In Between Dreams

A parting look back, A hopeful peek ahead...

2010-12-31T11:33:00.008-05:00

What do I say about the year that has been... I began the year, just like any other, with a precise list of goals (posted here). While I hit all of those that were not affected by my move across the world, my biggest learning and satisfaction, ironically, came from the disclaimer I wrote as a mere afterthought: "...these might well remain dreams. For despite all my meticulous planning, life has this queer way of creeping up and surprising the hell out of me sometimes." Life did dish out a few surprises, some not so pleasant. But to me, 2010 was a year that tested my conviction and tenacity on the professional front. I will not dwell on the details; it suffices to say that memories of many a (seemingly sinking) moment from this year will stay with me for a long time to come. Despite months and months of uncertainty and the troubling, unanswerable questions that prevailed, the way things turned out, I daresay it is a year to be remembered, cherished even!

What do I say about the year that is to be... First of all, it will be the year I lose my single status. There's going to be a wedding. Somehow, I don't dread it yet. But I'm sure there is some obsessive ranting in store for the next few months. I hate shopping, I hate summer, jewelry is not a favorite, neither are silk saris. Of course, there will be ranting! Looking at the bright side, this also means there's going to be a honeymoon! Well, well... more on that as things take shape. Now that takes care of half the year for us. The remaining half will hopefully be a deluge of sweat for marathon training...

In other musings, A has moved to India! Which can only mean travel, travel and some more travel. The travel blog will come to life again. However, once A moves to Bombay and our zillion impromptu jaunts take over our life, my running that has been chugging along pretty well, is bound to take a serious hit. So will my reading, and my friends and my various other occupations. Yes, A can have that effect on me *sheepish grin*. With the impending marriage, new jobs, new work goals et al, I've been thinking (obsessing obviously) about these things for months now. So I've designated 2011 as the year I figure out time management.

Time management is crucial to me for a few reasons. First, I believe I'm in the business of knowing- which means reading, thinking and learning. These things consume time and I want to create that time, somehow. Second, after a year and a half of fairly consistent running I can safely say running is close to my heart and I want to create the time to run, somehow. Third, A and I moved to India for reasons beyond career, chiefly our families. I want to create time for them, somehow. Then there is reading, writing, traveling and the whole laundry list. As you can see, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've even come up with a mathematical solution of sorts to manage my time. I will be back to haunt any remaining readers with the details in later posts. For now, the control freak prevails!

That concludes my sneak peek at the year ahead. Hopefully this blog will see a lot more action in 2011 too. On that cheery note, wish you a wonderful year ahead! Adios.

Combating Compromise: A reflection on business school and beyond

2010-08-30T14:39:00.011-04:00

The big news is that I moved to India. The bigger news is that I got a job. And the biggest news is that I got what I wanted! So here's a celebratory reflective rant before I move to Bombay, begin work and get too busy...

Come September, another unsuspecting class of starry eyed, bushy tailed, high fliers will begin their much anticipated journey into Business School. I vividly remember the first half of 2007; an admission to Wharton and a US Visa under my belt, my world could not be more perfect. Life was all about farewells and shopping and a little well deserved idleness after a grueling application season. I had not an inkling of the treacherous recession that was lurking around the corner. I believed, rather naively in retrospect, that I was set to power down a straight line path to the career of my dreams. Those were glorious times!

However, for more than a year after graduation, I had to contend with an unsettling mix of a sense of achievement and a slightly nagging discontent. Until recently, I was steeped in an elusive search for that perfect job. The recession might be to blame for my unattractiveness as a fresh graduate in a shrinking Financial Services market. But given that I was caught in an impasse, I had time to ponder. And I did conclude that I could have done things a little differently while I was at Wharton. I could have tweaked my thought process a little and gotten a wee bit more out of my time at school. Hindsight grips my pen as I write about my lessons, about the questions that once crowded my mind and the now obvious answers.

