Opportunities

I am in the midst of writing this essay for Columbia, which asks for one opportunity I have identified and taken. I was walking down memory lane and going the list of opportunities that I have seized in life. I have decided that though the event I am eventually going to write about happened some time ago, I want to write about it mainly because it pretty much changed the way I led my life, and has contributed largely in bringing me where I am today.

The opportunity doesn't have anything to do with business decisions, but are more personal decisions. But I can talk about the things I had to change inside to accept the opportunity and how it has led me to where I am. Isn't that what essays are all about? Or should I write about a business opportunity, which did prove beneficial but not necessarily as shattering as the other one. Hmmmm.

On a side note, there was this guy sailing a R/c boat in the lagoon near work, distracted us during a meeting and caused me to comment, "what happens if his boat runs out of fuel". And wonder of wonders it just did. He is out there paddling his kayak to bring the R/c boat back in tow. :)

New toy

Just got a new Garmin GPSMap 60C, GPS yesterday. It was a gift from my wife for not doing as badly as I expected, in my GMAT and also because she loves me! :) Have been playing with it ever since I got it. Calculated the exact length of our customary walk in the evenings, the average time and speed it takes and the exact distance from home to work.

Yeaaa! Truly awesome gift, everytime we would go to REI, I used to drool over the GPS'es there, and now I have my own. Still don't have the detailed city level maps, but since I am still playing with the many functions of the GPS and its pre-loaded basemaps, haven't missed it yet. Will probably get the maps sometime later next month.

I did write to a couple of students at Wharton, haven't heard from some of them, and the other responses weren't all that forthcoming, so a little disappointed about that. But the research continues, planning to sit down and start with the Cornell Essays today. Will see how it goes. But first to calculate the exact distance between the gym and my office. :)

Busy over the last weekend

Caught Bourne Supremacy, thought it would be an OKish movie and that is exactly how it turned out to be. Dint like the book, so difficult to like the random story line of the movie. I just pray that they don't make a movie on Bourne Ultimatium, that was definitely Mr. Ludlum's worst attempt at writing, so shudder to think how bad the movie will be. *Sigh* how true the adage that there are no good sequels.

Other than the movie, also ate crab at a dinner, if only one dint need to put a live crab in the water to cook it, I would definitely be cooking more crab at home. Somehow in a hypocritical manner I can eat crab, but hate the idea of killing it myself. :(

But inspite of all the fun (and open air runs), I did manage to get some work done. Managed to round out all my bullet points and brief stories that I wanted to talk about in my applications. I noticed that my writing style has improved drastically since when I started this process. It has become more fluid and the stories more humane. I guess I am becoming comfortable tooting my horn and writing about my flaws. Not sure if anyone heard Gov. Arnold's speach about "girly men" last week while refering to the State congressmen, but I was left wondering about the after effects of this application process. I am sure I am going to end up being a "girly man" in touch with my inner self. :)   

Correction to a post by MBA07

MBA07 had posted a great link to a Wharton S2S thread that spoke about what a Wharton AdCom looks for in an essay. The link it pointed too in his blog was wrong so here is the correct thread.

Thanks MBA07 and FF for the posts.

 

Changed the look and feel

The Orange wasn't really me. Decided to change the look and feel of the blog. I should probably be adding more content, but I just don't have the time to do everything I want too. I am falling back on my schedule for writing my essays. Hopefully this weekend I can put in some time to make up.

Recap of Wharton Summer Reception

In one word "Great", I just loved it. I was a little skeptical about the whole event after reading about Brit-Chick's experience with the London event, but luckily those fears went unfounded. Attended the session with Swoop, apparently he works pretty close to where I do, so it made sense to car pool. There was a little bit of miscommunication on the co-ordination of the meet. But luckily, we made it in the nick of time, found our seats and were launched into the world of Wharton.

The night started out by with a basic presentation about Wharton and the "Wharton Experience", by the various alumnus in the Bay area. Followed by a brief introduction of all the alumni and current students present. They summarized their career till date, including the time before and after Wharton. They also spoke about why each of them choose Wharton, and then invited people to step up and talk to them individually with any questions the audience might have. There wasn't any formal Q & A session as such, but the personal interaction was terrific.

