Prodigalized

Up, up and away! The Kellogg part I is finally on its way along with 210$ that have so much riding on it. I went through all the usual stages - anxiety, fear, confidence and hope while hitting the submit button. But the biggest worry I had was towards ensuring everything was as accurate as could be. Though I am not sure how anyone can verify whether I spent 5 hours or 20 on a activity. I didn't remember the finer nuances of something I participated in over 10 years ago, but I tried to be as honest with myself, in most cases erring on the conservative side.

Well will see how it goes, and with this I have finally dipped my toe in the water, it appears to be warm so jumping in.

Mesmerizing

I am no fan of TV, and even less of reality shows, but I have been making it a point to watch the Apprentice lately. I guess this new found addiction is in part due to my travails through the business school application process. I am not sure if the producers are doing some creative editing or whether the women they picked for the show were a truly bad sample set, but whatever said and done, it appears as if these women just can't work together! They suck as a team, hate each other, appear disorganized and seem to have no original ideas. Every time the men come up with something these women follow, like the ice cream cart location in the previous episode to cleaning the restaurant in this one. How do these women expect to be taken seriously in the business world after portraying such lousy images of themselves?

If I remember correctly the last time around the women kicked ass so badly that the men were decimated. I guess this time the producers decided it was time to change the story. If the guys had made it to the boardroom, I could bet that the guy making all those gay jokes would have gotten the boot.

And after all that, I sat down to complete my Kellogg application part I. I have no idea why I keep procrastinating on this task, but I finally finished last night. Then I had my wife proof read the application till about 1:00 am, which made her miss the alarm (she had to wake up at 5:00 am for a meeting with her management team), and I felt terrible to see her scrambling around at 6:00 am trying to get on that call. These early morning and late night calls and meetings are a bane to her, and by extension my, personal life. Since she runs a team in India and the US, she has to be on top of things in both places and it is one of the hardest things to do.

Report

Ah the Harvard reception, I went there with so many preconceived notions and ideas, it was staggering that I went at all since I expected it to be the same old thing. After having gone there, I was pretty glad I made the extra effort. It was very different from what I had expected, some highlights:

• Contrary to Classy's experience, there wasn't a SINGLE mention of other schools in a derogatory way. The content was very narrowly focused on Harvard and what it was about.
• There were 5 Harvard Alumni who had agreed to act as panelists (a surprisingly small number considering that they have over 8000 Alumni living in California). They hadn't called any of the big shot alumni to 'shock and awe' the prospective pool. Most of the alumni were fresh graduates.
• The average age of the panelists seemed ridiculously low. If I passed them on the streets I would think they were undergrads and not grads. On one of the questions towards the end was on the average age of the class, they mentioned that the oldest person in their batch was 34, youngest 22/23, mean age 26 median age 27. As you can see a pretty young lot.
• It was funny to see how young these people were because the average age of prospective students seemed pretty high. All the applicants seemed to be mature, experienced folks. There was a huge paucity of women though. Despite 40 % of the alumni being women they consisted only 5-10% of the audience.
• The largest theme at Harvard seemed to be Leadership! No surprise there, but while not disparaging team-work and consensus based leadership, they definitely stated that these weren't things that Harvard focused on. It was a unifocal, laser like attention on leadership and the development of leaders.
• Having said that, I must say the panelists *all* came across as very dynamic. It wasn't the intellect shining through and the laid back approach of Wharton, it wasn't the chummy, friendly approach at Kellogg, it was pure aggression. I would imagine that Harvard graduates who succeeds in life will be truly happy, but if they don't I am not sure how they live with failure with that kind of aggro/ego?
• The reception was run on a case study type situation with the alumni fielding most of the questions, the AdCom was just facilitating the conversation. I found this process pretty interesting. My key grouse was against the fact that none of the alumni seemed over enthusiastic about answering questions as was the case in Kellogg or Wharton, it was like pulling teeth. Which was kind of contrary to what they said when asked about, "what it was like to be in a class room filled with leaders". One of them answered that, "It always seemed like there were 120 hands raised for 90 people in the class". In this case the AdCom had to poke someone in the chest before they answered the question.
• Again having said that, I must say most of the alumni were very impressive speakers. They were very forceful in their convictions and thoughts.
• I picked up a whole lot of jargon that I want to use to spice up some of my essays. Some cool phrases that add some luster to an otherwise simple essay.