Business school is all glamor from the outside. It is a chimera of infinite possibility; it even has a misleading aura of invincibility. Maybe it is a result of the highly selective nature of the admission process. Be it the GMAT or the 2500 words of descriptive essays or the other intangible admission criteria of US B-Schools, it is designed to skim only the very top of a highly competitive applicant pool. Hence my admission to Wharton ushered in a mild complacence that the ride ahead had to be smooth, a complacence that made me decide not to take up the pre-MBA internships that I had lined up. I chose to spend a month at home reading books instead. Who would want to work when you can wake up at noon and spend the rest of the day with Douglas Adams and F.R.I.E.N.D.S?

Surrounded by immensely successful people from astoundingly diverse backgrounds, the first few months of business school can be humbling, even intimidating at times. The popular career choices and the “cool” jobs invitingly dangle in front of you. The allure is irresistible. The pressure to conform is high. Despite being amongst the youngest students in my class and never having encountered so much choice at once, I held my own pretty well. The first semester passed by in a whirr of academic rigor, heavy networking with recruiters, extracurricular pursuits, parties and socializing.

Before I knew it recruiting season was underway and I was being interviewed for summer internships. I’ve always believed that regardless of the outcome, true satisfaction lies in walking out of a test feeling that you could not have been better prepared. And that is the very satisfaction with which I walked out of each of my interviews. But by then the country was already spiraling into recession. And I walked into a reality where firms had cut their internship offers to half the usual number. When you do the math, there were a larger number of students with relevant backgrounds than the number of available jobs. I, a career switcher, simply didn’t measure up. So there I was, with no offer and a little bewildered at the end of the formal campus interview period.

It seemed earth shattering. It made me question my abilities and my methods. I wondered if I was really as competitive as I thought I was. I questioned if I went to B-school a few years too early. Everything that I could have done came rushing to me like an epiphany. Why didn’t I see this coming? Why didn’t I preempt it? I could have done the pre-MBA internship and been less of a career switcher. Or maybe I should have taken up some freelance projects during school to add relevance to my background. Why was I not proactive enough to reach out to Wharton alumni early? Why did I wait for things to be handed to me? Did I delude myself that there was an easy way? As I said earlier, the misleading aura of invincibility served to cloud all cautionary instincts. And I could not forgive my complete lack of foresight and my irrationally casual approach to a future I claimed really mattered to me.

The rampant self doubt and contempt was finite after all. For a dream is a dream. And you simply cannot allow past mistakes and an economic recession to rampage through it. For four long months I spent every waking minute on my job search. I taught myself new skills I could talk about in interviews. During the semester I did unpaid freelance work, in return for a line on my resume. I called every good friend of mine and asked for help with no hesitation whatsoever. I cold called anyone I thought could help me. I was looking for a Finance job in a shrinking market. Irrational, I know! I guess I just played the numbers game. I figured that if I knock on a hundred doors one was bound to open eventually. And it did. I got a buy-side internship in India that was way better than anything I had hoped for. Yes, through a cold call!

My real triumph at that time was in admitting that I was partly responsible for my less than ideal situation. The triumph lay in still mustering the strength to stay away from the path of compromise and continuing to put in effort towards what had become a more difficult dream. The reward really was a newfound courage, patience and maturity that enabled me to go on a sinfully fun trip to Peru with no internship in hand. And on a much envied cross country road trip across the US in the face of my chillingly large loan and the bleakest of job prospects. Maybe it dawned on that I won’t stay 25 forever…

This begs the question “What about Plan B?” I realized that the real Plan B, at least for me, was all the unconventional and proactive measures that could make Plan A work. Not everyone has their entire career figured out while at school. But everyone has immediate aspirations, which in bad economic times may seem unattainable. You can use the time at b-school to test for yourself if conviction can conquer the need to compromise, if the extra mile is better than diversion. Recession or boom, I feel that this is my most important lesson, as valuable to me as my Wharton diploma.

