Duke Admit package

First I want to thank everyone who congratulated and wished good luck for Wharton.
I received my Duke admit package on Friday. I did not get any $$$. Blue devil weekend (admit weekend) is on Apr 3-5, 2009. Have to book the flight tickets. I have to pay my $1500 deposit before Apr 7th. Hope Wharton’s decision is available by then. Saving few trees, Duke has created a CD with the information for the admitted students. It has a video about Durham, facts about Duke University and information about Fuqua School of business. The package also contained a business card case with Fuqua logo and a fridge magnet with blue devil weekend dates.
Earlier I also got my login to incoming student’s website. I will get access to Math review software and Career Leader only after paying the deposit. The Duke administration has created a facebook group for class of 2011, which has around 120 members is active. Looking forward for the happy hour in NYC.

Received a DING from Tuck

After a long wait, I checked the online application status at 5.00 pm without much hope as I did not get a phone call and saw the regret message. Part of the message pasted below.

The factors that most often contributed to our decision to not admit an applicant were the rigorous competition created by a strong applicant pool and our commitment to maintain a small class size. This year’s pool is exceptionally strong. We know that many of the applicants who were not granted admission possess excellent characteristics that will serve them well in business school and beyond.

Waitlisted @ Wharton

The waiting agony continues for Wharton. Do not know till 3/26 or till Summer. Admit at Wharton would have been the best Christmas gift.

I know Wharton has a strict no additional information policy. Any suggestions to convert the waitlist to an admit?

Got my Christmas gift from Duke

I got accepted to the Duke MBA Class of 2011. I got an e-mail about the decision. From BW forum I knew there was not going to be any phone call for accepted candidates. So I knew it could be either an accept or DING. Clicking the decision link popped up 2 windows. The animation about Duke MBA was hiding my status screen. I moved the animation screen and saw the word "Congratulations!". I was very happy and did not read further. Started to make calls and e-mail everyone who I know about the results.

Thank You Duke for a wonderful Christmas Present.

Received a DING from Kellogg

Today I got my second DING. I could attribute it to my below par performance in interview, but it could also be the whole package or the competition. Kellogg was my first interview this year. Later when I read the book "How to interview like a Top MBA" I realized how my responses could have been better, especially about team work and leadership.

Let me see what Tuck and Fuqua have for me on 12/19

Wharton Visit and Interview

I scheduled my interview with Wharton on 12/1 at 2.15 pm. I planned to reach Wharton by 9.00 am, so that I can attend the 9.00 am and 10.30 am classes. But delays in picking up rental car and traffic due to accidents made me reach Wharton only at 10.25 am, just in time to sneak into the Competitive Strategy and Industrial Structure class by Louis Thomas. The first 5 minutes went over my head. Then I was able to follow it better. It was teaching the application of Game Theory in Job Tournaments. It was about how promotions are made in Legal/Consulting firms. He gave lectures during the first 10 min and last 10 min and in between he guided the class discussion. I got to know the fact that married people make 10 to 15% more money than singles and also are more likely to get promoted. To reinforce this fact Dr Thomas used a video clip from ‘Sex and the City’ where Miranda was ready to be pseudo Lesbian to get her promotion. What am I going to do? The class was over at 11.45 am.

Back in the admissions room, I spend few minutes talking to other prospective students. There were many prospective students who were planning to apply in round 2. At noon, I decided to spend sometime with first years as part of lunch with first year student program. Though I had attended similar session earlier, I went for it to know about latest updates. All of us grabbed lunch from Au Bon Pain restaurant located at the ground floor of the Huntsman Hall and assembled in a classroom. Five first year students and one second year student (the famous AFleming from S2S forum) lead the discussion. It was an open Q&A session. Most of the questions were elementary and I would have answered them (If I were admitted last year, I would have got that opportunity). Only new information I got was that the Global Consulting Practicum consists mostly of first year students. Since it was an elective, I thought it would be more of the second year students. The Q&A session ended around 1.20 pm.

At 1.30 pm I joined the campus tour. I have not been on one before. The Jon M Huntsman Hall, built in 2002 is where most of the core courses are conducted and also shared by 2400 undergraduate students. The Huntsman hall has many classrooms, discussion rooms, computer labs and an auditorium. The Executive education is conducted at Steinberg Conference Center. And many electives courses are held at Dietrich Hall, the original Wharton School of Finance and Commerce. And around the Dietrich Hall is the Steinberg Hall. These buildings are accessible through Locust Walk behind Huntsman hall and not visible from Walnut Street. I had to cut short the tour at 2.00 pm and return to the admissions office from my interview at 2.15 pm.

The interviewer was a second year student. After her introduction, we discussed about the class I attended and she explained the interview process – a 30 minutes blind interview with 25 min for her to ask questions and 5 min for me. I told her that I knew the process well because I interviewed on-campus last year. Still I did not get the much wanted question “How has your candidacy improved since you last interviewed?” Some of the question I was asked are
1. Explain about your career progress since you graduated? She interrupted me in-between to know details about how many people I managed and details about the business of each firm. I interruptions helped me to explain my long career better than giving a monotonous lecture for 5 min.
2. How do you manage a global team?
3. How do you motivate your team members?
4. How do you deal with challenges in your team?
5. What are you career goals? Here we went in tangent discussing about the non-profit I started because it fits within my career goal and then came back to short term goals
6. Why MBA?
7. Why Wharton?
8. What extra-curricular activities would you take part while you are at Wharton? I should have mentioned this while addressing why Wharton
9. What are the attributes of a good leader?
10. What is your leadership style?
11. Anything you want to add to say or add to your application?
12. Questions for me? Here we were talking about her internship, her career change from finance consulting to Strategy consulting and her experience at Wharton. Our nice conversation has to be stopped as she had a class at 3.00 pm. So we stopped at 2.45 pm

Overall the interview was conversational. I was able to talk about many things I wanted to convey, but still after coming out I identified few things that I did not cover. Then I had to convince myself that 25 min is not much time to talk about all those things.
I skipped the information session at 3.00 pm; instead I went around and took pictures of the campus. Finally, I left Wharton around 3.30 pm. If it had been a Thursday I could have attended the MBA Pub event, but I could not get an interview slot on Nov 20th and did not want to take it to the last day for interview, which is Dec 4th. Now I have my fingers crossed and waiting for the final decision on Dec 22nd.