Some highlights:
1. By some quirk of luck at least 4 of the alumni present had served as admission committee members, and were very willing to share that experience and provide insight on the factors that influenced their decisions to admit students. Just loved that, special thanks to Thomas Caleel, and Ravi Sinha (Hope I got their names right). Ravi Gallu (I know I have his last name right), provided interesting anecdotes to his application process. (All of them WG '03).
2. Spoke with Dan about career choices after Wharton and about the Wharton community in the big cities. It was very insightful and really interesting.
3. surprisingly there weren't many finance majors around. Probably due to the fact that the bay area doesn't attract the math-heads, I am sure that would not be the case in a Wharton reception held in NY.

Impressions:
1. My first take on all the alumnus was "Wow, these guys are smart".
2. The alumni dint strike you at first impression as being outstanding leaders or as people who shake a room as they walk into it, but you could sense the potential. Each and everyone of them seemed very capable, and very confident in themselves, while at the same time being nice to the prospective applicants and each other.
3. There weren't any of the airs, that I noticed in some of my friends who are going to attend Harvard. While they all seemed competitive, they dint seem like sharks who smell blood. Another plus point in my book.
4. This was a Wharton reception, and while everyone spoke about how good the school was, I dint walk away thinking they were trying to sell me on Wharton, it was more of a sharing of information.

All in all a great experience. I would definitely recommend you go to one of these receptions in your area. It just reinforced the reasons why I want to go to school at Wharton, and why Wharton is the right place for me. If this is a fair representation of a class, it will an absolutely dynamic and interesting time to participate in. WOW!

Haven't been running lately!

Running is definitely on the top of my favourate things to do. Unfortunately I haven't run this week and it is making me bad tempered. The reason being, one of those freaky moments. I was walking with the wife, when just as my foot was about to come down on the sidewalk, I noticed something about to be crushed into oblivion. With this super dextrous combination of a hop, skip and lunge, I arrested the downward movement of my leg and avoided stepping on an earthworm. Sadly though, the dextrous move seems to have done some damage to the iductor muscle in my leg, it twinges everytime I step heavily let alone run. So I have been left wondering whether I did the right thing in choosing to risk personal injury, over the life of an earthworm which would have died anyway, in the near future, (A lot of birds seemed to be around, and they had that hungry look in their eyes). Maybe a swift death would have been better than being eaten alive. Besides it doesn't look very macho does it? If/When the earthworm crosses over the rainbow bridge and is asked, "So why are you here?" And is forced to reply, "I was eaten by a bird as an afternoon snack, because I was dumb enough to walk around in the sunlight!" as compared too, "This huge foot got me in the back when I wasn't looking".

Hmmm, and why is this mentioned in a MBA Blog? Probably because I was wondering if I could use this incident to showcase my compassionate nature in some essay? Hmmmm too much time spent on introspection.

Wharton: San Francisco Summer Reception

For those of you in the bay area, Wharton is coming to town for a meet & greet. Here are the details. You need to register for the event before you can attend though. Look forward to meeting some of my fellow Bay are bloggers there.

Upcoming Events and Activities:San Francisco Summer Reception
Date:
July 21, 2004

Location:
Wharton West101 Howard StreetSan Francisco, CA

Description:
We would like you to join us this summer as you research your graduate business school options. You may have some concerns about whether you should apply to business school or whether Wharton is the right school for you. In an attempt to address these and any other issues you may have, we have scheduled an evening presentation, followed by a reception, to give you the opportunity to hear from Wharton students and alumnae about the opportunities within the Wharton MBA community. Please join us from 7:00 - 9:00pm. We look forward to seeing you there!

Chicago/Kellogg school visit?

I have to go to Chicago next month for a couple of days, and I plan to take a couple of extra days off and make a couple of school visits. This will be the first time I visit a school, so any advice on what I should expect/questions I should ask, are welcome.
 
I am planning to spend a day each at Kellogg and Univ of Chicago. Chicago being one of my two top choices, want to take the time to soak in the atmosphere. Fall is a wonderful time to visit Chicago. The only sad thing will be if I get a ding, it will be even more devastating after having tasted what could be.
 
Tentatively the date will be around the 20th of August, will definitely post impressions here after getting back.