At the end of the Q & A, the alumni mingled freely and shared their personal experiences with the application process and Harvard. I found them to be really friendly, without the airs that Harvard graduates are perceived to have. I must make a special mention of Caroline Wade an alumnae who is working in the health sector. She was super helpful with tips and thoughts on the application process at Harvard and surprisingly other schools. She took all the time in the world to answer any question the little group surrounding her had. Despite efforts of the Intuit custodian at throwing us out. So thanks Caroline.

While walking out Dave did ask the AdCom on her thoughts about blogs and forums. No dice there, she hadn't even heard about it. Despite Harvard being completely paperless, they don't seem to have made much progress in extending their outreach to a wider audience. But then why need they? They are pretty secure in their business, with thousands of applicants willing to give their left arms to get in, they don't need to go out and recruit.

Which brings us to the post reception events, I got to meet Dave for the first time and Sorebrek. We hung around chatting for close to an hour after, discussing all things near and dear to applicants for BSchool and bloggers too. It was fun, so thanks for taking the time to speak guys.

Sick

The wife and I were both surprisingly sick this morning when we woke up so we decided to take the day off. It seemed like a mild case of food poisoning, due to something we ate over the weekend. This has probably been the first time I have ever called in sick, being disgustingly healthy all my life, never had the opportunity to fall sick on a work day. But strangely I have worked much harder today as compared to when I go to work. Managed to make some headway on the Michigan essays and hope to break its back by the end of the day.

Considering that I actually worked on my day off made me keen to take time off again next week to make final adjustments to my Wharton/Kellogg/Cornell applications. I am planning to attend the Harvard seminar later in the evening today in Palo Alto and hope to bump into Dave there.

Harvard

There is a Harvard reception tomorrow September 28th in Palo Alto, was wondering if anyone from the Bay area plans to attend? It's in the Intuit offices on Casey Avenue between 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm.

You will need a confirmation code to attend the event (or atleast that is what the email I received says), so you might want to sign up if interested.

Reflections

Coming this far in the application process, looking back at everything I have done till date and looking forward at what remains to be done, I am struck by all the things that could be. I am currently helping a friend go through the same process, ensuring that he gets his strategy right for the GMAT. I came to the conclusion that other that a deep will and motivation, I have lacked in a focused strategy, research and most importantly effort invested. Despite 'thinking' I was working really hard and concentrating on the right priorities, I realize that there were hundred different things that I could have done better. Some I can attribute to a lack of knowledge of the system, some to a lack of experience, but I have to take the blame for not putting in enough efforts to make this work. And for that I feel really sorry. I can only hope that what I have done is at par with the 80% of applicants out there, and that I can still sneak in a college of choice.

This weekend started out well. Hung out with Swoop in a Palo Alto bar. I am sure we bumped into some Stanford GSB crowd, considering we were at one of the more popular hangouts, but we were having too much fun to care or even think about networking. I finally got my resume and the Kellogg part I filled. I should be sending it out in the next two days, along with a request for a Michigan interview. Compiled a brief synopsis for my recommender' and hopefully there is enough material in there for them to crank out a nice 2 page recommendation. Finally got all my transcripts under one roof. Called up my parents and got the details of their education and work history.

Two weeks to Wharton and Cornell R1. I have all but the optional essay complete. I am going to do my usual screeching entry into the round. Probably right before they close their shutters for the night. I just realized that Wharton deadline is Oct 14 12:00 am and not 5:00 pm as I had initial thought it would be.

Here is wishing all the R1 applicants good luck. This is going to be a crucial time for us.

On the side, I read this incredibly moving story about the experiences of Dave's mother in Korea. It was so heartbreaking to read that I can only imagine how bad it must been to live it. But as an indication of how low I have sunk, (introspection has made me reach a new level of being cynical), my second thought was what a marvelous story it would make for one of the essays. Coming as a relief to myself and to the gratitude of my conscience, my third thought was one accusing me of being a total @#$%$#@, and I apologized mentally to Dave for being an ass for even thinking about commercializing such a tragedy. Guess I can't use the holier than thou attitude towards the Bush administration over their take on 9/11 anymore, I just proved I am at par with them.