Submitted my first round 2 app - Cornell

Yesterday I submitted my Cornell application for their 2 year program. Though I qualify for the one year accelerated MBA, I chose the 2 year program for the internship experience.
If I had got an interview invite from LBS, I would have not considered a November application and completely focused on interview preparation for LBS and Wharton. After receiving a ding from LBS, my confidence meter has gone down a bit. I postpone my Wharton interview to Dec 1 and gave some quality time for Cornell essays.
From my research, I learned that Johnson school at Cornell is very similar to Tuck at Dartmouth - small class size, general management focus, good interaction between faculty and students, collegial and collaborative students. BR Ventures and BR Incubator are very good opportunity for students looking for a career in VC/PE and Entrepreneurship.

Received a DING from LBS

Today afternoon I received the infamous “Regret” from London Business School. Given that I got an interview invite from Wharton and the increase in class size of LBS, I was confident of getting an interview, if not an admit. Find below the feedback I received.

Feedback to Unsuccessful MBA 2011 Candidates

Due to the high volume of applications we receive, we regret we cannot give individual feedback. However, we hope that these general comments will be helpful to you.

Why are people not short-listed for interview?

Our initial review of each application checks that candidates have met our basic admissions criteria. We are also looking for appropriate experience, well written essays, evidence of a lively, enquiring, reflective mind, leadership potential, team working skills and supportive references. An international outlook is another very important factor.
GMAT scores below the average score of the last class, 690, can make an application less competitive, as can a poor undergraduate performance.

Attended the conference of Social entrepreneurs @ NYU Stern

NYU Stern’s Berkeley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies conducted its 5th Annual conference of Social entrepreneurs on Nov 7th, 2008 with theme of “Measuring Social Impact”. The conference brings together leading experts from the public, non-profit, for-profit and academic fields committed to furthering the field of social impact measurement. I got my initiation for the conference through Prof. Jill Kickul when I met her at the Non-profit boot camp organized by Craigslist foundation at New York.

The conference started at 8.00 am with a breakfast and networking event. I met a 2nd year Wharton student who was representing REDF, her internship employer. There were many MBA students from NYU Stern and many other top schools. I gave a small interview to the student video team on what brought me to the conference and how measuring impact would benefit the non-profit I started. The key note speaker for the event was Mark Kramer of FSG Social Impact Advisors. He stressed the importance of performance evaluation and gave few examples on the consulting work his firm has done on social impact measurements.

The second event of the day was a panel discussion on Current approaches in Impact Measurement moderated by Blair Miller of Acumen Fund. The panelists were Margot Brandenburg from Rockefeller foundation, Debra Natenshon of Center for what works, Michael Weinstein of Robin Hood foundation and Richard Steele of Bridgespan. I gained information about what each of their organizations are doing for measuring impact and how the processes evolve from bad to less bad to good. The questions from the audience were mostly for Michael Weinstein because Robin Hood foundation was based in New York and measures impact by monetizing the benefits.

I had to leave to office when we broke for lunch. I wished I could attend post lunch sessions - another panel discussion, a case study and the award ceremony. The panel discussion post lunch was on Leveraging existing measurements tools and applications moderated by Mathew Klein of Blue Ridge Foundation. The panelist were Andrew Kassoy of B lab corporation, Rob Katz of Acumen Fund and Sara Olsen of Social Venture technology group. The case study was about the Humane Society and Beth Rosen moderated by Jason Saul of Mission Measurement LLC. The NYU Stern’s Satter Social Entrepreneur of the year award went to Darell Hammod, founder and CEO of KABOOM. The NYU Stern’s Social Entrepreneur lifetime achievement award went to Bill Drayton, founder and CEO of Ashok and also my role model

Invited to Interview at Wharton

Today I received the much awaited interview invite from Wharton. This is a second chance given to me by Wharton. I have already visited Wharton twice. Last time it was an easy decision to choose to interview on campus. This time I am also considering alumni interview. Any advice if I should choose on-campus or alumni interview?

Submitted my Fuqua and Darden Apps

This Monday I submitted the Duke application. The “leader of consequence” question was very challenging. I spent whole week thinking about it. The next tough essau was writing about a significant person, event or experience. Based on recommendation from a friend, I changed from significant experience to a significant person. Check out the questions at http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/programs/duke_mba/daytime/apply_daytime/

After submitting Fuqua application on Monday afternoon, I switched gears to Darden. This year Darden essays are very short with a total of 1000 words for 3 essays. Answering the question ‘how I fit with case study method’ was a challenge. Darden’s application does not use ‘Embark’ or ‘ApplyYourself’. The questions in the application were very similar to Wharton with slight changes. I copy pasted most of the content from Wharton app. There were lots of room to explain job duties, extra-curricular activities and community services. But not much space for essays?. A surprise part of the app was a short 100 words essay that asked me to complete the sentence,
“I am a person who __________, with expertise in __________.” So be prepared for it.

The busy application month of October is over and I have submitted 6 apps. I had a target of 5. I am very happy after submitting 6 apps. Working on multiple apps at the same time definitely diluted the quality of the application, especially LBS. I rushed in the LBS app to make it to round 1. Though Darden was not originally on my list, I was impressed with Darden after listening to its podcast and learning about its strength in General Management. If you are considering Darden I recommend listening to the podcast and follow blog by Dean Bob Bruner.

The waiting starts… Now I have to sit tight and wait for interview/ding/accepted.