Business school seldom prepares one for failure, or for uncertainties. In fact, for the risk averse, it is a rather expensive insurance against uncertainty. In a way, I’m glad that I was faced with a recession of such monstrous proportion at the beginning of my career. Because I learned how to deal with it when my opportunity cost of the lesson was negligible. I owe it to my attitude for the tenacity to stick to my dreams and spend a year after graduation doing relevant things that got me the job I wanted as soon as the market improved. I owe it to my idealism for helping me to stick to my claim that I am indifferent to location as long as I get the career I want. Most importantly, I owe it to all the the amazing friends and family I'm blessed with, without whose helping hand, sympathetic ear and precious time I could never have survived what has doubtlessly been the most testing period of my life.

So here I am, ever the optimist, sauntering once again on a path to the career of my dreams. Here I am, about to start my new job, glad that my world is smiling again…

I am a Label Reader!

2010-02-15T21:58:00.010-05:00

Grocery shopping takes me a full hour longer than it should. I more often than not return snacks to their shelves before they can find their way to my cart. I deeply ponder over the different variations of a product before picking one. Take bread for instance- there's white, wheat, Italian, potato, rye, whole grain, cinnamon raisin, pumpernickel and the list is endless. It's not all the choice that has me lingering in those aisles minute after confused minute. It's the labels people!

The big friendly "Fat Free" or "Low Fat" that jumps out to greet me is not sufficient for me. Even the simple calorie count will not do. I have to labor over the protein and the potassium, the vitamins and the sodium, carbs, saturated fat, MSG, high fructose corn syrup... I draw mental spreadsheets to compare the options before I "Oh so callously" toss one into my shopping cart, gleeful at having pandered to my OCD. The thirty three different options available for every product only make my mind sharper!

In high school, I used to be your average Indian kid who sat through the last hour of class dreaming about the samosa or the ice cream waiting for me. In fact, the store down the road from school might have stayed afloat just because of my friends and me. Once I went to college however, I stopped playing as much, but didn't stop eating as much. Thanks to my genes, all the junk somehow didn't make its way to my midsection. Then I moved out of home for work and restaurants became my home away from home. One fine day, probably on my way out to lunch, I tried to zip up a pair of jeans from my college days. The pizzas, the dosas and the loads of chaat I had packed in over the months would not fit in. My jeans creaked! That was it. I freaked out! And started cooking for myself. That is when my obsession with nutrition and fitness started and has stuck with me through the years.

Don't mistake me for one of those crazy dieting chicks. I'm eating almost all the time. I even eat junk when I crave it. Like today, I was extremely tempted to grab a bag of cheese curls that tantalized me from the shelf. But one glance at the label, I threw it back in alarm. 170 calories, 120 from fat. I could hear my waistline threatening to become unrecognizable. I ran.

Later in the car, the benefits of my dorky love for nutrition data and all the food literature I've read over the years slowly dawned on me. It gives me the resistance to not give in to the delicious pictures of crinkle cut potato chips floating lightly in the air, or the heavenly cheese oozing out of a slab of lasagne. I've lived borderline sugar free (no substitutes, just no sugar) for the good part of a decade, save the occasional ice cream or dessert. I become ecstatic over tofu and lentils, less for the taste and more for the protein . It has made me a purist of sorts when it comes to fresh food. I grind my own ginger and garlic, although I battle later with soap and scrubber to get the smell off my fingernails. Store-bought pasta sauce is a big no-no for me. Whole grain over processed food any day. I grew up vegetarian and I still am. I give up all those wonderful scrumptious choices at restaurants despite being able to stomach meat and fish. I can eat just a salad or a soup for dinner and not ask "When's the food coming?". At the end of the day, it is this OCD with nutrition that keeps me from undoing all my physical exercise, say, with a stack of Pringles or a warm brownie...

You could call me too technical and geeky, like many of my friends and family do. But you know you've reaped the rewards when you don't hyperventilate and rush to enroll in a gym when your high school reunion looks you in the eye and smiles its smug smile!

And the plot thickens...

2010-02-11T20:18:00.007-05:00

I had not met a worse commitment-phobe than myself. Well, not until I met A. Now we are both vying for the grand blue ribbon. There was a time when we encountered many situations where people inevitably assumed we were a couple. We usually laughed it off, both in public and between us.

