I have been off for a quiet long time now and I am sure some of you must be thinking the blog is gonna be dead, but I am back. There was a little change in my priority and had to concentrate on something else for the last few months and now that I am done with it I am all rearing to move ahead and go all out for GMAT with even greater enthusiasm.
I have not yet started preparing again but I am planning to start it now and would take GMAT around Jan end or Mid Feb.
In the meanwhile I have still kept my eyes and ears open to all the information flowing around regarding the various schools and GAMT preparation.
I attended the World MBA tour last week and had a chance to talk to some of the school’s representatives. Few of them I talked to were Darden, Wharton, Hass, Queens and Ross school of Business.
I was really impressed by how patiently the lady from Queens Admission committee took all our questions and explained to us about the Queens philosophy and what it is looking for in the candidates and what makes it a special place. I was attracted towards it more because of the relatively lower cost and its inclination towards technology. It also emphasizes on team work and the smaller class size lets the students share a special bond and know each other well.
Ross school of Business hosted a presentation and I had a chance to attend it. I found that as the most interesting talk on the day. They shared a lot of information about the school, its culture, teaching methods and community. There were two alums from the school who made a great effort to share with us their experience. It had so much information which one can never find on any website or forums. Now I know how it helps to talk to alumni and how much helpful it can be. This is one school I am surely applying to. I have Stanford on my list for sure as well and that’s mainly because of the focus on not for profit and social entrepreneurship. I can take a lot of learning out from the courses for non profit offered their and can work with some of the esteemed faculty on a social entrepreneurship project as well. Over the next few months I am sure there will be many more additions and deletions to the list J and a lot depends on the GAMT score.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Monday, August 29, 2005
Target CrITiCaL ReasOniNG
Have been going real slow with my Prep so far as I was involved with some community work and also was over loaded with work at office.Now I have finished the community service project I was working on and also my office work load will be a bit lighter for next one month or so.
I have planned to attach the sections where I can attain 100 percent accuracy rate. I have identified Quants and CR as the two sections where I can aim at giving my sore aboost. For quants I am not doing anything specific as of now but I am pretty sure that with a little bit of practise and a great amount of concentration while giving the tests I will be able to avoid the careless mistakes I might make during the test.
For critical Reasoning I have started with practising the questions given in the LSAT. I read it on scoretop.com that LSAT CR is tougher and if we can practise with LSAT CR questions we can surely do good in GMAT CR.
You can go to scoretop.com and get loads of practise sets from LSAT to practise CR. So next few days I will be doing just CR and will also keep working on sentence corrections.
Somehow I feel that I will end up with 2-3 mistakes each in RC and SC and CR each. So if I can get all right in Qquants and decrease my mistakes in verbal I would be in a very good shape.
For SC I have finished Princeton Review and the Verbal workout of Princeton Review. I gave a test but still ended up with 10 mistakes in verbal section. I have to see how I can improve on Sentence correction in particular.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Some good information
Below is the post I got from http://brit-chickmba.blogspot.com . Found it really good. Might be of help to some of u as well.
What I'm looking for
Before talking about each school, I thought it would be useful to post the lists I made of why I want to do and MBA and what I want from a programme.
What do I want to achieve?
Equip myself to lead an nfp organisation in the future, by:
* developing skills in strategy and leadership
* gaining a deeper understanding of the issues affecting nfp orgs
* building more generalist skills and knowledge onto my specialist skills, knowldege and experience.
* acquiring enough knowledge of other specialisms to understand the issues and ask intelligent questions
* gaining knowledge and skills in the 'hard' areas
* building on my knowldege and skills in the 'soft' areas
What am I looking for when chosing an MBA
* Core courses with a good mix of 'hard' and 'soft'
* Opportunity to lok in-depth at leadership, strategy and nfp issues
* Ability to have both breadth and depth in course taken
* To learn from experts working at the 'cutting edge'
* To learn from my fellow students
* To be able to put theory into action
* To be in a co-operative culture
* Opportunity to work and study with people from a wide-range of backgrounds
* To be somewhere I'll enjoy living and studting
* Good links to nfp orgs and consultacies
* Interesting extra-currics
* Interesting people
* A firm foundation for future professional practice and development
* A well-regarded course
* A mix of teaching methods, used effectively
* Opportunitied to sing (a long-term hobby that I want to continue)
* Finance available for international students
* A loan forgiveness programme
* Decent transport links with the UK
* Not too big, but not too claustrophobic
* Excitement!
The above aren't in any particular order. I'm going to go through them at some point and divide the criteria into 'essential', 'desirable', and 'bonus', and probably add in some more that I think of along the way.