Ross, LBS and Darden reception

Updates from last week
Oct 20th, I attended the Ross reception for prospective students and Alumni at New York. It was a yearly Ross school alumni reception. Prospective students who had earlier attended the information session were invited for the event with 1 hour allotted for the prospective students before the alumni reception. I went to the event with the primary objective of meeting Dean Bob Dolan. He is a nice friendly person. We introduced ourselves in the lift and then had a personal conversation for about 10 min. I also talked to the admissions director Soojin Kwon Koh and few other staffs, students and alumni of Ross. The number of alumni attending the event was around 300. It was a good networking and fund raising event. Few information for the readers:

1. The new building at Ross would be ready by end of this year ($125 million for the $150 million building was raised from alumni).
2. No increase in class size planned.
3. Ross would increase its global presence by including more international MAP projects (if you do not know about MAP check about my previous blog entry http://mbaapplyagain.blogspot.com/2008/09/ross-and-sept-25.html)
4. Admission tips: differentiate you from your cohort; visit the school and connect with admission staffs and students.

On Oct 21st I attended the London Business School (LBS) information session. Though I have already submitted the LBS application, I wanted to talk with alumni and the admission staffs. I clarified about the delay by my recommender. She confirmed that I would be considered in round 1. I talked to few alumni and left early. I had to work on my Duke and Darden essays. Few information for the readers:

1. LBS has started a new program called Masters in Management for people with less or no work experience. Check out http://www.london.edu/mastersinmanagement.html
2. The MBA class size would be increased this year from 320 to 370.
3. The application numbers for round 1 is similar to last year.
4. Every alumnus I talked to had chosen LBS over US schools for its global focus.

On Oct 22nd, the b-school reception crashing continued. It was University of Virginia’s Darden School of business. The event for an informal alumni and prospective student’s reception. Talked to few alumni present in the event. Dean Bob Bruner gave a short speech. He answered the questions: Should I do an MBA? Should I do now? And where should I do my MBA? He focused on Darden’s USP which the Dean referred to as high touch, high tone and high energy

1. Darden is a 100% case study school -3 cases per day and around 600 cases in 2 years. (High touch).
2. Darden has the best rated faculties. (high tone)
3. Darden is proud of the allegation of being called as the most toughest MBA program (high energy)

Fuqua - Duke visit and interview

Last week I scheduled the interview with another Applicant initiated interview with Fuqua school of business, Duke University in I reached Raleigh - Durham Airport on 16th night. Picked up my rental car and checked into a hotel near Duke University. I was supposed to register with the admissions at 7.30am and attend my scheduled class at 8.00am. But I could reach admissions only at 8.00am –delayed because of taking the wrong exit on I-85 and searching for a parking. On top of this, it was raining. Missed my scheduled class visit and registered for 10.30am class. Luckily, the on-line scheduling system did not show me the 10.30 class. If it did, I would have planned for 10.30 am and probably missed it, going by my past records.
I freshen quickly and waited at the admissions waiting area. It is part of the newly constructed, 91,400-square-foot Breeden Hall, opened on Aug. 1, 2008. It holds classrooms and auditoriums, team rooms, meeting space, the Ford Library, the Center for Excellence in Business Education, and MBA admissions and operations offices. The building also features a rooftop terrace.
Many first year admission ambassadors take turns, one hour each, in meeting the prospective students in the waiting area and answers questions. Unfortunately the first year students have spend only 2 ½ months at Fuqua and do not know much about electives courses and consulting projects. The adcom should include few second year students in the team meeting the prospective students. In 2 hours, I met around 5 first years and 10 prospective students. I learned about Fuqua Friday, Fuqua Vision, GATE (Global Academic Travel Experience), Clubs, Fellows, Student Government, Housing options etc.
Then it for time for my class visit. For the first year Managerial Economic Class, I was the only visitor. I was guided by a first year Student. He told me about the class and the Prof. Giuseppe Lopomo, popularly know as Pino. It was their last class for the term. Here is some background about Fuqua’s academic calendar. The academic year is divided into four six-week terms plus an optional two-week winter term called FleX Term. Most classes meet twice a week, either on Monday and Thursday or on Tuesday and Friday. Each class session is two hours and fifteen minutes with a 15 minute break. Visitors attend only the first half of the class. Pino was an expert on Game theory and Competitive Analysis. It was mostly a lecture and I learned about Nash equilibrium in Game Theory. The class room looked modern than the ones at Kellogg.
At noon we had a tour of the facilities guided by a first year student and followed by a free lunch. The building, with 3 levels, is large and very spacious with modern equipments. To save paper, each club is provided with a LCD panel to display details about news and events. The building is next to the Law school and has lots of trees around it. Sometimes you get the feel of being in the woods. The Duke University has a very large campus and is located close to University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University and the Research Triangle Park.
After the tour I spend some time with few more first years and prospective students. Learned about the events for the evening - speech by distinguished speaker Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase (Grapevine: Jamie Dimon’s daughter is attending Duke University), Fuqua Friday, and debut of term’s Fuqua Vision (search for FuquaVision on YouTube). I felt bad for not staying back in Durham for all the events.
My interview started at 3.00pm. It was by a 2nd year student. She had a printout of questions and a notepad to write down my answers. Here are some of the questions she asked
1. How would you explain your job to a 5 year old?
2. Walk me through your resume
3. Tell me about your community activities
4. Why MBA?
5. Why Fuqua? And how did you choose Fuqua?
6. Apart from Team work and friendly students, what else is important to you (May be I did not explain Why Fuqua well)
7. What do you plan to do when you are at Fuqua?
8. How can you contribute to Fuqua?
9. What will you do if MBA does not exist?
10. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
11. Have you quit anytime?
12. Have you regretted your decision anytime?
13. What is the biggest risk you have taken so far?
14. Have you faced an ethical dilemma in your career?
15. If you have to explain yourself in one word what will be the one word?
16. If you can choose a team of 5, who will you choose?
17. If your story is written as a book, what will be title?
18. How do you resolve conflict?
19. What will you do if you have nothing to do for a whole day?
20. Have you felt sometime that it is better to be led than lead?
21. What is the difference between Leader and Manager?
22. How do you define a leader of Consequences?
23. How do you define diversity?
24. How do you prove feedback?
25. Do you have anything to add?
50 min was already over by now and hence she let me ask questions
I asked about her background, internship and what she plan to do post MBA.
After the interview I left her the message that I am a very compassionate person.