We painstakingly resisted even the possibility. We gave a lot of platonic names to “us”. We inched slowly from friends to best friends to a little more than friends. “Do we have to name everything?” We decided we didn’t, or rather couldn’t.

Our reasoning was laughably predictable…

A: We’re having too much fun.
K: We don’t want to break up, do we?
A: Yeah, what we have is too precious to mess up. I want you in my life.
K: I’m an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ person you know.
A: Me too. We both suck at long distance.
K: We are both too whimsical.
A: And selfish.
K: And whimsical. Oops! Did I already say that?

Meanwhile we went out on trips, carefully skirting around romance inducing circumstances, if any. We avoided silences and knowing glances. We kept our conversations meticulously focused on movies, travel, books, food, the economy, photography and other non-ominous topics. We also told ourselves we fought because we were spending too much time together. We declared with true conviction that we’ll be “alright” once we put 4000 miles between us. We were both bound to get busy soon. We thought we will “get a life”.

Some friends laughed at us. Some had advice to give. Some were surprised. Some others gave up. Even our parents shook their head wisely. “Kids, these days!” they dismissed us.

While we were lauding ourselves for our self awareness and rational decision making, the imperceptible breeze of change lulled our senses. Movies became about holding hands despite rendering it impossible to eat pop corn comfortably. The chilly waterfront called for a warm hug instead of a snug jacket. Meeting became an opportunity to spend time together rather than going someplace new. “45 minutes of bumper to bumper torture. I’m too lazy” became “Oh come on! It’s just a 20 minute drive. I’ll be there.” When we lived on different coasts, we discovered that our heretofore unnamed relationship transcended distances and time zones. Silences became easy. Trust became implicit. Dreams of togetherness bloomed. Desire flourished. I guess somewhere between all the fun we were having and the separation we once dreaded and later endured, we went from enjoying each other’s company to intimate to inseparable.

Marriage, to me, always signified an implicit loss of freedom, unpredictable, sometimes even unwilling, compromises and a complex entanglement of two families. Marriage, I believed, enjoyed an unreasonable importance bestowed by an irrational society. I cannot honestly claim that my views have changed. But I am rather glad, even moved, when I say that, with A, I have found the courage to commit, I have the heart to compromise. Against all odds, I have serendipitously stumbled upon the perfect person to share my life with.

I write this, not as a tale of melting romance that makes you weak in the knees. This is not about mawkish sentimentality or adolescent infatuation. This is simply a celebration of our wondrous journey from an innocent blog post that threw us together to this joyous moment where we look ahead at our life together.

This and that

2010-02-06T01:52:00.004-05:00

Wow! It's been a month since my last post. Time does fly. And I hate to see this blog die. Now that rhymed, in a really lame way though. I don't have much in the way of life updates. It suffices to say 2010 has not disappointed me so far! Neither am I capable of writing anything remotely funny. So I suspect this will end up being another one of those reflective rants that reign this blog.

Of late, I've come to realize how indispensable progress is to me. My non-academic life before Wharton was spent entirely in the pursuit of a b-school admission, doing well at work and reading. I had such little time for anything else, that the visit to the gym and time with friends felt well-earned. And I actually enjoyed my sleep-deprived, megalomaniacal zeal. The two years at school made me shift gears to an even more maddening pace. I loved that too! What I really savored all those years was the constant presence of goals and the unmistakable progress from each day to the next. I know I'm beginning to sound like a grand old lady here, so moving on...

Quite naturally, in the days following my graduation I found myself struggling without short term goals to focus on. My internships and job search were not enough to keep me a 100% mentally engaged. I spent a lot of time reading, but I could not attach goals to a hobby. It felt like I was cheating somehow. One fine day, I discovered running. Initially I used it mainly as a reason to get out of the house. Soon I felt what I recognized as the runner's high. Voila! I'd found a new obsession to plan, practice and analyze on spreadsheets. I was hooked!