Edited to add: In response to requests, anyone wanting to use this list elsewhere is very welcome to do so, but I'd appreciate it if you could credit where it originated. Thanks.
Now, as promised, my thought on each school:
Yale
What makes it stand out
*Very good reputation for its nfp offerings.
*Interesting nfp focussed resources and courses (e.g. Programme on Social Enterprise, Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures, Nonprofit Organiosations Clinic.
*Social Entrepreneurship course
*Strong offerings in the strategy area.
*Strong offerings in the leadership area (including Chief Executives Leadership Institute, Creativity and Innovation course)
*Intersting joint offerings with other schools, particulalrly liked the look of 'Business Ethics and Sleeping Well' with the School of Divinity.
*Small school.
Concerns
*New Haven
*No university housing, how difficult will it be to find accommodation when I'm coming from across the Atlantic and have no local credit history?
Stanford
What makes it stand out
* Overall profile and reputation of the programme
* Location / weather
* Centre for Social Innovation and the nfp course oferrings
* Centre for Leadership Development and Research and the leadership and strategy courses
* Leadership DEvelopment Platform
* Process of Change Lab
* Management communication Programme
Concerns
* Location - west coast makes time difference with and travel time to the UK that little bit more
Before I visited, I'd listed 'reported arrogance of students'. I've now deleted that, but replaced it with 'very high competition from extremely able applicants'! But if you don't ask, you don't get, and the worst they can do is say 'no'.
Kellogg
What makes it stand out
* Centre for Nonprofit Management
* Offering of noprofit leadership non-credit course, early on in the year
* Social Impact Club and Conference
* LEAP
* Well regarded programme, both generally and for nfp's
* Very team focussed
* Good leadership and strategy offerings
* Board Fellowship course
Concerns
Slightly larger programme than the other two
What I'm looking for
Before talking about each school, I thought it would be useful to post the lists I made of why I want to do and MBA and what I want from a programme.
What do I want to achieve?
Equip myself to lead an nfp organisation in the future, by:
* developing skills in strategy and leadership
* gaining a deeper understanding of the issues affecting nfp orgs
* building more generalist skills and knowledge onto my specialist skills, knowldege and experience.
* acquiring enough knowledge of other specialisms to understand the issues and ask intelligent questions
* gaining knowledge and skills in the 'hard' areas
* building on my knowldege and skills in the 'soft' areas
What am I looking for when chosing an MBA
* Core courses with a good mix of 'hard' and 'soft'
* Opportunity to lok in-depth at leadership, strategy and nfp issues
* Ability to have both breadth and depth in course taken
* To learn from experts working at the 'cutting edge'
* To learn from my fellow students
* To be able to put theory into action
* To be in a co-operative culture
* Opportunity to work and study with people from a wide-range of backgrounds
* To be somewhere I'll enjoy living and studting
* Good links to nfp orgs and consultacies
* Interesting extra-currics
* Interesting people
* A firm foundation for future professional practice and development
* A well-regarded course
* A mix of teaching methods, used effectively
* Opportunitied to sing (a long-term hobby that I want to continue)
* Finance available for international students
* A loan forgiveness programme
* Decent transport links with the UK
* Not too big, but not too claustrophobic
* Excitement!
The above aren't in any particular order. I'm going to go through them at some point and divide the criteria into 'essential', 'desirable', and 'bonus', and probably add in some more that I think of along the way.
Edited to add: In response to requests, anyone wanting to use this list elsewhere is very welcome to do so, but I'd appreciate it if you could credit where it originated. Thanks.
Now, as promised, my thought on each school:
Yale
What makes it stand out
*Very good reputation for its nfp offerings.
*Interesting nfp focussed resources and courses (e.g. Programme on Social Enterprise, Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures, Nonprofit Organiosations Clinic.
*Social Entrepreneurship course
*Strong offerings in the strategy area.
*Strong offerings in the leadership area (including Chief Executives Leadership Institute, Creativity and Innovation course)
*Intersting joint offerings with other schools, particulalrly liked the look of 'Business Ethics and Sleeping Well' with the School of Divinity.
*Small school.
Concerns
*New Haven
*No university housing, how difficult will it be to find accommodation when I'm coming from across the Atlantic and have no local credit history?