The interview was over by 4.00pm. We walked out of the room can continued the conversation about how to prepare for the MBA experience and how I am going to miss the events for the evening. After taking her e-mail id, I went around the campus and took few pictures and left the Duke campus by 5.30 pm. When I was stuck at the traffic, I appreciated my decision to leave early and miss the speech by Jamie Dimon. I was also able to appreciate the fall colors around Durham.

Tips for interviewees:
1. When I interviewed at Kellogg and Tuck, I had researched about the school well and had already written the essays. With Fuqua I did not prepare well nor written the essays. Scheduling the interview in the evening helped me to collect information about Fuqua. But it was not enough to talk about Why Fuqua. I recommend researching the school well before interviewing.
2. Make sure you pronounce Fuqua (few-kwa) correctly. When I said Fuqua for the first time, my interviewer wrote it down.
3. Be prepared to answer hypothetical questions such as who you will select as your team-mates. I took my time to think and answer these questions.
4. Do not get distracted when the interviewer is not looking at you and taking notes when you speak. In fact, more notes she takes more details to present your case to adcom.

Submitted LBS, Tuck and Kellogg

It is Friday evening. I am at the Raleigh – Durham airport after completing my interview with Fuqua School of Business. Though my experience at Duke University is fresh in my mind, the whole week was very busy - 3 applications and 1 interview. WOW!
Last Sunday I looked at the available dates for Fuqua interview and did not find any during the week of Oct 25 such that I could visit the school before the Round 1 deadline (Oct 27) and after the busy week. But unlucky me! The only dates available before the round 1 deadline were Oct 16 and 17. I choose Oct 17 and also booked my flight hotel and car.
On Oct 14 I submitted my LBS app. I worked on it only for 5 days. It all happened very fast. When I was contemplating if I should apply to LBS in round 1, I contacted a LBS alum and had a chat. He validated my career goals and my fit with LBS. He also offered to review my essays. I prepared the essays in 4 days, he reviewed it one day and finally submitted my app on Oct 14 before noon. But one of my recommender turned in his reference little late. Now I do not know if my app would be considered for Round 1. The LBS app provided lots of room to explain work experiences and extra-curricular activities but no place to explain community services.
On Oct 15 it was Tuck. I finalized my Tuck essays just after my Tuck interview. But I made some last minute changes based on the feedback I received for LBS essays. The major challenge was filling up Tuck application. The app provided only 300 characters for describing each work experience. My Wharton and LBS description were slightly longer. So I had to spend time to trim the descriptions. Finally I made it my Wednesday 2 pm. My recommenders also made it on time.
On Oct 16th I planned to submit Kellogg, a day before the deadline so that I can spend the 17th at Durham. The Kellogg essays needed some tweaking. The part II app was easy. I just had to upload the essays and transcript. The Kellogg app has instruction to include 1 inch margin on the top for all uploaded documents . I had to format my scanned transcripts to include the margin. Finally I made it by 5.30 pm, which left me with only 1 hour to prepare for my Fuqua interview. Kellogg app did not have any space for extracurricular and community activity. Everything has to be covered in the essays. This year Kellogg has the lengthiest essays (3 two-page essays and 2 two-paragraph essays), which is roughly 3000 words (3*750 + 2*300)
A good thing to do before working on the essays is to complete the application so that we know what is already conveyed in the app and cover the rest of the story in the essays.
Note: I will write about Fuqua visit and interview in my next post

Wharton Application submitted

Submitted my Wharton application today at around noon. Yesterday I looked at the Wharton essay after 1 week. I made few last last minute changes, especially in the Why Wharton section. Though I have visited Wharton last year, my recent Kellogg and Tuck school visits triggered few areas to research in detail. One was Wharton's Global Consultancy Practicum. The information in my essay was very shallow. I read more about it on the GCP site and included few more details in the essay.
Lesson: Visit the school. It would also help in researching other schools

The time to fill up the application was more time consuming that I originally estimated. My plan was to copy and paste content from my previous application. But I realized that there were many details missing or ambigous that I had to spend more than 2 hours to fill in all the details in the application.
Lesson: Do not assume the application can be completed in 30 mins.

I had all my transcripts scanned and ready. Only when I tried to upload the transcript that I realized that my latest transcript scanned doc was more than 500kb in size due to high resolution. Today I had to scan it again with low resolution.
Lesson: Do not plan on submitting the essay on the last day. Do it at least one day before.

Now that I have done my part in the Wharton application, let me keep my fingers crossed and wait for the interview invite...

Tuck Visit and Interview

I got a companion to visit Tuck. We met at Wharton as prospective students and we continue to help each other in our MBA application process. He is also applying Early Action at Tuck. But he could only get an interview slot on 15th Oct- the deadline for EA. So he decided to join me to experience Tuck before applying. FYI: applicants can schedule an on-campus interview with tuck before the application deadline.

Because of delays on and off-road, we ended up at the admissions office only at 10.30 am, a delay of 45 minutes. We missed our class visit. We convinced the receptionist to get us some other class. After looking at various options, she found a 2nd year class at 4.45 pm. The next scheduled event was only at 12.00 pm. So I took some time to see around the Dartmouth campus. The Thayer school of engineering is close to Tuck and they both share the library. We also looked at the construction of the new student housing building. Before lunch I got back to the admission office and talked to few prospective students. A guy came from Turkey to interview.