Six months later, I own a great pair of running shoes, technical apparel for the cold, hydration gear, iPhone apps to track my pace and mileage, subscription to Runner's World (one of the most interesting magazines I've ever read). I run 25 miles or so every week. I spend hours analyzing the run, figuring out the route to run on the next day and checking the weather to make sure I can run outside. I thoroughly enjoy wheezing my way back home after my 8 mile "long runs" and my hour long speed workouts. I get blown away by veteran runners' workouts on www.DailyMile.com and wake up every day wanting to run faster and longer. Most of all I love being able to better my own best. Although I'm still very slow, I think I will soon begin to participate in races for the fun of it. I even have a couple of friends who've recently taken to the sport, thanks to my regular Facebook updates. Alright, that's it about running, before you close this blog in disgust.

I hate to say this. But the truth is, save the occasional weekend travel which I urge you to read about here, life has been humming along as uneventfully as ever. Maybe this is a case of the famed winter blues. Maybe I'm just a pathetic wallowing mess if you take away the endorphins. Maybe it is sleep finally creeping in at 3:15am! It is only wise to give in...

Desultory dreams for 2010

2010-01-06T00:35:00.016-05:00

It's 12.36am. Too early to sleep. Nothing half decent on TV, as usual. I can't read more than a sentence, thanks to a clogged nose and watery eyes. What better pastime than dreaming up some awesome plans for the shiny new year that lies ahead?!

Let's start with running. I have grand running goals this year. I aim to run 1300-1500 miles. I'm already 25 miles behind, thanks to aforementioned nose and eyes. I want to run the Seattle half marathon in June and the San Francisco half marathon in July. If not both, at least one of them. And I want to run a full marathon before winter. All this if and when I get past this cold attack and manage to begin running this year. Moving on to fitness, I've lost 10 pounds since I started running. I guess I could lose 4 or 5 more pounds before I begin to look like an emaciated goat. But I'm more keen on building some muscle strength and toning up, which will also help increase my running speed. Not to mention all the avant-garde attires my mom keeps suggesting I wear for my wedding and its hundred related events. When that will happen seems totally irrelevant to these conversations I have with her! I'm not complaining. Hell, No!

Now that we've done away with the vanity-induced goals, let's talk about reading. My reading suffered for two long years during business school, save the winter breaks when I tried to make up for an entire year of literary sloth. It's getting back on track, but with such little momentum that my reading list threatens to require more than a lifetime to get through. So a minimum of 2-3 books a month is in order. I also want to read more non-fiction this year, mainly economics. Chide me if the "Buried in..." part of the sidebar on this blog remains unchanged for too long, will you?

Travel! I've visited at least one city/tourist attraction in 25 of the 50 states in the US. I want to visit the remaining half in the next 2-3 years if I end up living here. I guess Alaska, Oregon and Seattle are definitely on the cards for 2010. So is a trip to Europe. I'm sure that's not all, but let's leave some room for impulse travel, which really is the norm.

On to newer unexplored territories. I've postponed investing in the stock market for years now because of my b-school plans. My investment prowess remains stunted at Indian mutual funds that offer a tax shield, that too only the ones that were doing well in 2006. There's a lot to learn on the investing front. I guess I will take the plunge sometime in the second half of 2010, after I've taught myself a few things about the markets and their inefficiencies. Any market gurus reading this blog? Maybe you could give me some tips?

Before you write me off as an idler who has no professional aspirations, let me assure you, I do have many of those. But they are no fun to talk about really. So let's just leave them out of this space, shall we?

"Hmmm lofty...", you say. I hear you. These might remain dreams. I say this not as a disclaimer so that I can chicken out of my plans later. More so because, despite all my meticulous planning, life has this queer way of creeping up and surprising the hell out of me sometimes. But what the heck, might as well dream big while I'm at it, right?

A Cheery Goodbye to 2009!

2009-12-31T12:08:00.010-05:00

Happy New Year everyone! Hope 2o10 holds wonderful things in store for you...

For the past few days the internet has been inundated with New Year wishes. And I could not help noticing a general theme that pretty much everyone, myself included, cannot wait to be done with 2009. Usually we wish people a "great" year ahead. But I find us wishing everyone a "better" year. This got me thinking: Was 2009 really so bad that I want to forget it so quickly? I believe that there are always silver linings. This post is an attempt to glean those silver linings and leave the year behind on a positive note.