Stanford
What makes it stand out
* Overall profile and reputation of the programme
* Location / weather
* Centre for Social Innovation and the nfp course oferrings
* Centre for Leadership Development and Research and the leadership and strategy courses
* Leadership DEvelopment Platform
* Process of Change Lab
* Management communication Programme
Concerns
* Location - west coast makes time difference with and travel time to the UK that little bit more
Before I visited, I'd listed 'reported arrogance of students'. I've now deleted that, but replaced it with 'very high competition from extremely able applicants'! But if you don't ask, you don't get, and the worst they can do is say 'no'.
Kellogg
What makes it stand out
* Centre for Nonprofit Management
* Offering of noprofit leadership non-credit course, early on in the year
* Social Impact Club and Conference
* LEAP
* Well regarded programme, both generally and for nfp's
* Very team focussed
* Good leadership and strategy offerings
* Board Fellowship course
Concerns
Slightly larger programme than the other two
Saturday, August 20, 2005
One Down....dont know how many more to go :)
I have been really keen on seeing what my score would look like if I take a full length test. But I had been restraingning myself from taking a full length test so that I dont waste one test cos of this temptation.
I did some basic stuff like reading the strategy to crack sentece correction and critical reasoning questions. I also did the Princeton review Verbal workout for sentence correction.
So finally I thought I should og ahead and take a full length test and I took the Princeton Review first cd test.Was taking it on my friends comp and it asked me to enter first word in Acknowledgement section for authentication, had to go back home and get the book.
So i did finally start my test.
First section promted to me was AWA and I dint even think twice before skipping the section :)
Next to come was Maths. I told myself not to hurry up through the section and give it with extra caution so that I dont make careless mistakes. I was pretty confident that I will get all of them right. Dint face any conceptual problems in any of the questions. But i guess that must be the case with most of the people. being an Indian male with Engineering background puts me in a good stead on my math skills.
The next section was the one where I really wanted to judge where I stand today so that I can plan my strategy accordingly. I was careful with the first 15 questions and gave them some extra time and went slow. I was trying to be careful and was also trying hard to keep my concentration level good. But looks like it dint happen :(
After finishing the test I was prompted if I would want to upload y score for which i said yes. But then my PC dint have anet connection so it dint happen. It then showed me the table where it listed out in each section which questions I got wrong and which ones I got right. Now here culd I find my score :(
Now I am still not surer how bad or decent my current status is. If you guys can help then here are the stats :
Quants 3 Wrong out of 37 and all of them were wide aprt and all after first 15 questions. Careless mistakes :(
Verbal wasnt as good as I wanted it to be. Anyway I know its the area I need to work on:
3 wrong in SC3 in CR4 in RC
so total of 10 wrong out of 41 :( But the good thing was no mistakes in first 10.
Any clues on how u think I stand at this point of time.I know it wont make much difference as neither will I get over confident nor complacent but still I had this curiosity to know the score.
Anyway I know the areas I need to work on now. So I will try harder to cut my mistakes there and be more careful in quants and not commit any careless mistakes.
Today is saturday but we are officially working as we have a release coming up soon :) Listening to Enrique One night stand have a grt day guys
I did some basic stuff like reading the strategy to crack sentece correction and critical reasoning questions. I also did the Princeton review Verbal workout for sentence correction.
So finally I thought I should og ahead and take a full length test and I took the Princeton Review first cd test.Was taking it on my friends comp and it asked me to enter first word in Acknowledgement section for authentication, had to go back home and get the book.
So i did finally start my test.
First section promted to me was AWA and I dint even think twice before skipping the section :)
Next to come was Maths. I told myself not to hurry up through the section and give it with extra caution so that I dont make careless mistakes. I was pretty confident that I will get all of them right. Dint face any conceptual problems in any of the questions. But i guess that must be the case with most of the people. being an Indian male with Engineering background puts me in a good stead on my math skills.
The next section was the one where I really wanted to judge where I stand today so that I can plan my strategy accordingly. I was careful with the first 15 questions and gave them some extra time and went slow. I was trying to be careful and was also trying hard to keep my concentration level good. But looks like it dint happen :(
After finishing the test I was prompted if I would want to upload y score for which i said yes. But then my PC dint have anet connection so it dint happen. It then showed me the table where it listed out in each section which questions I got wrong and which ones I got right. Now here culd I find my score :(
Now I am still not surer how bad or decent my current status is. If you guys can help then here are the stats :
Quants 3 Wrong out of 37 and all of them were wide aprt and all after first 15 questions. Careless mistakes :(
Verbal wasnt as good as I wanted it to be. Anyway I know its the area I need to work on:
3 wrong in SC3 in CR4 in RC
so total of 10 wrong out of 41 :( But the good thing was no mistakes in first 10.
