Can I love them all ?

I Love them all and I feel so greedy that I want to get into all of them !!!

Their websites look so good, the students are an awesome bunch, all of them have good placements and brand value, some a bit more and some a little less but still good enough to make me feel interested.

They have a whole lot of clubs and activities to get involved in and build your network and leadership skills.

Then how do I differentiate between them?
How do I tell them why they are special to me and how will the school play a unique role in helping me reach my goals and how I will be able to enhance the experience of my fellow classmates.

These are the questions I have been struggling to find answers too.

I have found out some of the schools I definitely like and I am applying to them for sure. They also seem to be a great fit for me. I am a very outgoing person and believe a lot in teamwork. I have been a collaborative kind of a person and I am not a very aggressive leader. I enjoy taking part in lot of activities and my friends feel I am fun to hang around with.

I am working on my essays and I have found that it is better to sit with the set of essays of a school and decide in which essay I will highlight which aspect of my personality. One cannot talk about all aspects in all essays or the same aspect again and again. Plan it before getting started on the essays as this will help you in being more focused and you will be better able to cope up with the word limit and convey your story completely.

Guys how many schools are you planning to apply to? How many you think is advisable?

The Clock has started ticking.

Saw the posts on Dave's blog

HAAS has released deadlines and essays

Round 1 Nov. 6, 2006
Notification Jan. 29, 2007

Round 2 Dec. 11, 2006
Notification March 19, 2007

Round 3 Jan. 31, 2007
Notification April 30, 2007
Round 4 March 12, 2007
Notification May 14, 2007


Chicago Announces new deadlines

Per Chicago GSB:
The 2006-2007 application for admission will be available by August 1, 2006. Our application essays will be posted on this website by July 1, 2006. We will also post a downloadable version of the application to this website in August.

Round Submission Deadline
Round One October 18, 2006
Round Two January 10, 2007
Round Three March 14, 2007

But none of my target schools have released the deadlines so far :)

The last week has been a little unproductive. I am done with the first draft for my Kellogg essays except for one.

I am taking turns to revisit the essays so that I have some time gap between my second reading and the first one. This helps in looking at it differently.

The draft seems fine, but somehow lacks a very personal touch. It sounds more like I did this, I achieved this and I learnt this. There is not much of my motivation, passion and me in those essays.
Its more like achivements essays and leanring from them.

In kellogg I have used different essays to highlisght different aspects as the word limit prohibits you from taking a lot in one essay.

All 2008 applicant blogs are a little too inactive now a days and I check for any updates everyday but then there are none most of the times :)
I guess they are all busy getting ready to get back to school.
All the best to them.

Working on First Essay

I finally took the first step after a lot of delibration on which schools I am going to target. I think I have my list more or less finalized. I still feel that as I would spend more time writing the essays and introspect more I would be able to decide wether I am really interested in the school or not.

I also got the book How To Get Into Top MBA Program and I am finding it really useful.

I spent last two weekends and few more hours trying to get started on one of the essays for Kellogg's. I ended up exceeding the word limit by a lot. Thanks a ton to MBA JackAss for the amazing post on Kellogg essays.

I reworked my strategy and I am using different essays to highlight different aspects of my personality to bring out a complete picture. Earlier I was trying to talk about everything in the same essays and thus excceded the word limit.
Going forward before I work on essays of any school I will first decide which essay I am going to use to highlight what aspects and then start writing. It should save me some precious time.
I know some guys must be thinking I am starting too early, but keeping in mind my other commitments and work pressure I think I need to do this. Also I need spectacular essays to reach for my dream schools and I plan to give the applications my best shot.

School Selection contd...

I have been trying to find out more about various schools, reading about the site visit experience of other bloggers. Few posts on why some of the bloggers choose one school over the other were really insightful and has helped a lot in letting me understand how to go about selecting schools.
No doubt all the schools I look at look really appealing but then I cant apply to all :)

I also have to keep in mind that the school should have a financial loan program.

So here is my list as of now:

1. Wharton
2. Stanford
3. Kellog/MIT (Still deciding.. but as of now it looks like it will be Kellog)
4. Darden
5. Michigan
6. Duke
7. Cornell/UCLA
8. Stern
9. UNC
10. Emory/UT

It still is a long list and I need to trim it down further.How do I do it is a question.