Tuck provides free lunch to every prospective student who visits campus and connects them to a first year student. At noon a group of 5 of us had lunch with first year student Johnathan. He has worked at PriceWaterhouseCoopers before coming to Tuck. Surprisingly, Tuck was the only school he applied. He provided information about his background and why he came to Tuck. He talked about his experience at Tuck so far – the study group, 1st year sections, clubs, extra-curricular activities etc. For some one who does not know about Tuck’s study groups, the incoming class of about 240 students is split into 4 sections. Each section is split further into study groups of 5 or 6 students. The study group works together for a minimum of 3 hours each day. After Fall A and Fall B, the sections and study groups are shuffled for winter and spring classes. Most Tuckies are member of few professional clubs and few recreational clubs. The Tuckies are crazy about ice hockey (What else to do in cold winter?)

After lunch, we had a tour of the facilities. That is when I saw the whole crowd of prospective students, around 25. One important feature of Tuck facilities is that all the buildings, including the on-campus student housing, are connected by tunnels – a feature well appreciated during winters. A new building with classrooms, study rooms and student housing would be opened in Dec 2008. The halls and buildings all have a traditional and cozy feel. The class rooms are below the ground level and the faculty offices are above ground level.

After the tour we meet with Dia Draper in the admission office. She answered all our questions about admissions. Some takeaways are:

• Three important criteria for admission in the order of importance are Essays, interview and transcripts. For Americans, educated in US, the Quantitative part of GMAT is important. For internationals, both Quantitative and Verbal are important.
• 40 % of the applicants use optional essay
• Do not discuss too much about your weakness
• If rejected feedback would be provided in spring
• Interview measure Emotional Intelligence of the applicant
• It is ok to send additional information such as improved GMAT score after submitting the application.
• 30-50% of the students get scholarship from $5000 to full tuition

After the Q&A, I had to wait for almost 1 hrs for the interview. I used this time to talk to other students waiting for interview and to read about Tuck from its alumni magazine “Tuck Today”. My interview was with a 2nd year student Nykia Wright. She has done her internship with a consulting firm and is going to be a consultant post-MBA. The interview was more conversational. Both of us were speaking equally. She added her perspective for all my responses. Some of the questions asked were

1. Walk me through your resume. (She interrupted at many places and asked follow up questions. She was very much interested in my entrepreneurial experience.)
2. Why MBA?
3. Why Tuck?
4. How will you contribute to your study group?
5. How will you contribute to the Tuck community? (I kind of repeated the answer to the previous question. I could have talked post-Tuck contribution to the community)
6. After 30 min, she asked me if I had questions for her

We spend a total of 40 minutes and the message she received was that I am passionate about entrepreneurship.

At 4.45pm I attended the class “Leadership out of the box”. It was a touchy feel course and one that meets only once a week for 3 hours (Other classes are 90 minutes). The class was very interesting as I could relate to the class easily. Everyone in the class had some story to tell. The students were very nice and outgoing. During breaks, they themselves initiated conversation with me and also provided contact information for further questions. The professor was Ella Bell and she was very nice, friendly and innovative. She introduced us (just my friend and me) to the students and talked to us about Tuck and it’s Corporate Persona. (The class was about individual’s Corporate Persona and how we box ourselves). After the class I felt that the morning delay was a blessing in disguise and helped us attend a 2nd year touchy feel class rather than a 1st year accounting class.

Finally we left Tuck around 8.00 pm and felt bad for not being able to enjoy the drive through the scenic woods. Tuck is pride of being a close-knit family environment and its small class size. We could see it in all the activities we were part-of. The students are very friendly and ready to help. If you are city-person, Tuck is not for you. Tuck is in a rural small town and is the best place to develop close relationships and also get a good education.

Kellogg Visit and Interview

I decided to rent a car and drive from Chicago O’Hare airport to Evanston, even against recommendation of hiring a cab. Traffic delays due to construction on I-294 resulted in not making it to Kellogg by 8.30 am. (Recommend not to use I-294 till 2010 to visit Kellogg). I had to miss the first class. I could not attend 2nd class at 10.30 as well. I had my interview at 11.00 am. So used the time to go around the Northwestern campus, find a good parking spot and try-out few ties that would go well with my suite. Before the interview I had to fill up a form with details of Degree with major intended to do at Kellogg, short term and long term career goals. Be ready with details to fill these up. To write the correct names of the majors, I had to look at the Kellogg fact sheets available at the reception.

The interview started right on time. The interviewer was Nancy Sims, the assistant director of admissions and career management services. I had attended an admission panel she participated in New York City. I acknowledge that fact. Then she gave me an overview about the interview process - 30 minutes time, the interviewer will not read the application, first read by two 2nd year student, then by someone from admissions, then by Beth Flye, director of admissions and financial aid and finally by Dipak Jain, the dean. The dean reading applications was a big surprise to me. Here are the questions asked
1. Give a one paragraph summary of yourself.
2. Why MBA
3. Consulting experience
4. Why did I sell my company
5. Experience at start-up in San Francisco
6. Why Kellogg and how did you learn about Kellogg
7. Any challenges in undergrad or grad school
8. Any challenging project at current company
9. Leadership experiences
10. Working in teams with peers
11. What kind of person do you have difficulty to work with?
By this time 20 minutes was over. I was expecting probes in my answer. So I kept my responses at a high level and did not go into details. But I did not find many follow-up questions. Within 20 minutes she was done with most of her questions. This is when I got the unexpected.
12. What else do you want to convey about yourself? My immediate reaction was “We have covered everything on my resume”. Then I talked about one of my non-profit initiatives.
13. Then she let me ask her questions. I asked about KWEST and resources for soft-skill development. I felt stupid asking such question. Then I told her the fact that I was prepared for a 2nd year student interviewer.

Then she walked me out of her office to the reception.
After coming out I realized how I could have managed the last 10 minutes of the interview better. I could have talked about lots of things – my first job, extra-curricular activities, my recent non-profit initiative, etc. I felt worse when I heard from another interviewer that his interview went on for 45 minutes. I could have done lot better. But I was satisfied that it was better than my last year Wharton interview and did not screw it up. Now my application has to make wonders to get admitted.