Any clues on how u think I stand at this point of time.I know it wont make much difference as neither will I get over confident nor complacent but still I had this curiosity to know the score.
Anyway I know the areas I need to work on now. So I will try harder to cut my mistakes there and be more careful in quants and not commit any careless mistakes.
Today is saturday but we are officially working as we have a release coming up soon :) Listening to Enrique One night stand have a grt day guys
Friday, August 12, 2005
Its not that bad after all :)
Hey guys the sentence correction doesnt seem as tough as I was thinking after going through the rules in the Princeton Review.
I have practised a bit about how to identify the common GMAT errors and have been made good progress atleast in the tests given in the Princeton Review book.
I know it might be relatively easy and not a correct reflection of how the actual level of difficulty of sentence correction may be in actual GMAT. It has atleast helped mke get rid of phobia of Sentence Correction.
Going forward I plan to finish Princeton Review Verbal Workbook and then move on to kaplan and then Kaplan verbal workbook.
Last would be the OG :)
I hope this is the correct approach and should help me ace the SC questions on GAMT>
I am right noe concentrating only on SC as I was most scared of this.
I tried Quants and DS and I am sure with a bit of concentration I can get most of them right. That leaves me with SC and CR and RC to concentrate on.
Planning to take my first full length test over the weekend. We have along weekend ahead as we have a holiday for Independence Day on Aug 15th .
Happy Independence Day !!!
I have practised a bit about how to identify the common GMAT errors and have been made good progress atleast in the tests given in the Princeton Review book.
I know it might be relatively easy and not a correct reflection of how the actual level of difficulty of sentence correction may be in actual GMAT. It has atleast helped mke get rid of phobia of Sentence Correction.
Going forward I plan to finish Princeton Review Verbal Workbook and then move on to kaplan and then Kaplan verbal workbook.
Last would be the OG :)
I hope this is the correct approach and should help me ace the SC questions on GAMT>
I am right noe concentrating only on SC as I was most scared of this.
I tried Quants and DS and I am sure with a bit of concentration I can get most of them right. That leaves me with SC and CR and RC to concentrate on.
Planning to take my first full length test over the weekend. We have along weekend ahead as we have a holiday for Independence Day on Aug 15th .
Happy Independence Day !!!
Monday, August 01, 2005
Done with the DIagnostic Test
In matters of principle, stand like a rock; In matters of taste, swim with the current.
-- Thomas Jefferson
I finally bouth my First book Kaplan GMAT book. Took my first Diagnostic test and was not sure how to react. It dint go too well or too bad.
It had 38 questions and I got 29 right and 9 wrong.
Data sufficiency 2 wrong (The first two questions of the test. Careless mistakes)
Quants : All correct. it was pretty simple
CR : 3 wrong :( A bit disappointed here
RC : 3 wrong. This is my weakness I know and I am ready to work on it as well.
SC: 1 wrong. Was a bit happy as i was most scared of SC.
It showed a score of 76%. Dint know how to interpret that in terms of absolute score.
Have been reading Spidey's Notes for SC so far. PLanning to get Princeton Review and Kaplan Verbal workbook.
Will start with PR and take a full length test from that to gauge where I stand as diagnostic test dint tell me much I think.
Then I will do Kaplan and later on OG and kaplan verbal workbook.
Long way to go :)
-- Thomas Jefferson
I finally bouth my First book Kaplan GMAT book. Took my first Diagnostic test and was not sure how to react. It dint go too well or too bad.
It had 38 questions and I got 29 right and 9 wrong.
Data sufficiency 2 wrong (The first two questions of the test. Careless mistakes)
Quants : All correct. it was pretty simple
CR : 3 wrong :( A bit disappointed here
RC : 3 wrong. This is my weakness I know and I am ready to work on it as well.
SC: 1 wrong. Was a bit happy as i was most scared of SC.
It showed a score of 76%. Dint know how to interpret that in terms of absolute score.
Have been reading Spidey's Notes for SC so far. PLanning to get Princeton Review and Kaplan Verbal workbook.
Will start with PR and take a full length test from that to gauge where I stand as diagnostic test dint tell me much I think.
Then I will do Kaplan and later on OG and kaplan verbal workbook.
Long way to go :)
Monday, July 25, 2005
(Does)Slow and Steady wins the Race ???
It has beena logn time since I have updated the blog. That doesnt necessarily mean there is nothing happening on the GMAT prepration front.
I have been doing a lot of introspection about when exactly I want to apply for B schools and when will it be the right time to give GMAT. I have decided finally to go ahead and apply for GMAT now and apply to ISB this year itself.