I have been eagerly trying to find out about the profiles on India/IT Males who have made it to these schools to assess my competitiveness, but no luck so far at most of the schools.
I have good GMAT, good acads in my undergrad, working for a BIG brand name product development company with lot of extra curriculars and a LOT of community service with good leadership roles. But I lack international work experience and have 4 years of work ex, which I think might be a little less for some schools.
Also I wont be able to visit the schools and I think the schools do give some weightage to students who visit the school and show genuine interest in the school.

With all the research so far I have found that no one can answer the question which is on top of the mind of all applicants "What are my chances?"

I know I have been tempted to ask this myself, but the more i read about admission process the more I realize it is not really possible to answer that. May be someone can suggest if my profile would be competitive or not, but at the end of it if you are a decent candidate it all boils down to your essays and interview.

Shortlisting the schools!!

After almost a week long research, browsing through the site, exchanging mails with the current students, talking to applicants and reading businessweek I am convinced that Wharton is one school where I definitely want to go.

So, Wharton is the first school I have on my list.

I am now researhing Stanford/Kellog/HBS and would most probably apply to one of these. As of now based on my limited research Kellog/Stanford it will be :)or may be both.

About HBS I would love to go there, for that matter everyone would, but I am not sure if I would be doing the right thing devoting so much of time and energy on its application when I know the returns might not be too good :)

Columbiba has declared its ED deadline. So the race has begun!!

The Running of the Bulls: Inside the cutthroat race from Wharton to Wall Street

Last time when I had gone to get some books I happened to see the above book and without any second thought I picked up a copy to get an insider view of the life at Wharton. I had also been partially inclined towards finance and was not sure if I Banking would be my cup of tea or not.

This is one of the few books that I read without leaving a single page, including the preface, acknowledgement etc. The reason for this may be that either the book was so interesting or I was too motivated to get the maximum juice out of the book.

The only thing I was disappointed at was that the book talked only about the undergraduate school and not the MBA School, but despite of that it gave a very good perspective about the culture of the school, the academic rigor, the alumni base of the school etc. The biggest insight was about the recruiting and internship process, which is the most important phase of the life at a B school.

Another big take away for me from the book was the greater understanding of what it takes to be a banker J. I am more aware about the dark side of this job then before and about the brighter side I think we all know it pretty well J The high salaries and fat bonuses and an amazing sense of empowerment. I am pretty convinced that given the priorities of my life I am not interested in such a career where I would be left with no time for my family, myself and to be involved in some of the things which are very close to my heart.

Wharton came off as a very finance centric school with almost the whole batch trying to jobs in finance related fields, consulting was the second preference and the book never talked about technology related careers or Not for Profit related careers. But I think that might be because it was a book about the undergraduate school.

I surely liked the challenge of thriving in such an ultra competitive environment and being among the over achievers. I myself would go out and make the most of it if I get a chance at Wharton. I liked the awesome career service department and the alumni base, the kind of admiration and reputation the brand carries. It will help me come back to my country and work in future as Wharton brand holds the same value across the globe.

I would still spend some more time on the Wharton website and try and get in touch with some current students or alumni.

So am I applying to Wharton? Well cannot say that as of now need to research more schools and see which fit me most. But no doubts about it that Wharton surely rocks!!!!!!

I would really appreciate if you guys can share some of your insights about the school incsae you researched the school.

Moving Ahead ...

After a brief period of patting myself at the back for the good show in GMAT I am now ready to take the next step.

I have been working in office and partying with friends, watching movies and having fun. I am also learning french :) It sure is a lot of fun to learn about someone else's culture and traditions and the language. A few more interesting people in my class would have made it an even better experience :)

I have downloaded the essay questions of most of the schools in Top 30 and plan to download their applications as well.

I would now be researching the schools I would be interested in applying.

The more I read about the MBA application process the more I realize that its very unpredictable and a long and enduring process.
The key lies in differentiating yourself from the others. I need to improve my writing style to make it more interesting and crisp.

Best of luck to all the applicant who are waiting for the results or are on waitlist.

First Step of my Journey :)

I am really happy that I did as I expected on the final Day and sored >720, which I think should put me in a good position. I am planning to apply for fall 2007.

I need to figure out how I can make the most of the time I have at my hand. Any suggestions ?? Things which could help me make a stronger case for the top B schools and add value to my application.

How to start researching the schools etc etc :)

Thanks to all you wonderful people. Your blogs have been a great source of inspiration !!! Thanks for the wishes and the tips too :)

Incase anyone has any questions regarding GMAT I would be glad to answer. I have benifited a lot form the fellow bloggers and would sure want to give back to the comunity.