I'm tempted to summarily dismiss 2009 as a year of uncertainties and disappointments. But that would be uncharacteristic of an optimist. To me 2009 was a year of surprises-few good ones, few bad ones. I like to look at these surprises as nothing beyond tests of my ability to adapt to situations out of my control and emerge from them still smiling. They were tests of persistence, of hardiness, even faith sometimes. I do not have a way to measure my performance. I do not even know what qualifies as success. All I can say is, the year's over and here I am, still smiling.

I grew up a lot in 2009. We are talking about a quantum leap here, coming from someone who had the maturity level (and many of the problems) of a sixteen-year-old. I've always had ambitions, now I know how to persist when things don't come easy. I've always had plans, now I know how to make new ones when the old ones fall apart. For the first time ever, I know my priorities. I recognize and methodically work on my limitations. Above all, I've learned how to live in the present, something I never believed I could.

This account will probably sound vague and irrelevant to anyone who's reading this. But the events and details are only incidental. This post is a retrospective nutshell of the tremendous transformation a single year has effected. And I suspect I will be able to draw strength from it every time I come back to read it.

So fare thee well 2009. Again, Happy New Year to you!

So long California...

2009-10-07T15:27:00.008-04:00

I'm off to the East Coast! The details are lack luster at the moment. But all that matters right now is that I'm going back to where I want to be. As I pack up and prepare to leave, I have a few thoughts to share about my unexpectedly prolonged stay in California.

First things first. I feel extremely fortunate to have the kind of family I have. For the past few months I have been staying at my maternal uncle's house. My uncle is only a little over 10 years older than me and we are more friends than 'uncle and niece'. There was a time when I spent every summer with him and my grandparents in Thrissur, Kerala. My uncle would save up money all year and would buy me ice cream and other treats every single day I spent there. When I was too tired to walk back he would tirelessly carry me home because it was too short a distance to flag a rickshaw. All through my formative years he was an imperceptible guiding hand for me. He fed a lot of his ambition to me. He spent an unjustified amount of time researching and discussing my academic options with me. Even today, when I no longer need it, he takes it upon himself to ensure I have all the information I need to make the right decisions. And he does it in the most non-intrusive of ways. These months I spent at his place felt like my childhood all over again. I was cocooned, supported and constantly encouraged to follow my dreams and fight my battles. No questions asked. I sometimes feel undeserving of such support and I believe I can never do enough to repay him and my aunt.

On lighter fronts, there are other things that will make me look back at these months fondly. I've become much closer to one of my friends from Wharton, as we vacillated together between extremes of fun and angst. I might have forged a lifelong friendship there. I got a chance to hang out with my college friends. It was like undergrad days all over again, full of slapstick humor and fading memories revived. Even the cyber world became a dearer place during my stay here. It would have been a pity if I had not gotten the chance to meet and become friends with the bloggers I met here recently. In the past, I've always found the Bay Area boring. But it is that very boredom that made me a runner. I've upped my mileage from 0 to 5 miles a day in about 7 weeks. It is the first time in the last 5-6 years that I've found a fitness routine that I'm not itching to change. Thank you Bay Area roads for the liberating runs. Thank you Public Library for the blissful hours with your books. Thank you Simon & Garfunkel for all the psychedelia...

I always imagined this would just be an obligatory post. I'm rather glad it is not. Until later California...

Bibliophile

2009-09-19T02:13:00.015-04:00

I love reading. I've never wondered why. But as with all other things, I vividly remember the beginnings of my oldest and favorite hobby.

My dad's brother used to be an avid reader. When I was 5 and he was in high school, I tried to tear open the crisp newspaper with which he had carefully wrapped the James Hadley Chase novel he was reading. He seemed to have prepared wisely to avert the scandal that would erupt if someone at home saw the buxom babe in fishnet stockings and nothing but a rifle to cover her chest. And I, with my curiosity and loud mouth, almost ruined it. He decided it was time I read literature more suited to my own age. And that is how I got my first library membership. I still remember handing over a deposit of Rs.25 to the library owner and getting a bright yellow card with my name and address on it in return. My very own library card!