I will have three years of work ex by then. Which I know is a bit less and it might be better to go in the next year. But, at the same time I know the learning curve at my job is not too steep at the moment and there might not be much fo a difference in the value I might have added on to myself during this one year period.
Outside work there is a lot I can do and add value,like, continue the work I am doing with an NGO, learn a new language and get involved in some other activites. But professionally I dont see much responsibility coming my way in next one year's time.
So now that I have decided I am gonna start off right away with my prepration. I actually bought a new study table chair for myself. have started off with reading Wren and Martin, the English grammer book(thats cos I dont have any other material at the moment)
There seem to be too many rules to remember and it looks daunting, but its a lot of fun too.
There was a funny thign mentioned there.
With uncountabel nouns we can use plural. Now advise ,scenry etc are uncountable.. but it was written that in India they are considered countable !!! I was surprised to see that.. Cos I never thought the same.. And I am sure most of the other Indians dont.
Guys if anyone of you can suggest me the best sequence to start off and which books to follow it willbe great. Cos i read a lot and have too much info now..which is confusing me a bit.
I have been doing a lot of introspection about when exactly I want to apply for B schools and when will it be the right time to give GMAT. I have decided finally to go ahead and apply for GMAT now and apply to ISB this year itself.
I will have three years of work ex by then. Which I know is a bit less and it might be better to go in the next year. But, at the same time I know the learning curve at my job is not too steep at the moment and there might not be much fo a difference in the value I might have added on to myself during this one year period.
Outside work there is a lot I can do and add value,like, continue the work I am doing with an NGO, learn a new language and get involved in some other activites. But professionally I dont see much responsibility coming my way in next one year's time.
So now that I have decided I am gonna start off right away with my prepration. I actually bought a new study table chair for myself. have started off with reading Wren and Martin, the English grammer book(thats cos I dont have any other material at the moment)
There seem to be too many rules to remember and it looks daunting, but its a lot of fun too.
There was a funny thign mentioned there.
With uncountabel nouns we can use plural. Now advise ,scenry etc are uncountable.. but it was written that in India they are considered countable !!! I was surprised to see that.. Cos I never thought the same.. And I am sure most of the other Indians dont.
Guys if anyone of you can suggest me the best sequence to start off and which books to follow it willbe great. Cos i read a lot and have too much info now..which is confusing me a bit.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Gathering the gyaan
Have just shifted to a new house and haev taken a seperate room on the top floor. I am really happy for this because now I can study peacefully without getting disturbed by others in the house.
Started off with researching few sites and blogs. There seems to be an amazing amount of information available on the Blogs and on various sites. Few of them are:
1. http://mbaleague.blogspot.com
2. http://daveformba.blogspot.com/
3 http://www.beatthegmat.com/
4 http://home.comcast.net/~dave.kim/index_files/Page423.htm
5 http://www.gmatclub.com/
6. http://scoretop.com
7. http://www.clearadmit.com/2005/05/best-of-blogging-2004-05.html
8. http://pagalguy.com/cat
Now these are some of the resources I have been tapping into and I am amzed how helful some of these are. I would seriosuly reccomend looking into all these and getting a feel of whats required and whats the strategy you need to follow and how to plan your GMAT better.
There are people who have been there and done it.. It can be a grt advantage if you can see how they went about it and see what strategy suits you best and plan according to that.
I would appreciate if you can leave as comments other useful links which i have missed.
Started off with researching few sites and blogs. There seems to be an amazing amount of information available on the Blogs and on various sites. Few of them are:
1. http://mbaleague.blogspot.com
2. http://daveformba.blogspot.com/
3 http://www.beatthegmat.com/
4 http://home.comcast.net/~dave.kim/index_files/Page423.htm
5 http://www.gmatclub.com/
6. http://scoretop.com
7. http://www.clearadmit.com/2005/05/best-of-blogging-2004-05.html
8. http://pagalguy.com/cat
Now these are some of the resources I have been tapping into and I am amzed how helful some of these are. I would seriosuly reccomend looking into all these and getting a feel of whats required and whats the strategy you need to follow and how to plan your GMAT better.
There are people who have been there and done it.. It can be a grt advantage if you can see how they went about it and see what strategy suits you best and plan according to that.
I would appreciate if you can leave as comments other useful links which i have missed.
Monday, July 04, 2005
Here I go
Well I have just decided on starting off with my GMAT prep and my journey for a MBA . Wish me luck and I hope to share all the Gyaan I will accumulate while I follow my dream :)
Adios
Adios
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