9 days to go...

After a 740 in GMAT prep1 a score of 720 was not really very encouraging but still I think it was not really bad.

Now that I am done with both the tests I can start working with the Official Guide. I have high expectations from this book so lets see if it lives upto that.

I have started taking kaplan Higher score tests and plan to finish them soon. Got 640 in the first test. I think the standard of RC was really tough and I made a lot of mistakes.

I think CR is the only area where I have mainained a good accuracy rate in all the tests.
I was doing well in RC also till the last test in which RC was a big disaster.

In gmat prep 2 tests it was SC which bombed :(

But still on an average I am making around 7-10 mistakes in the verbal section.
In quants I have been a bit disappointed as so far I have n been able to get a 100% accuracy rate in any test as I am maknig some mistakes in data sufficiency. This is the biggest area of concern as I think if I can get all correct in quants then even if I do average on verbal I will get a good score.

GMAT Prep Test 1

Finally I got the Gmatprep cd from my friend and I sat down with the test. I was a little nervous as I wanted to do well on the test because people say it is the true replication of the actual test.

I gave it with full concentration and score a 740 (Q 50 and VA 40)
and was pretty happy to see the score. Nevertheless, I could have done much better as I realized I had made many mistakes.

I plan to take the next test tomorrow and then get started with OG as I have only 10 more days to go :)

Slow progress

I am done with the Kaplan Verbal workbook and almost half of kaplan 800.
The difficulty level of questions in Kaplan 800 is surely much better and it has helped me increase my accuracy in Critical reasoning and sentence correction.

Maths was fine, no great about the difficulty level.

Took another Princeton Review Test and scored 730 this time with a raw score of 46 in quants and 45 in verbal.

The good news is that I am scoring well in verbal and making around 8 mistakes in a full length test. The bad news is that I am still unable to put a check on the careless mistakes I am making in Data sufficiency.

I need to focus more and go a little slow in the maths section. I finished it with almost 40 minutes to spare.

Verbal i need to improve my focus and concentration level and that would help me push my score further up.

From where I am right now a simple zero error score in maths would get me a 750 plus and I need to focus on getting this right. After that even if I do just fine in verbal i will get a good overall score.

inching closer to the GOAL

I am feeling much better now and am in aposition to sit and study without much of pain :)

I have almost finished the kaplan verbal workbook and right now I am working with kaplan 800 and it is an amazing book.
have done only Critical reasoning from the book and it sure is pretty tough.

I have also takem 2 full length tests in last few days.
First one was the Paper based full length test in kaplan book.

I got 4 wrong in Quants and 10 wrong in Verbal section.This fetched me a score of 660 according to the scoring formula given in the book.

In Verbal I made only one mistake in CR and 5 in Sentence correction and 4 in Reading comprehension.

Yesterday night I took Computer adaptive test from Princeton Review and managed a score of 680. Here again I made 3 mistakes in quants and 9 mistakes in the verbal section. Out of these 9 I again made 3 mistakes in Sentence correction and 4 in Reading comprehension and 2 in Critical reasoning.

Was a bit disappointed as I was expecting a score of above 700.

So now what i feel is that I am doing good in critical reasoning and I need to improve my accuracy in sentence correction and reading comprehension.

part of it can be done by concentrating better and being aggressive while eliminating the answer choices. In some cases I did not read all the answer choices carefully, in someother read the question wrong.

Quants is where I am strong and I need to get rid of the careless mistakes I am doing. As all the 7 mistakes I made in the 2 tests were very simple ones and I made the mistakes because fo trying to hurry up.

I still have not started with my OG and I think doing that should also help me improve on my scores in sentence correction.

I am all pumped up and want to hit a score of 750 plus. Lets see if I can push myself hard enough to do that.

What a start :) The going just got tougher.

I was down with fever for past few days and was avoiding a visit to a doctor. When the fever just refused to go away even after 3 days I finally went to see a doctor and it turned out to be something more serious than a normal fever and have been advised bed rest for minimum 10 days. And guess what the previous night only I had booked my GMAT test date for March 14th :)

I think god thought testing me just on GMAT would be an easy thing to do, so he increased the odds against me :) and here I am now with only 4 weeks for my GMAT and out of which the next few days are gonna be bad with fever, weakness and many other things :)

I flew back home and am off from work till I get well. That means good food and care at home :)

I have carried along all my gmat books. The net here is real slow so I wont be able to take too much of advantage of the various online forums etc. Need to register for VIP membership of scoretop. Anyone with an idea how good it is ?