Feel like a fool

I don't have anyone to blame other than myself. For some reason, I spent a number of hours yesterday working on my Cornell essay, and when I reached the last bit where I had to speak about why Cornell, I decided to visit Johnson School's web site to fine-tune my reasons. While browsing through the courses, I got this strange feeling of deja-vu that I couldn't shake off. So I went to my online account where I store my latest application related work and voila! There was a completed set of Cornell essays that I had apparently worked on from home.

This is the first time I have goofed up this badly. The only reason this happened was that I hadn't crossed out the essays from my "to do" list. So a lesson learnt and an observation from this snafu. The lesson? If you rely on external aids to do the "remembering" for you, make sure it is updated every time. The observation? Funnily most of the essay that I had written again was almost an identical replica of the first essay. That was a remarkable coincidence. I am not talking about common stories, but right down to the words and sentences.

So I quietly kicked myself for having completed one application and not realized it. It is back to Michigan for now and since I am slightly ahead of my new schedule. It has me thinking as to whether I might be able to scramble abroad my old schedule. We will see.

I did catch a couple of TV shows last night, the Apprentice was one of them. For the past couple of days they were hyping it up as "Rules being broken in the boardroom, yadda yadda". Strangely I dint see any rules being broken, did anyone get what the promo was all about? Oh and I thought the men kicked ass this time. I dint think getting a completely uninterested, unrecognizable Mike Piazza qualified for a bigger buzz than a bunch of fire eaters. I liked that touch where they had put a tooth paste in the hands of the statue. Thought it was cool!

Geekdom

I was discussing Kellogg applications with Swoop last evening, confirming whether RA's/TA's should be incorporated in the employment summary. As usual he had some interesting things to say about that and other topics. One of which was interview topics, he mentioned that one of the questions asked to someone he knows in an interview was, "Why is water transparent?"

Now hearing that question, I instantly started thinking about refractive indexes and molecular properties. My answer at the end of my thought process was quite complex and geeky. This morning I was driving to work, when I decided to ask my wife that question, and in less than a split second answers, "it is the property of water". And I thought, hmmmm that is the right answer. People who don't have science backgrounds don't understand refractive indexes, but property of water it is bang on. Now that is what I hope to achieve with my MBA, leverage my current education and experience to understand the problem, but learn better communication skills that conveys the idea without getting lost in the technicalities. :)

Today I am going to work on Cornell drafts, so if anyone reading this is applying to Cornell or is a student there, feel free to drop me a line. It will be interesting to discuss the merits of the school.

Playing around with 'Hello'

I had some free time yesterday and decided to play around with ways to get images in my blog. For some reason the geek in me needs to play around with available technology just because it is there.

This was a picture we took in our trip to the bible belt last year. Both my wife and I love to travel and we have found that some of the most beautiful places are the least heralded. This is from one such innocuous place outside Montgomery, AL.


Tree and Clouds in Alabama

Agonizing crawl to the finish

I remember running this 800 meters race once, it was my first attempt at running in inter-school championships. Having no exposure to the 'horses' that other schools were fielding I was pretty confident of placing in the top 3 before getting to the stadium. At the starting line, it was totally different story, I was completely intimidated, standing next to folks who looked old enough to be your father I dint think I had a chance. Strangely enough that prophesy soon bore fruit, puny little me was soon relegated to the back of the pack after the first lap. Coming into the final curve with the stands in front of me, I could see the gate to exit the track coming up before the finish line. I was so tired and exhausted I must have thought a hundred times, "Let me get the hell out of here. I am just embarrassing myself by being the only person on the track after everyone had finished the race". People were actually waiting for me to clear the track so that they could start the next race. And try as I might I couldn't pick my feet up faster than a VERY VERY slow jog.

Strangely enough this is the first I have ever thought back to that moment. I was working on my Michigan essays this morning, and for some reason I got the same feeling. That I was last at the gate, and the finish line was so far away, with the exit gate coming up fast. Needless to say I did complete the race the first time around, crawled to the finish line and then home with my tail between my legs, all the attitude drained out of me. So I am pretty confident I will complete this race as well. I just hope it will be with my tail and head up this time around.