Introspection

Spent the last few hours in Borders, running through the various essays in "Accepted: 50 essays of people who made it to business school". One thing I concluded was that the common refrain you hear from AdComs and others in the know, about each and everyone being different, is so true! I guess just doesn't matter how similar your background, GPA, GMAT Scores, the way each and everyone of us deals with life and the lessons we take home from it are different. So in one way we are all like snow flakes, different from each other. It is absolutely impossible to copy or steal someone else's essay, because the story just won't apply to you. But reading those essays atleast gives me some perspective on what is expected out of me and the level to which I must bare my soul. This essay business is definitely an extremely personal, extremely soul baring process. Almost makes me resentful that anyone will actually read it.
 
I am not sure how many people actually sit and do this level of introspection through every part of their lives. I feel a little bad that I haven't done it for so long, and due to which, might have stumbled along the wrong path for some time without even knowing it. So I am looking at essays as a necessary evil.
 
Funny how every step of the application process is teaching me something new. I learnt that my mind was not fully stimulated during my GMAT, and how my English language skills had deteriorated. And now this from the essays. You live and learn.
 
Just found out that this blog had been listed on the League of MBA Bloggers, I was hesitant to add this blog to the list till today, as I wasn't quite sure of this medium, not to mention the lack of comfort over strangers reading my thoughts and feelings. But after reading all the other blogs out there, felt it can't be so bad. And hey it isn't like anyone will know me personally unless I choose to spill the beans.

Spoke with an admission consultant

Had a pretty interesting chat with an admission consultant the other day. Seemed pretty knowledgeable and competent. But dang these guys are expensive! Unfortunately the competetion has become so stiff these days that if you ain't the best, you better be getting your story right. Plus without the help of a sounding board of people who are going/have been, through the grind, makes the reinvention of the wheel an absolute necessity. And a bad story might just get you down.

So as you can see, I am slightly more inclined to take some professional help. Just a question of taking help for what part of the process. The strategy, the essays, the interviews, or all of the above?

Schools - love them, love them not

I have been vacillating between the various schools. Haven't been able to pin my final list down. I have a basic core group, consisting of Wharton, Chicago and Kellogg as my top reach schools, with Stern, Michigan and Cornell as my safe bets. I probably don't need any more on the list, but can't resist flirting with Duke, Harvard, Columbia and MIT. I had pretty much dropped Duke and MIT, wasn't considering them for different reasons, but spoke with someone who is pretty knowledgable about this and it was his opinion that I have very low chances of getting into Harvard, and apparently Columbia doesn't like Techies from the valley. So I might drop them from the list. Duke is pretty much out, but the surprising recommendation from him was MIT.

Another strategy I need to work out is which round to apply for each of the schools. My 4/3 or 4/4 strategy apparently might be flawed. Ah, decisions, decisions decisions. Did a round of the usual blogers and found that they are going great guns on the essays and are pretty firm in the school selection list. Having a strategy laid out definitely helps in research and writing the essays. Scrabbling around like what I am doing is going to hurt me.

Get the hits but miss the wits

I seem to be getting a few hits on the blog, or atleast that is what the counter tells me. I wonder why I can't seem to attract support, anger or interest. Please drop me a cooment on who you are and what you do. Just to give me an idea as to who my audience consists off.

Pure crap!

Just realised that the essay draft that I wrote earlier was a bunch of pure crap! :( Instead of explaining the circumstances, I was trying to justify the fact that I have changed inspite the issue, and that track record is apparent in my application. But I made one big hash of the whole thing. Can't believe that I have wasted the entire time. More fool me! :(

First draft, first essay

Finally wrote the first draft of an essay for Wharton. This is my optional essay explaining extenuating circumstances that caused my low under grad GPA. It took me 1064 words to explain something that is given only 250 words. Does anyone know how seriously this word count barrier is implemented?

Progress over the weekend

Last weekend, I printed out tons of information on schools I am interested in. This is my attempt to gather as much information as I can regarding various schools and whether they fit into my overall plan as to where I want to go to get my MBA. I guess there will be some people out there who will claim that I should have done this earlier and studied for GMAT accordingly. I prefer taking the MBA process in little bite sized helpings, offcourse I have my overall goal in my head, but coming from a programming background, I believe in XP (eXtreme Proramming), and use that paradigm pretty much everywhere I can shoe horn it into. XP claims that plans should be more event driven as compared to long term strategies that are subject to many changes, where the end product suffers from over engineering and a lack of coherent structure, due to the changing nature of the world we live in. In the same way, I wasn't sure if I could score above the required amount to garner admission in a top notch school, so din't want to waste my time researching a bunch of schools where I might not get admission, instead spent the time studying for the score that would get me where I wanted to go. Now that the stage I has been achieved, it is time to move to stage II. Research and analysis followed by basic themes and points to be highlighted.