Have been working with the Kaplan book for the last 2 days now.
The way I see it, I hardly need to do anything about quants.
I am also finding CR pretty straight forward, sometimes the weaens and strengthens questions get a little tricky but most of them are in black and white with no grey areas.

Sentence correction also I am improving slowly and my accuracy level is up to 80% now.

Reading comprehension was something i used to think might be tough, but to my surprise i made only 1 mistake in 24 questions I attempted so far from the kaplan book.

Once i finish this I would also take the full length practise test and then move on to kaplan verbal workout and then to kaplan 800.

Right now I am feeling really weak so studying in short slots of half an hour types.

Lets see if i crack under adversity or make a record :)

One month is all I have

It has been long time that i have been going slow on my preparation for GMAT. Finally I have decided to put my foot down and set a date for myself.

March first week is what I am aiming at, I still need to find out if there is any free slot available during that time.

I plan to get cracking with the kaplan book by this weekend.

Next would be Kaplan Verbal Workout and then Kaplan 800.

Once I am done with these I am sure I should be ina good shape to take the cd tests and would move on to OG.

Lets see how quickly and vigourously I get cracking on this.

Got Tagged :p

Starting here, the game hit KV who in turn tagged Mr D.Spiral and then wannabe and finally hitting me.

So here I go

Four jobs I've had in my life:
Ok I have been working for a few years only so dont really have 4 full time jobs :) But anyhow some of the jobs I think are major ones are

Placement Coordinator at College
Software Engineer at my previous organization
Programmer at my Current Organization :)
Fund Raising coordinator at a Not for Profit Organization

Four movies I can watch over and over:

Forrest Gump
Notting Hill
The Matrix
Munna Bhai MBBS its a hindi comedy :)

Four places I have lived:

Hissar
Bangalore
Hyderabad
Gurgaon

All in India and none of them is my hometown

Four TV shows I love to watch:

Young Turks
India Business Hour

I cant really recall any other TV show which I watch regularly..


Four places I have been on vacation:

Pondicherry
Shimla
Kodai kanal
Kullu manali

Four of my favourite dishes:

Kheer
Halwa
Aloo Parathas with curd
Pizza

Four websites I visit daily:

Pagalguy
business week
Orkut
My yahoo gorups

Four places I would rather be right now:

At home with Parents
Sipping coffee and reading a book
In the Gym or running
With my friends

Four bloggers I am tagging:

I am a new kid on the block not really sure if I know 4 bloggers who would respond :)
Lets see if I can continue the game :)
Forrest
Vibhu
Ash

What if it was Real GMAT Verbal Section :)

Yesterday was a good day, it did a lot to boost my confidence level. In the monring I read the Sentence Correction section from the Kaplan book.
It was good, but I would say the Princeton Review Verbal Workout was much better to get the basic right.
Kaplan did give a bit of information about the 8 different types of error GMAT tests you on and gave some examples about that too.

I did not attempt the sentence correction exercise at the end of Kaplan as I was expecting them to be a little tougher and want to keep them for a little later.

I had read the sentence correction from PR Verbal Workout and attempted the sample verbal section test give in it. The test had 41 questions and I timed myself to get a feel of the actual section test.
The questions werenot tough, but still some of them were a little tough and I had to choose between the two choices I was left with.

In the end I was surprised to see that I got 38 correct out of the 41 questions.
I treated myself with an ice cream :) and dint study after that :)

From today back to studying !!!

Being is almost always incorrect on GMATLAND

A good improvement from the previous score in Sentence Correction.

I was might disappointed with my performace in sentence correction of the crack gmat diagnostic test i took. I sat down with Princeton Review Verbal work out and read about the 8 different types of error which are usually tested on GMAT.

It had some exercises as well for each type of error, it really helped in improving my ability to identify that error.There was a test at the end of it with 22 questions and I got only 4 wrong out of them, which I am sure is a great improvement over my previous performance.

Being is never correct in GMATLand :)
intent on is correct idiom intend to is correct to
Always try to underline the subject and the verb in a sentence and then see if they agree in number.This can be made complex by adding a lot of additional info in between the sub and the verb.
so much ..as is correct idiom

Process of elimination is the best way of tackling the problem. Going forward I have planned to solve all the questions witha scratch paper in which I will have a square for each of the choices and would write the reason as to why this is incorrect.This I believe will help a lot in gettimg more conceptual clarity.