Last night we received a phone call from my wife's parents. Apparently they were involved in an accident. Luckily it was nothing serious, just a broken arm that required a rod to be inserted. Strange how life is, one moment you are feeling sorry for yourself, so many things to do, so many things left undone, and in the next minute your perspective changes. You just feel lucky and glad to be hale and hearty. All your fears and troubles seem negligible compared to troubles of others. Amazing how fragile humans are, and we are at the top of the food chain?

Nice to see some activity

After a long hiatus the blogger boards seem to have woken up. Spent some time this morning reading updates on numerous blogs. I was beginning to feel a little lonely here with my solitary post showing up on my RSS reader.

First things first, some progress on the drafts but not much. I am concentrating on getting my resume completed by today so I can complete the Kellogg part I and get the interview process started, and do the same for Michigan.

My undergrad transcripts are in the mail, and I hope to receive them soon. But a new problem has surfaced with both my recommenders. Strangely despite planning every little things down to the last possible detail something or the other manages to get out of synch. Between one recommender having a death in the family and having to leave town to attend the funeral, and the other planning to apply for school I am suddenly left with no recommenders to manage.

I am going to give it another week which is all I can spare before I contact my backup recommenders. I don't know if I can change recommenders midstream, but something has to be possible. I don't know how else to deal with this issue other than drop R1 and focus on R2, something I am loathe to do.

Problems aside, here is wishing iwhoElse, who plans to take GMAT tomorrow, all the best for the test. Hopefully you do well.

Argh! The dreaded post lost problem

Just lost a huge post I had written about my weekend activities and future goals. I have no enthusiasm to repost, but a couple of quick notes:
1. Kudos to Riter for attaching hoof to posterior and working hard on the essays! Now we know why there have been no updates on the blog.
2. Thanks to Swoop for the Wharton Resume book you kindly mailed me.
3. I am way behind schedule so had to rewrite the schedule just to be back on track.
4. I hate the Blogger JServ and load balancer, since it doesn't seem robust enough to tackle session time outs. (The reason why we keep losing our posts)
5. While we are on pet peeves, I hate SMS and IM style notes. If you can't write English properly, don't write period! This butchering of the language gives me the creeps.
6. Now I will make sure I copy all my posts before trying to publish the post.

Working on Saturday

*Sigh* like many of the other applicants out there, I am working on a Saturday, we have some visitors over for the weekend, and the wife is taking them around the city. (For some reason every time we have visitors over the day is usually grey, cold and windy, on all other occasions it is brilliantly blue and sunny - go figure). I would have liked to spend the day partying around with the group, but due to slip ups in the schedule I am here at work. I can only hope all this effort pays off in the long run.

I am incredibly surprised that there are so many other people who work long hours, have a family life, score well on the GMAT, write good essays, play a strong role in society and most importantly carry their enthusiasm through the 8 months or so it takes to complete an application process. And then you hear about MBA students who are narcistic, mean and lazy? I mean come on doesn't going through the grind throw out the chaff from the wheat? How do such people make the cut? There can only be two solutions, one that the system fails when it hits certain candidates. Or, All MBA students have some common traits that allow them to get into business school, but some obviously transcend that commonality and rise above the rest.

Which brings me to another question that is bothering me, is it the school that moulds the personality or is it a natural selection process that attracts students of a certain type to one school. How is it possible for some one to learn to be a leader? Isn't charisma inborn? Just by reading about Churchill or Napoleon or Alexander, or by watching them in action, will I be able to imbibe their traits? I guess this is where your essays come in, by showing hints of leadership, you try to show some thing in you, akin to a diamond in the rough being examined before it is opened by the gem cutter. If you have that spark of leadership, the charisma, you will be polished and buffed up till you emulate a Churchill or a Napoleon.

Enough of this shit it is getting me no where. I have Creed blasting from the speakers in my room, trying to create an atmosphere of creativity and adrenalin to crank out the essays.

Kellogg drafts out of the door

Was up late last night trying to wrap the last of the 3 big Kellogg essays. And finally while juggling between watching glimpses of the Apprentice I got it off the ground. Mailed it to my reviewer at 12:30 am before crashing into bed. I am pretty happy with the way these Kellogg essays are shaping up. I don't foresee too much change between these drafts and my final essay other than minor changes in grammar or syntax.