Thursday no official lunch with current students, so went to the cafeteria and tried talking to students. But all I got were few Hellos and few smiles. Most of them had preplanned things – case preparation, checking e-mails, discussing with other students, etc. After lunch I went around the Jacobs center and took few pictures. At 1.30 pm I attended the “Competitive Strategy and Industrial Structure” by Peter Klibanoff. It was a case study about consolidation in used car industry. The class started with videos from “Fargo” movie and litigation on dealers. I learned some details about used cars industry such as dealer reserve. The first year students participated well in the discussion and provided some useful ways to gain out of consolidation. The final conclusion was about the market conditions necessary for consolidation, when it would work and when it would not work with few more examples.


At 3.15 pm I went on a tour of Kellogg facilities. It was just 3 of us, another guy from New York and a guy from Bangladesh apart from our tour guide. The 45 minutes tour gave me opportunity to talk with the 2nd student and her experience at Kellogg. Everything at Kellogg happens at one place - Donald Jacobs center, named after the dean previous who made Kellogg very popular. The facilities at Jacobs center were impressive though old. It had a large auditorium, many study rooms with flat large panel monitors, quite study area and loud study area, print facilities, old and new model classrooms etc. Kellogg students does not interact much with other schools in NW University. The joint degree programs are exceptions.

After the tour I left Jacobs center with a good feel for Kellogg except for the cold winters. The Jacobs center is close to Lake Michigan and the winds make life hard during winter. After another delay in traffic I reached the airport and flew back home, thinking how I could have interviewed better.

Ross and Sept 25

Is Sept 25 the only day for Business schools to visit New York? Three top schools - UCLA Anderson, Dartmouth Tuck and University of Michigan Ross - conducted their admission reception in New York yesterday. The schools should talk to each other and schedule these events with no clash.

I decided to go attend the Ross reception. UCLA is visiting NYC again in Nov. I am visiting Tuck next month. Here are the takeaways from the event

* Ross is pride of its 16 years old Multidisciplinary Action Program (MAP) and claims it to be its USP. For those who do not know about MAP, it is a team based 7 week full time consulting assignment to solve real business problems at corporates with faculty guidance. MAP is scheduled during the last term of first year and just before internship.
* Ross follows a 7 week terms.
* Ross MBA does not have concentrations or majors. It is a general management program where you can choose your electives vertically or horizontally.
* One third of the class end up in consulting school.
* Students can select 3 electives in the first year to prepare better for MAP and internship.
* 40,000 Ross Alumni and 500,000 living alumni of University of Michigan. Ross is pride in being part of a university that has the largest living alumni for any university.
* Alums from other schools of UMich were also present at the event. The Ross school is well integrated with the other schools in the university.
* The alums present at the event were very enthusiastic about the Ross’s collaborative environment and non-competing students
* A significant other of a student was also present in the event. She explained about how her friendship with her husband’s classmates and how much the ODC (Office of Career Development) helped her find a job in Ann Arbor.
* "Go Blue" and football were in the blood of every UMich alum present.
* Tips for admission - Visit school, apply early, explain why MBA in detail, differentiate from your peers and show passion for Ross. “GO BLUE!!!”

QS world MBA Tour and Wharton

On Saturday (20-Oct-2008) I attended the QS World MBA tour held in New York. As part of the events Wharton conducted an admission panel session. One person from Admission committee and 2 alumni (one 2008 graduate and one who passed 14 years ago) answered questions from the audience. Here is a gist of what I got.

Re-applicants:

• The summary sheet from previous application would be read before reading the current application.
• The adcom would also look if the feedback, if one was provided, are taken seriously and followed.
• Highlight the new work experience and improvement made in candidacy

Highlights of Wharton MBA

• Strong student community
• Global Immersion Program
• Leadership Ventures
• Provide toolkit and confidence for entrepreneurs
• Provide a Way to think – Breaking down problems and analyzing them
• A great alumni network 80000+
• Will integrated with the university

Details about Adcom

• Contain 70 2nd year students who read essays and conduct interviews
• 35 to 40 % of the applicants are interviewed
• Behavioral Interview.

I also attended a session by Ben Baron of Kaplan. I did not get any new information which I did not know already. It was the usual 4 criteria used for admission namely: academic ability (GMAT/GPA), Work Experience, Personal qualities and Fit. And details around them

During the fair, I also stopped by at the booths of Oxford, Cambridge, Darden, LBS and CEIBS.

Possible tragedy for Kellogg

Yesterday was a very eventful day. Morning I completed the recommender information for Kellogg and Wharton and went to office. By the time I reached office, I saw an e-mail from embark that one of my Kellogg recommender has submitted his recommendation. That was too fast. When I spoke to him, I told him that I would give him examples to use in recommendation. I do not know what he has written in the recommendation. Just 2 days before I heard a horror story from one another fellow applicant that last year one of his recommender wrote a one line recommendation. Wish it is not the case with me.
Yesterday I also scheduled an interview with Kellogg for Oct 2nd. So it is going to be Kellogg and not Tuck where I would interview first. Kellogg being the my first interview experience, am I going to screw it? So Kellogg is getting ready for a DING?
I have received my transcripts from Ohlone College. So all set for schools which need transcripts.
Lately I am having concerns with my leadership essay as my friend who reviewed in felt it is not powerful enough. Am I not up to the level of top MBA admits!!!

PMP and more

1. Two weeks back I gave my PMP exam and passed it. A major time sucker is out of the way. The exam itself was not very hard and I did not put in as much effort I wanted to.

2. Last weekend I visited Vancouver, Canada for 4 days. The weather was beautiful and supported a nice Whale watching experience at the Pacific near Victoria.

3. Completed 2nd draft for 2 of the Wharton essays. Still need to work on the word count. The career goals essay counts 1350 words. I got too much to write for a 1000 words essay. The details about career goals sound better than the last year career goals. But do not know if it would be convincing enough for the adcom. Still need to add an answer for "Why now?" question. I am not getting a convincing answer for why I waited so long (9 years out of college) to apply for MBA. Any suggestions welcome. The innovation and leadership essays counts around 850 words. Need to work on them.