My initial days of reading were filled with Enid Blyton. I had a club of my own, just like Secret Seven- replete with cookies and pitchers of orange juice, with the kids in the neighborhood. I even had a bonfire in our garden, which my mom put out before we could burn down the house (far fetched I know, but I must admit it made me feel all powerful). Then I discovered Fairy Tales and Arabian Nights. For months I longed for a gingerbread house or a lamp I could rub on the eve of my exams. I slept dreaming of princesses and dwarfs and mermaids and witches. I sat at the back of my Carnatic music class and read Archie comics for the entire hour, which explains why I am only a bathroom singer. I spent many a night snickering at the exploits of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, I blushed everytime Ned Nickerson kissed Nancy Drew and I read most of Sherlock Holmes on school nights with a flashlight under my blanket. I remember the name of every single Sidney Sheldon heroine. I've had my knuckles go white from gripping a Jeffery Archer novel too tight, unable to bear the suspense any longer. I spent most of my pocket money and every penny I ever got in gifts to buy books. I still read Wodehouse and the Classics. When I entered college my reading took a quantum leap. Maugham, Salinger, Rand, Shaw, Hesse, Eggers, Tolkein, Adams, Nabakov, Steinbeck, Stone, Irving, Pamuk, Joyce, Seth, a neverending list of writers entered my life to delight me. Some left in a hurry, some faded to the background, some endured.

I sometimes wonder if I would have been a different person if I didn't have an obsession over reading. I think so. Books ensured I never missed having a sibling. I am never bored. I am never short of a way to spend my money and my friends are never at a loss for gift ideas for me. Books have made me the restless insomniac that I am. I can, and would even prefer to, learn practically anything from a good book. I connect instantly with people who read. My mother would have liked me a little better if I didn't read ( read: completely ignore her whenever I did). If I didn't read I might be more willingly social. I might have no opinions. I might be less of an idealist. I may not be able to write.*Shudder*

PS: Thanks to Gradwolf for triggering this train of thought and bringing back countless fond memories!

On cyber buddies

2009-09-11T17:24:00.006-04:00

Friendships that sprout on the internet turn out to be as good as or sometimes even better than those that have lasted several years. Is it that our vetting skills of faceless folk have reached an evolutionary high? Is it that we self-select ourselves into like-minded cyber-circles? Or is it just me?

In the books I read, no matter how intricately the author sketches a character, there is much left to my imagination. I suspect I enjoy what I imagine a wee bit more than the starkly evident. Maybe people I cross paths with in the virtual world have a similar allure too. In fact I attach a certain personality to most regular readers of my blogs- just an intuitive picture drawn from their comments, which makes them a little dearer and makes me anticipate their visit and second guess how they are likely to react even as I write a post. Sometimes I feel I take comfort in the extent of choice virtual friendships give me in deciding how much of myself to bare, how quickly and to whom, which is rather absent in settings such as schools and workplaces where we are slaves of situation. I am well aware that what I get in return is not a complete picture of a person either. But that is the beauty of cyber-friendships- no expectations, no pressure. Just a picture vivid enough to feel secure or hazy enough to delude, whichever we choose.

Whatever be my motivations, my luck (for lack of a better word) in cyberspace has been exceptional. During my b-school application days I read Iday's blog for 2 weeks, chatted with him online for the next couple of weeks and then we exchanged applications way before we met in person. We built, read, critiqued and obsessed together over our applications for 6 long months. The distance between Madras and Bangalore was hardly a hindrance. It is a time I cherish. And we both admit that we had a tremendous positive influence on each other. Such trust is hard to find, especially considering that we were competing for a spot in the same 5 schools. Today, after 3 years of great times and terrible times, we are still great friends, confidants, sounding boards et al.