My strategy for these drafts has been slightly different from what is prescribed in the Montauk guide. I found that Kellogg asked direct questions that required direct answers, and it was difficult for me to come up with new facets of my personality, instead I used each essay to throw additional light on the issues I mentioned in previous essays. For e.g. if I highlighted activity 1, 2, 3 in essay 1, I explained it with a little more detail in essay 2 and more so with essay 3. As I mentioned before I tried to answer the questions as honestly as possible, and if it is not enough then obviously Kellogg is not the school for me.

The more I think about it, the more similarities I see between Wharton and Kellogg. So that makes it easier to find that common trend in some of the schools I am applying too. Unfortunately due to the pressures at work, I have fallen a little behind on my schedule, I was to finish the Wharton draft 8 or whatever the count has reached by close of business today. Looks like I will have to drag it over the weekend, which was reserved for resume drafting and helping my recommender by filling out my recommendation template and answering any questions they might have. Ah well the essence of management is to move rapidly with changing situation. I do want to catch up with my schedule by before Monday blows in or my plans will be completely busted by these delays.

Oh and here is wishing Classy who has her GMAT scheduled for Saturday all the best. Classy go get 'em.

Update on Kellogg seminar

Got back home last night at 12:00 am after the Kellogg seminar. The seminar dint last that long but the three of us who went together (Swoop, Depack and me) had dinner in the city before heading home. Swoop kindly volunteered to drive with me as the navigator while Depack quietly suffered motion sickness and the heat in the back seat. It took us some time to find parking but once that was done we made it to the seminar with time to spare.

A few observations and notes from the seminar:
1. The conference room was a little small for the number of people there, with very little space for people to talk and walk around to participate in different conversations.
2. The alums were really friendly, I have to mention Daniele Ghioti who was incredibly helpful, he really took the time out to answer questions without once appearing to brush us off. Specially after a bunch of people kept asking him some damn fool questions (me included). After we discussed my career choices he whipped out his card and asked me to give him a call after I was done with my MBA, regardless of the school I went too, since he knew a number of people in that field. I really liked that attitude. I also noticed another Alum (Stuart) who was handing out his card to the group he was speaking with. So I rated Kellogg high in terms of people skills.
3. Curiously though, one of the impressions I got was that Kellogg had a slight bit of insecurity with regards to applicants they admit picking other schools over them. Probably because everyone was insistent on accepted applicants visiting their campus BEFORE sending checks to other schools.
4. The alums present were all pretty sharp, with a couple having outstanding communication skills, but this was more like an everyday Joe kind of group. Where you could be comfortable and not be worried that the guy next to you probably worked on the theory of relativity, and the girl behind discovered the cure for Cancer.
5. The main theme at Kellogg definitely is team work and team spirit, but the marketing strategy has changed slightly with other schools jumping on the bandwagon. Now there is more of a focus on Team-Work AND Team building/leadership. So something you might want to highlight on your essays.
6. The Kellogg representative did mention that there is no font/size restrictions. The only thing she said was that it should be easily readable. So if you are like Swoop and can squeeze in 1000 words in 2 pages with font size 10, it will do just as good as an essay with font size 11 with 700 words. I am sure that answers a lot of questions.

Now for the critique:
1. WHERE was the cheese? I am not kidding, most of the people coming for the seminar seemed to be coming straight from work. The seminar was to last a couple of hours, and there was no refreshments other than some soft drinks. It totally sucked. The three of us were hungry the whole time.
2. Another impression that all three of us concurred on (after comparing notes over dinner), was that the Kellogg representative seemed a little tired from the touring. Not that she wasn't efficient or anything, but just a feeling we got that it was more of a chore than this warm, fuzzy, gung-ho COME TO MY SCHOOL IT IS SO COOL! But can't blame her I guess, after answering the same questions on such a tight schedule as the MBA tour, she was probably at the end of her tether. But definitely not something you want your prospective students to see.
3. The seminar did not allocate more time for the Q & A. I am sure the Alums were all tired and exhausted, but so were the applicants and this is probably the best opportunity for them to sell their school and for us to soak it in.