4. I have also started working on the Kellogg essay. Yesterday I submitted part I of Kellogg application. Will call adcom sometime next week and schedule an interview. I am not sure if I would get a slot before submitting the essays on Oct 17. Else I have to make 2 trips to Kellogg, one visit before the submitting part II to get content for essays and one more for the interview.

5. I have scheduled an interview with Tuck for Oct 9. I have not started anything with regards to Tuck. Need to speed up. School research, essays, preparation for interview, talk to current students etc.

6. So 3 schools finalized for round 1. Considering Fuqua and LBS also for round 1. With fast approaching deadline and the list of things to work, completing 4 applications for round 1 would be considered an acheivement. The jittery times of apping continues . . .

Updates and Wharton essays

1. I have completed the first draft of all 3 essays for Wharton (I am a re-applicant so 1 essay less). Instead of perfecting one essay at a time, I decided to write all 3 first and then start editing them. This way I can get the complete story right before I can work on revisions. If any part of my story is not conveyed, I should be able to fill it in.
2. I am getting some help from a colleague for editing essays. He is a junior to me with good communication skills. He has aspiration to get an MBA and feels my essays would help his endeavor. We sit together and edit the content for grammar and expression. Then I get them reviewed from my friends and family for content.
3. I have decided to write one more story for Wharton Innovation/Initiative essay as I feel the current essay is very technical.
4. On 16-Aug-2008, I attended a non-profit boot organized by Craigslist foundation. It was very useful, especially to connect my non-profit and for-profit goals. Got glimpses of talents of professors at NYU Stern School of business. I am planning to write a detailed report of the event.

First essay for the season

Yesterday I completed the first draft of my Wharton’s career goals essay. The first reaction from my sister-in-law was that it is better than my previous year’s essay. Today morning when I read the essay again with wearing a critical hat, I identified the following improvement areas
1. Answer “why is now the best time for you to join our program?”
2. Avoid generic reasons for Why Wharton question, such as, “With excellent faculty, diverse and intelligent student body, and global alumni network Wharton MBA appeals to me”. I need to be more specific.
3. Link my entrepreneurial failure to not having an MBA
4. Connect my non-profit initiative to my long term career.
5. I have repeated similar sentence construction many times. This could make the reader uninteresting.
6. Variation in Vocabulary: I have used some word too many times: ‘work’ (11), ‘focus’ (6), and ‘learn’ (7).
7. And the very obvious one, word count. I stand at 1400 words now.

Can Entrepreneurship be taught in b-school?

Last week, I was talking to a Chicago GSB MBA student (class of 2009) at a student reception in New York. He had been an entrepreneur before starting his MBA. When we were discussing about resources available for entrepreneurs at GSB, he expressed his opinion that entrepreneurship has to come from within the person and the MBA programs cannot teach entrepreneurship. Though it was his own view, it triggered a question in me “Can Entrepreneurship be taught in b-school?” So I decided to do a little bit of research.

We all know that an entrepreneur is a person who starts a new business venture. But what are the qualities of a person that makes him a successful entrepreneur? A quick Google search resulted in 3, 7, 10 or 20 qualities of an entrepreneur, such as, energy, passion, assertiveness, initiative, creativity, self starter, etc,. Many of these qualities are also required for anyone to be successful in his carrier. What differentiates Bill Gates from Jack Welsh is the ability to take risk. Can b-school teach a person to take risk? No. But a b-school can provide the necessary tools and knowledge to calculate risk and help make change a risky decision into a prudent decision.

Few decades back, even now, many raised the question “Can b-schools prepare good managers?” The b-schools proved that it can, provided the students have the potential. When managers can be trained and leadership taught in school, entrepreneurship can also be taught. But entrepreneurship is not for everyone. It is only for the people with the right mind set. An MBA program can only impart business knowledge to an entrepreneurial person and increase his chance of success. “What is the best way to learn business skills?” is a different question. Some would say only “experience”. Other would say formal education. For entrepreneurs, real world experience is better any day.

In the second half of the video, Prof. Tom Kinnear of Ross School of Business at University of Michigan explains whether Entrepreneurship can be taught in b-school.



An interview from MIT Sloan school professor Ed Roberts. His answers to first 3 questions reflects my opinion

Essays Questions with a difference

In the last few weeks many schools have released their essays essays for 2009 intake. Most of the essays questions are similar. They include a few variations and combinations of the following question:
1. Describe your career progress to date.
2. Briefly describe your short-term and long-term career goals
3. Why MBA?
4. Why now?
5. Why our school?
6. Describe your most significant accomplishment.
7. Describe an innovative solution you have created to address a specific challenge
8. Describe your key leadership experiences
9. Describe a setback or failure and what you learned from it.
10. What are your background, values, academics, activities and/or leadership skills?
11. Tell us about a time when you went beyond what was defined, established, or expected


Apart from the above regular question, some questions could trigger the creativity of the applicants. For example, one question for University of Michigan, Ross school of business is “If you were not pursuing the career goals you described in Question 1, what profession would you pursue instead? (For example, teacher, musician athlete, architect, etc.) How will this alternate interest contribute to your effectiveness in solving multidisciplinary problems?”.

University of California at Berkeley, Haas School of business has the question, “If you could change one thing you've done in your life, what would it be, and how would you do it differently?”

Stanford has stuck to its usual off-beat question of “What matters most to you, and why?”

Of all the essay topics I have seen so far, 2 were totally different including the format requested. University of Chicago has requested a PowerPoint presentation. “We have asked for a great deal of information throughout this application and now invite you tell us about yourself. Using four slides or less, please provide readers with content that captures who you are.”

MIT has requested a cover letter. “Prepare a cover letter (up to 500 words) seeking a place in the MIT Sloan MBA Program. Describe your accomplishments and include an example of how you had an impact on a group or organization. Your letter should conform to standard business correspondence and be addressed to Mr. Rod Garcia, Director of MBA Admissions”.