A friend was supposed to send me some information that he had gleaned during his application process last year, relating to strengths and personality traits that individual schools look for. Haven't heard from him since, and am giving him up as a lost cause. Why is it that some people promise help and renege when it comes time to deliver. Well whatever, it can't be so difficult to gather the information, the only thing I have to do is reinvent the wheel. Hopefully this is not an indication of most MBA applicants and/or my future classmates.

But while researching the schools, thought I would get started on the essays for the schools I will definitely be applying too. The first amongst equals is offcourse Wharton. :) There I have gone and said it. Feels good to finally articulate a goal, hopefully will get to it by January 2005. I want to get some thoughts down on paper ASAP, specially themes that I want to establish and personality traits that I want to bring to light. Here are the essays required of all First-Time Applicants at Wharton:

Required: Describe your career progress to date and your future short-term and long-term career goals. How do you expect an MBA from Wharton to help you achieve these goals and why now? (1,000 words)

Required: Describe an impact you’ve had on an individual, group or organization. How has this experience been valuable to you or others? (500 words)

Required: Please complete two of the following three questions (500 words):
Describe when you were part of a team where the group process and/or intended outcome failed. What did you learn?

Describe a situation where your values, ethics, or morals were challenged. How did you handle the situation?

Describe a personal characteristic or something in your background that will help the Admissions Committee to know you better.

Optional: If you feel there are extenuating circumstances of which the Committee should be aware, please explain them here (e.g., unexplained gaps in work experience, choice of recommenders, inconsistent or questionable academic performance, significant weaknesses in your application). (250 words)

Links to school rankings

US News '05
Business Week '02
Wall Street Journal '03
Forbes '03

Ranking information of some schools I am considering

#	School	BW 02	US N 05	WSJ 03	Forbes 03
1	Wharton	5	3	5	6
2	Kellog	1	5	4	9
3	Chicago	2	6	6	3
4	Stern	15	14	24	13
5	Columbia	7	6	10	2
6	Fuqua	9	11	25	22
7	Cornell	11	15	19	11
8	Michigan	8	10	2	20

End of Phase I

And it is over! Took the GMAT yesterday. Was resting on the pleasant feeling you get when something you have been preparing for is over, was thinking that now I could concentrate on the serious business at hand, of actually writing the essays, when it suddenly dawned on me that if I thought the GMAT was the most difficult part of the game, I was seriously mistaken.

It takes an adcom less than 30 secs to read the score, decide if it meets their criteria and move on. So the past 8 weeks of effort were aimed at something that occupies just 30 secs of the entire application process. That seems like a major waste of time. But the way I look at it, the preperation process was absolutely essential to help get you focussed on the task in front of you.

I like to think of myself as very methodical and super motivated most times (you could call me anal), but this experience has been an eye opener. I felt my preperation was NOT up to par, and I could have done much better if I had done a better job with the tactics and study pattern that I followed. This I feel is what seperates the men from the boys. People who scored higher than me, hats off to you. You are definitely better than me either in organizational ability or in intellectual capability. And I don't in the slightest feel envious of these people, mainly because their success is absolutely deserved.

I usually hate multiple choice questions, because I feel it introduces the element of luck for the people who don't deserve the grades they get. But looks like ETS feels even more strongly than I do about this, and writes its multiple choice questions accordingly. There were atleast a three instances when I selected an answer, hit next, and right before hitting confirm thought to myself, wait a minute. And on revisiting the premise, realised that I had pulled a snafu. Gotto thank my wife for that. :) She made me promise that I would think over answers twice before hitting next. And everytime I planned to move to the next problem, I kind of heard her voice in my mind asking me to recheck the answer. Got pretty mad at some point about it because I was running short on time, but definitely I would have pulled a much lower score without that reminder. Finshed all the sections with time in the nick of time, without hurrying through any part of the test, so I guess that is a good thing.

I took a lot of guidance and help from people who post in their Blogs, and since there is no way I can pay them back, I am going to pass on the favour. Will be posting my GMAT experiences and recommendations shortly. Hopefully if someone who hasn't given the GMAT looks at this Blog, he/she can take some good things away, that could help them get a better score than they would otherwise.

Do send me an email if you want any further information. My email address aregon23