All in all a solid B+ effort. Waiting to see how Harvard and Chicago stack up in comparison.

I did receive an email from Graham with regards to the Kellogg essay guidelines. His preference on the matter of sharing the guidelines would be, if the people interested contact him directly at info@clearadmit.com. To collect it directly from the source so as to speak.

Wow! Thanks Graham!

Received a short note from Graham of ClearAdmit fame this morning, answering the questions that has had us in a quandary (Kellogg's vague word limitations). His guidelines were in synch with Classy's recommendations (Times New Roman font, 11 pt.). But over and above the word limitation, he also provided a detailed analysis/guidelines on how to answer the Kellogg essay questions. Having just run through them, I must say they were bang on target. I realized I was drifting from the scope and actually risked not answering the some of the questions.

For which I have to blame Montauk! I was reading through the Kellogg essay he had up there, and if you notice essay 2 By Nitin Shravan is in a tangential plane to the scope. I am sure a lot of people are going to be a little confused by that essay which is up in an otherwise terrific book as an example of how to answer that question.

As you can tell I was pretty impressed by Graham's analysis. I probably should have followed up on Dave's post when he spoke about his conversations with Graham. Now I am a little concerned about my other essays.

What is with Kellogg?

I am sure the admission committee at Kellogg thinks they are being flexible with their word limits, but somehow this open ended requirement of (one or two pages double spaced) just doesn't help me at all. I am confused as to how many words I can squeeze into the essay. Everything is so dependent on font and size. How are the rest of you dealing with this problem? I would appreciate a comment on the font, font size, and approximate words you are using for your essays. I went through the Montauk book and the Kellogg essays were pretty much the same, and the example there goes into Pages and pages as compared to a couple of pages.

I think I am going to give the world MBA tour a miss, I am not to happy about wasting my time traveling to SFO on a busy weekday, specially if I won't be taking home anything other than brochures. I am looking for something more on the lines of Wharton Seminar I went to last time around, where I actually got to speak to the alumni present at length. Learnt something about the school and culture. From what I have heard this world MBA tour, is more like a cattle market, where there are very few alumni and people available to speak about the school and a lot of applicants who ask the same question like "Is my 740 GMAT and 3.3 GPA good enough to apply to your school?"

While I haven't worked on my resume as I planned to last week, I have managed to get all my transcripts together. Now that is an accomplishment considering the trouble I went into for it. It almost derailed my entire application strategy. So I have all the ground work ready for R1. Now all I have to do is put it together.

Okay is back to the Kellogg essays, would appreciate a note on its size.

Semi-productive weekend

Can't blame any one thing, but the weekend dint pan out quite as expected. But it was quite interesting. I spent over 16 hours sitting in my office trying to work on my essays but kept getting distracted. I spoke with a couple of my fellow applicants for almost half the time, and was left completely impressed with their candidacy. It is like everyone out there has something special, some unique and a track record of success. Makes me feel very humble and keen as mustard thinking about spending 2 years at school and a lifetime of friendship with these people. I am hoping that we can continue these bonds of friendship we have forged through this difficult times as an applicant through school and beyond.

I did get around to making a schedule for the remaining time till my applications are due. So in pursuit of that, I am scheduled to finish my Kellogg drafts by tomorrow, (only one big essay and a couple of smaller essays to go). I am pretty happy with my Kellogg drafts. A lot more than I was with my Wharton drafts. I guess having written a few essays helped me gather my thoughts that much faster.

Another interesting thing that happened over the weekend was my discussion with Swoop. We were hashing out different schools that we were applying too, and trying to understand each other's choices better, when we realized that both of us were trying to sell each other a school the other hadn't planned to apply too. In my case, I was selling Chicago to Swoop, and he was rooting for Stanford. :) So it might just be that I end up applying to Stanford, in R2, and if by some quirk of fate I get in, you know who to thank for that. :)

I am planning to attend the world MBA tour tomorrow, but after reading completely contrasting opinions posted by PowerYogi and Dave, to the events as they occurred in NY and LA, I am in two minds. I don't really have the time to spend gallivanting around SFO in all the traffic, but don't want to miss out on a good thing. I am also attending the Kellogg seminar on Wednesday, which makes it doubly important for the world MBA tour to be really worth it for me to attend.