The difference in format of the essays will stretch the imagination of the applicants and provide the reader with a variety in response instead of the old styled essay responses.

Early Announcement of application Essays

Every year the business schools publish their application essays at the end of summer or beginning of fall for the next year’s fall intake. This year, it is just the beginning of summer and many schools have already published their essay and admission deadlines.
Harvard started this trend by publishing the essays first (http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/writtenapplication.html). Kellogg (http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/admissions/admissions/index.htm), Haas (http://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/fall2009.html), Stanford (http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/admission/essays_activities.html) and Wharton (http://adcomblog.wharton.upenn.edu/admissions/2008/07/fall-2009-appli.html) have also published their essays.

Many other schools such as Columbia, Chicago, MIT, Ross, etc have published their deadlines for applicants to plan their application cycle.

The rush by the schools to publish their essays early could be seen as a sign of possible increase in number of applications for the 2009 intake. The schools want to attract more students to apply for their schools, which would reduce their yield (and hence better ranking) and increase revenue from application fee. I could hardly take a breath after my last application season and not the 2009 application season has begun. Good luck for your applications.

Improving my writing

It has been more than 3 weeks since the last entry. Initially I committed to myself that I should write an entry at a minimum frequency of one in 2 weeks.

The latest update from me is that I have joined an online non-fiction writing class at Gotham Writer’s workshop (http://www.writingclasses.com). I have many reasons for joining a writing class
1. I am bad at writing. I have lost marks in examinations because of my bad writing. My GMAT AWA score is awful 4.5
2. My friend who just finished his Executive MBA at Wharton advised me to work on my writing skills. He has graduated in Top 5% of the class. He mentioned the B+ and B he got were in the courses that required submitting a written project report. And if he had good creative writing skills, he would have got all A’s.
3. I want to improve my application essays this time. Everyone who read my last year’s essays consistently said that presentation could be improved.

Now, let me tell about my experience so far about the online class. Most of the students are from different part of the country and one from UK and taking up writing seriously as a second career or career change. I am the only novice out there. I have completed just one class in Memoir writing. It works like this. The instructor provides about 10 pages lecture notes to read on one topic each week. The instructor also provides a writing assignment and some sample writing each week. The class discusses about the writing sample till the next lecture is posted and also complete the assignment for the instructor to comment on. The benefit you get is from the class discussion and the comments about the assignment. The topics that are going to be covered are
Memoir
Personal Essay
Feature Articles
Profiles
Reviews
Travel Writing

Hope at the end of the course I am able to improve my blogs and application essays.

H/S/W to M7 to …

I started showing interest towards MBA way back in 2002. During those days only Harvard, Stanford and Wharton (H/S/W in short) were considered top programs. Other schools were considered a compromise. Today the list has grown to become M7 (Magnificent/Magic 7). Kellogg, MIT, Chicago and Columbia have been added to the Top 3 and are considered good programs. Five years from now, is it going to be E10 (Elite 10)? Possible 3 additions could be Tuck, Ross and Haas. Or if the focus is International, the additions could be LBS, INSEAD and IMD. What is the possibility of E10 or S15 (Splendid 15)? And what are the driving factors?

To answer the question, I decided to analyze the applicant pool in 2000 and in 2007.

GMAT Test Takers in 1999-00	190264
GMAT Test Takers in 2007	219077
Increase	28813
Increase %	15.14%

Data from GMAC

The number of GMAT test taker has increased by 15% from 2000 to 2007. But the class size of the top 10 MBA programs have increased only by 5.6%.

H/S/W	2001-2002*	2008-2009 *
Harvard University	1742	1908
Stanford University	730	741
University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)	1566	1640
Total	4038	4289
Increase		251
Increase %		6.21%

M-7	2001-2002*	2008-2009*
Harvard University	1742	1908
Stanford University	730	741
University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)	1566	1640
MIT (Sloan)	717	746
Northwestern University (Kellogg)	1200	1200
University of Chicago	1016	1125
Columbia University	1155	1220
Total	8126	8580
Increase		454
Increase %		5.58%

US News Top 10 schools	2001-2002*	2008-2009 *
Harvard University	1742	1908
Stanford University	730	741
University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)	1566	1640
MIT (Sloan)	717	746
Northwestern University (Kellogg)	1200	1200
University of Chicago	1016	1125
Dartmouth College (Tuck)	398	500
University of California-Berkeley (Haas)	484	486
Columbia University	1155	1220
New York University (Stern)	840	838
Total	9848	10404
Increase		556
Increase %		5.645816

* Data Collected from BusinessWeek and included the class size of first year and second years at campus

Assuming that the number of applicants who could be admitted to the top 10 schools increased at the same rate as the number of GMAT test takers, we can see that the increase in class size is not able to accommodate the number of applicants. If these 9.5% (15.1 – 5.6) applicants decide to go for an MBA outside the Top 10, then quality of the class outside the Top 10 would increase. In the coming years, many of the top 10 schools would reach its maximum capacity and would have to deny admission to many qualified candidates. The directors of admission of many top programs have comment that 60 to 70% of the applicants are eligible for admission but are denied because of limited class size.

The class of top program has be traditionally been hired by the Investment Banking, Management Consulting and other Industry in almost equal portion. The growth of the Private Equity, Venture Capital and Hedge Funds industries in the past few years has taken away most talented away from IB and MC. So some of the lesser know IB and MC have to go to outside the Top 10 programs for hiring.

There is one major problem for the programs outside Top 10. The schools find it difficult to hire and retain quality professors. The number of quality professors has not increased at the same rate as the increase in MBA candidates. There is lots of competition among top programs for hiring good professors. Soon the market forces will come into play and many more would take teaching as a career and fill up the gap.

Better hiring coupled with better incoming class would increase the popularity of the programs outside the top programs. If these programs could maintain a good infrastructure and teachers, they can make it to the E10 or S15 in the next 5 to 10 years.