Would I get one too :)

Got this from http://bschoolorbust.blogspot.com/


HBS Admit letter from the BW forum
(if I am violating some copyright law, please inform me and I will take it off)

Dear Ms. xxx:

Congratulations!
On behalf of Harvard Business School, I am delighted to offer you
admission to the MBA Program. Your admission recognizes your outstanding
record of accomplishment and your potential for future success.
Each year, the MBA Admissions Board selects a class from among the
brightest and most accomplished young individuals in the world. We
aspire to find leaders like you who have the highest standards of
integrity and who understand that leading is a privilege.
The Harvard MBA Program offers more than just an academic degree; many
find it to be a transformational experience. By immersing yourself in
the case study method, and by working with distinguished faculty and
students, you will teach others as you learn. You will build deep,
practical knowledge while developing your leadership capabilities. In
joining our community, you will become part of an influential worldwide
network of alumni who will support you throughout your life.
We hope that you will accept our offer and want to make sure that you
have all the resources you need to make this important decision. Our
Prematriculation Web site will be your main source of information over
the next few months. It will direct you to key activities that will help
you learn more about HBS, such as Admitted Students' Weekend; in
addition, it highlights key requirements and logistics related to
joining HBS. You can immediately access the Prematriculation Web site by
using your username: xxx, email domain: mba2008.hbs.edu, and password:
xxx.
Your offer of admission is exclusively for the MBA Class of 2008,
entering in 2006, and it is contingent upon the verification of your
transcript(s), verification of your employment history, a signed copy of
"Joining the HBS Community" (a document that highlights our Community
Standards), and a tuition deposit.
We believe that you have the potential to make a real difference in the
world and hope that you will decide to become a part of the Harvard
Business School community.
Sincerely,

Brit K. Dewey
Managing Director, MBA Admissions & Financial Aid

CRaCk GMaT

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


http://www.crack-gmat.com/gmat.htm

I happened to visit some blog where I got this link to take a free online Diagnostic Test. I had been wanting to take one full length test for long time. As I took the first one a while ago and left my preparation in between after that.

So basically its a fresh start I am making and wanted to know where I stand before I formulate my strategies.

Todays morning I took this test and the result was not very encouraging. But it wasnt really abd either.

It started with the Quantitative section through which I was able to breeze through. I finished it much before time and got 34 right out of 37 and it showed me a scaled score of 50.

The second section was verbal and this was the one which gave me a shock. I managed to get only 22 right out of 41 and 19 mistakes.

The bad thing was I had mistakes in all parts of verbal test.

SC was the worst and i got 5 right out of 14 questions I attempted. CR was equally bad with 4 right out of 9. RC was relatively better 8 right out of 13 questions.

Now I think this is a real bad show in verbal and there is a lot of effort I need to put in before I even get close to my target score of 750.

But one thing I was surprised to see was that despite of it the test showed me a score of 610 and it saud the score of the actual test would be a 100 points more than your score here as this test is relatively tougher.

But I am not reading too much into this last statement and would make sure I improve on my overall verbal score.

I had been doing some work on this already and its not good news that it dint help me much. I had taken a few tests from LSAT critical reasoning, was reading some verbal notes and frequenting various gmat forums like testmagic and sentencecorrection.com

looks like it is a long road ahead, but then I love challenges and its going to make it more interesting.

Small Steps to begin with

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
--Robert Collier

I have spent my last few days trying to gather information on whats the best way to start my preparation and what should be my strategy to attack the test.

There is so much of information available out there and at times it got really confusing. I just wanted someone to come and tell me that do this and this and it would be done. But then it aint so simple, I finally tried to come up with my own plan of action and this is how it looks.

To start with I am going through some of the Verbal Notes complied by people who have done well at GMAT.
Sumeet Thakur's Verbal Notes

is a very good compilation and its helping a lot.
At the same time I have started visiting
testmagic.com
scoretop.com
pagalguy.com
sentencecorrection.com and they seem to be real good place to get your doubts clarified and learn new things.

Next I plan to start with Princeton Review Verbal owrkout and that should give me a good standing to get cracking on sentence correction.

Side by side everyday I plan to spend some half an hour on RC/CR form LSAT material I got from some forum. This would help me get in good shape for CR especially.

As of now this is what I have planned. Once I start implementing this I would have a fair idea of my strengths and weaknesses and I would be able to decide the future course of action.

I have plans to do Kaplan , Kaplan Verbal Workout and OG after this.