Took the day off

Yesterday other than working on my transcripts I took the day off. Did absolutely nothing as far as the essays are concerned. I have been feeling stressed in the past few days and just wanted to take time off before a hectic weekend starts tomorrow.

This gave me lots of opportunity to sit down and actually watch some shows on television and catch up on my reading. So yes I saw the premiers of Joey and Apprentice. Joey was absolutely horrible, can't believe this show will last longer than a season. There is no story and unfortunately Matt Le Blanc can't act. That I am so dumb routine can only take you so far. Was it just me or did everyone else like Chandler (Perry) on Friends? I thought his sarcastic innuendos and hyper active acting was really funny. Add to that Monica's (Cox) peccadilloes made Friends actually interesting. The less said about Rachel and Phoebe the better. :) I know, I know a lot of people disagree with me, including my wife who loves the Rachel character.

Gotto stop for lunch. So more on the Apprentice later.

Back now for the Apprentice, I thought this time the group was much better. A lot more qualified people, who actually had some exposure from the last Apprentice to chalk out strategies, but the task they were assigned was truly pathetic. Come up with a toy? It was a situation where no one knew anything about the issue, so obviously the person who spoke the loudest was going to ram his/her thoughts across. Crustacious-whatever? I mean come on, you have to be a nerd to like that kind of stuff. I thought 9 people a team was just a little too much. Not sure if I will be catching too much of either show. This time though I thought Donald was a lot softer than before, but still pompous as ever. :)

Interestingly right after lunch, I found out that one of my colleagues is leaving. I was really sorry to hear that. We have a small but very close knit team, and the fact the we lost a member through a layoff, and now this, is like a blow. But what makes the blow doubly hard is that now I will have to pick up the slack which will increase my workload at just the wrong time. :( I am going to take a day off every week, till the application process is over, just so that I can finish all my apps on time.

Raining Gmail accounts

It is raining Gmail accounts once again, any takers? As usual the first 4 get the accounts.

A celebrity whose shoes I would like to step in

I was thinking about the essay for Chicago, when the answer hit me. I am by all estimations a simple person, with strong passions and high goals. Would I be interested in filling the shoes of a Michael Vick? Or a Mahatma Gandhi? Or even Churchill? While all of them play/played huge roles in the lives of a lot of people around them, some how they don't relate to me. I am sure I could draw parallels from all of them. Hard work, vision, dedication, passion, etc. but somehow they just don't seem to be people I want to be.

Instead, I was looking for a person into whose shoes I would have loved to have stand in, out of whose eyes I would want to look at the world, feel the quite passions and dreams that made him change the world. Not in any grandiose way, but rather in a quite way, by moving one brick at a time. Pretty much like how I would do things. Add to that the fact that I wanted to share some goals, some dreams with such a person, made it doubly difficult for me to find that one person who I could relate too. Someone who I could have conversations with if I met him for dinner. When it struck me, I knew exactly who I admired, whose shoes I wanted to fill. :) And there was the subject of my essay, as humble and inconspicuous as ever.

Once I am done with my application process, I would love to post more about this person. Just to share why this person was special. Not just to me or any small group of people but the entire nation as a whole. Why his gift means so much for generations past, present and future. How he grew to the stature he did, despite a lack of formal education. As you can tell I am pretty excited about this essay. I was initially pretty concerned that this essay along with the one for Mascot would prove difficult for me to tackle, but getting one of the way, I can only imagine that the other will fall into place as soon as I do more research on the school.

Post Long weekend Blues

I have been working on the essays for various schools over the long weekend. I am not sure if I utilized the best strategy of attacking them though. Instead of taking each set of essays one after the other, I hit all the easy ones of different schools, since I wanted more time to think about the tougher ones. Now I am left with trying to consolidate my themes and weave a common story between all the essays of a single school. Shouldn't be a problem really, just that it will require more attention on my part to ensure the story fits.

Has anyone made any headway on the Chicago essays? I seem to be stuck with some of the essays there, and if someone is in the same shoes and it up to it, I wouldn't mind bouncing a few ideas on topics and themes for these essays. I am talking specifically about the mascot essay.

