MIT

I was talking to a couple yesterday both from MIT Sloan. They said a lot of good stuff about the school. Here are some of the things I took away from the conversation:

• In the essays/interview focus on the "I" rather that "We" when talking about team situations since the adcom needs to know more about how you behaved and what you did as opposed to what the team did
  
  
• If you get into Sloan (I guess this is true for any B School) think really hard about your future career choices before joining school because the recruiting begins almost as soon as you start and being unsure could cost you
  
  
• Visit Sloan and talk to professors. Knowing what Sloan is and exactly what you want from the MBA experience. It is very important
  
  
• If applying for entrepreneurship have a good career plan. It seems Sloan is wary of applicants who say that they want to venture out on their own right after graduation and do not have any other options
  
  
• When in Sloan try to take courses from the main MIT campus and do not get confined to Sloan courses
  
  
• Professors are sort of mixed. Some are great well known researchers but not necessarily great teachers while others are not so famous but are great teachers.

Well, that's all I can recall. Any additions or critiques are more than welcome.

I am still alive !!!

Its been a while since I updated the blog....lots has happened since my last post. Got an interview call from Columbia. Interviewed in the city. Same questions Why Columbia ? , Why MBA ? , Why Now ?, Teamwork , Leadership. A couple of interesting questions:

* There are two types of students in Columbia a) Hardworking, b) Smart. Which one are you ?

* In a team situation (you are not the lead), the team picks your idea for a project how do you restrain yourself from taking over the project and at the same time ensure that your idea gets implemented properly

The interview was short about 20 mins in the middle of which my interviewer walked out to attend to a phone call. I was not very satisfied at the end of the interview. I felt I was a bit under prepared and missed out on getting a couple of points across and repeated a couple of things :(

As I sort of dreaded I got a ding about one week later. so that's that. At present I am finishing up a couple of 2nd round apps. Will write about them later.

Oh and last but not the least -----
Congratulations to all the bloggers who have gotten admits !!!!

Importance of a partner in crime

One of the biggest assets during the first app process was my partner in crime...my wife :)).

Apart from people who review your essays you need someone who knows you very well for discussing approach to your essays. There were at least 3-4 instances where I hit a roadblock while working on my essays and talking to my wife helped a great deal.

Wanted to write a long post about the whole experience but a series of short posts might have a better chance of making it :))

Columbia...Done!!

Finally after initially struggling and then obsessing with my columbia application I submitted it yesterday......yeeeeeeaahhhh!!!!!

tete-a-tete with a recommender

So tomorrow I have a call with one of my recommenders. As I am always on top of things :)) here I am sitting up at 1:00 am finalizing my thoughts on what I will discuss with him tomorrow. I briefly went over the recommendation management section in "How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs" and an article I found on Clearadmit on managing recommenders and here is what the agenda will be:

• Appetizers: Howz Life/Weather/Work/Play etc.
  
• Main Course: Dive in into the good stuff.
  * What are my future career plans?
  * Why an MBA?
  * Why did I choose School X?
  * What is the school looking for?
  * Good Ol' times (projects/work/good things I did and so on)
  * What I want to get across in my recommendation
  * Go over the recommendation questions if possible
  
• Dessert: I am truly grateful to him for doing this and I need to make sure
  I get this across
  

Hopefully I can get all this done and then I need to send him an email with all the things discussed for his reference

Please comment if I am I missing something?

and also Wish me luck !!!!

Schools

I have finally managed to shortlist schools. I was looking for general management/consulting/entrepreneurship focus. The list is:

• Columbia


• Haas


• Kellogg


• Sloan


• Stern


• Tuck


• Wharton

All the schools seem to be great, which makes this process extremely challenging. I hope I have made the right choices. I intend to elaborate more on why I chose these schools going forward.

Looking forward to comments/critiques.

Detour:: Meebo me

My daily browsing led me to a new innovation done by Meebo called Meebo Me. Seemed to be a pretty cool concept to me so I decided to try it and that it what you see on the right hand navigation on my blog now. So if you feel like checking it out IM me :)