. So till then it is "Tadangalukku Varunthukiraen" ("Sorry for the Interruption") from me.

Blogstipation: noun
Inablility to post or update one's blog for some time. Not to be consfused with its counterpart which starts with a 'C'.

Hello World !!!

Yup...just like the famous test program which everyone writes to start their practice in programming, i too am starting blogging with this "Hello World" post.

I'm thinking of using this blog to chronicle some of the happenings in my life, though i would not assure that i would write everything or even that i would be punctual in updating this blog, but you can very well expect some interesting ones from me. This blog also will serve to portary my personal opinions on different issues. Just like the mistake i made in the previous sentence (it should be "portray" and not "portary"), you can very well find some silly mistakes and some grammatical errors in this blog. As the intention of this blog is only to bring out my thought process, i guess i can request everyone to put up with some of these errors which one will be able to find in this blog time and again. Speaking of grammatical errors, i remember one interesting "panda" joke i read recently. It goes like this,

A panda goes to a restaurant and orders a sandwich. After eating it, he takes up a revolver from his pocket and fires 2 shots in the air and then starts leaving. The waiter was baffled by the behaviour of the panda and asks him, "Why you shot in the air?". The panda then produces a badly punctuated wild-life manual from his pocket, tosses it to the waiter and asks him to look it up. The waiter finds the following description about pandas in the book.

Panda. A black and white coloured animal living in treetops and is native to china. Eats, shoots and leaves.

Unlike the above joke, any errors made in the blog will be unintentional and accidental. Though i will assure you that these errors will get minimised as this blog gets older.

So it's "Hello World" from me again.

P.S:
For anyone who still can't realise the error in the panda joke, The only hint i can give is "the error is in the punctuation".