The regular essays that deal with achievements and failures are still simple, even moral lessons are approachable as long as you have the right story, but mascots? Definitely the toughest essay I am writing on this season.

My long weekend wasn't as productive as I hoped it would be. There were numerous things on my 'to do' list, that remained undone, but I got a couple of solid essays out of the whole exercise. I am hoping this procrastination hasn't left me too far behind the rest of the class. It was so hot in the afternoons, that I was just too drowsy and lethargic most times to pick up the pen and paper or even think.

Pleasant evening

Spent last night having dinner with Swoop and Riter. It was pretty interesting speaking with other MBA applicants. We dint get around to speaking about the application process till we were done with dinner and asked to leave the restaurant (they had started to close down for the night). We adjourned to the nearest bookstore, which also shut down shortly after, forcing us to take our discussion outside.

All in all a very pleasant evening. I am hoping we can continue this about once a week. Hopefully we will be a lot more focused the next time around and clear out common doubts or clear the misconceptions we might have about the MBA process.

Today fortified and encouraged by yesterday's discussions I am hoping to get some serious work done. I think I took away some tips on how people attack some essays that I hope to incorporate into my attempts.

Swoop, Riter if you are reading this, thanks for making the time. Specially Riter for making a long drive to get here. I had a blast.

Are Kellogg applications out?

I was poking around on the Kellogg website looking for a copy of an old transcript request form when I stumbled upon the 2004 application. While trying to select the 2004 application, I clicked on the 'get latest copy' or some such link and it put me in an embark window that allowed me to log in.

Interestingly I could enter data, save it and all the good stuff. The essay questions were exactly those put forth this year. So I was wondering if I stumbled into some Beta test page for the 2005 application form. If so then it looks like the Kellogg applications will be out soon. They are probably feeling the heat of being the last school to release the applications.

Well check it out people and let me know what you think. Here is the link. Select the second radio button and click away. :)

EDIT: Okay Kellogg applications are definitely out! Here is one of the headers I found "Welcome to the official online application for Kellogg School at Northwestern University 2005"

Mad scramble for Transcripts

Okay the mad scramble is almost over. Things are under control with having assigned my sister to the task, (there are some uses to having a big sister). I called my mother last night to speak with her about my transcripts and found out that she along with my father were vacationing in sunny Colombo! Yup Colombo, Sri Lanka! I spoke with them last Sunday and they dint mention they were leaving this week. I knew they were going, but wasn't sure about the date, can't believe they sneaked off without telling me. Hmm maybe my mom did mention it to me a long while ago, but how do you not tell your only son you are leaving for Sri Lanka 2 days before you leave?

With the transcripts kind of out of the way, now I can concentrate on my essays again. It is like out of the frying pan into the fire. What on earth was I doing all of July and August?

It looks like the Bay area bloggers community have finally gotten their acts together and are planning a small dinner party tomorrow. So once again the folks from the Bay Area who plan to apply in 2005, do feel free to join us. Likewise with any alumni who wish to pass on any pearls of wisdom. The dinner is scheduled for tomorrow approximately 7:00 pm in Fremont. Feel free to ping either Swoop, Riter or me for details.

Up the creek

With the pressure mounting, I was still confident of getting out all my applications on time, but now my manager just put a wrench in all my plans. I have been assigned a hyper critical issue in an area that I have absolutely no familiarity with. Which means intense pressure on the work front to first understand the background and then fix the damn problem. Normally I would love to get my hands dirty, learning new stuff and fixing problems, but now with so much pressure to meet R1 deadlines I am just mad that this had to happen now.

And all this right after I cooled down after my panic attack. :( Now I have to just suck it in and try to finish as many of my apps as I possibly can at all times of the day and night. To add to my cup of woes, Cornell refused to let me self report my undergrad scores, and now I need to scramble around to get that out of the way. It is going to prove to be a problem since I will have to beg someone to go to the University and get the transcripts and mail it to me. More tension and loss of time.

Initially I contemplating letting the deadlines slip a bit and target R2 for a couple of schools instead of hitting R1 but decided against it. I have too much riding on this MBA to allow myself the luxury of wallowing in self pity. Besides from all I have heard if you get more than 6 hours of sleep per night it is considered to be a luxury so this is as good a place to practice as any.