About a year and half ago I discovered that Arun, a regular reader of my blog and vice versa, lived in Philadelphia through a very random post on his blog. We met, became travel buddies and zoomed across the United States in a car. Our story thereafter is well documented in our joint blog- Footloose on the Freeway. Today he is my biggest source of support and the calm hand of reason every time I reach new lows.

There are others- Ganja Turtle, my friendship with whom started off with a 12 hour long delightful discussion on poetry and books over Skype. There is "the Being" who I've met all of 3 times but with whom I share an impossible optimism which we call each other to reinforce now and then. And then Meera and Anuradha who were nothing short of academic rivals at school, who I rediscovered through their blogs years later and found them to be wonderful writers and extremely like-minded people.

I guess this is just my customary verbose way of saying I am really glad I did not shy away from looking to the blog world for friends. Till a new thread of thought beckons...

My Mother...

2009-09-03T03:05:00.009-04:00

When I was a child, I was always daddy’s little girl. I could never grasp why my mother insisted that I had to be back home at the stroke of 6pm every day, or why I had to score only 100 in math, or why I had to leave the room when the grown-ups were discussing things that did not concern me. Being the only child, the only girl child in two generations of my family, I naturally ran to my father or my grandmother for sanctuary every time my mom tried to be a mother. But despite being thoroughly spoilt and despite my best evasive efforts, to this day I’ve never been home 5 minutes late without informing my mother, even before cell phones existed. To this day, I stop dead if my mom is silent and cannot be at peace until she herself tells me why she is angry.

My mother had a queer way of raising me. Every time I fell down and hurt myself (I used to have sutures twice a year) she would rebuke me like I had committed a crime, but not without torrents of tears streaming down her eyes as she rushed me to the doctor. When I was ten she bought me a bicycle even before I asked for one, because all the kids in the neighborhood had one. But she didn’t let me ride it the 3km to school for three whole years. “There will be big buses on the way,” she used to say. When I was 15 she bought me a scooter and allowed me to ride it to my gazillion coaching classes without a driver’s license, but would stand in our balcony with bated breath till I came home every night. I could never understand why she would voluntarily put herself through such trauma.

When I was sixteen, my relationship with my mother changed permanently. On an uneventful Monday afternoon, as I hovered around the kitchen talking to her about this and that, she taught me about choice. “Everything in life is a choice,” she began. As a girl from the average Indian middle class family, I could choose to score well at school, etch out a career of my choice, travel the world and never know what a budget meant. Or I could squander away the next few years, pursue whatever education my scores afforded me, get married at 20 or 21 and, in the worst case, lean on a man for financial support for the rest of my life. Then she drew out some personal choices for me. I was at an age where I had an uncontrollable urge to rebel, she explained. If she restricted me, I would do things without her knowledge that would prove to be far more unfortunate than doing them with her consent. So she awarded me complete freedom. She would not stop me from doing anything. Instead she would offer her opinion and possibly explain the consequences as she saw them. Essentially my choice was to tell her the truth or to lie.

That is how my mother dealt with my adolescence. She did not once try to make my choice for me or nudge me towards the right one. She just left it to me. And her method worked like a charm. By giving me the freedom to screw up my life, she ensured that I never did. That Monday afternoon, I left the kitchen a little bewildered. But my mother had become my friend. Today there is nothing I cannot discuss with her. Boyfriends, crushes, alcohol, parties, my insecurities, my aspirations, my confusions, nothing is off bounds with her. She shields me from judging relatives. She debates with me about my decisions. She indulges me and my profligate ways. She eggs me on when I'm feeling down. She brings out the idealist in me when I struggle with bouts of cynicism.That clueless sixteen-year-old has come a long way today because of her mother's attitude and unrelenting support.

When I think about it now, 10 years later, I realize that she probably wanted me to have the childhood she never had. My mother was blessed with an untimely maturity. At the tender age of 8 she used to help her slightly ill mother cook before she left for school every day. At that age she never let me enter the kitchen except to throw dishes into the sink. When she was 16 she would wake up at 4am to study for a couple of hours before she cooked for the whole family and got her little brother ready for school before she left. I, in turn, slept for 15 extra minutes while she ironed my uniform for me. When she was 18 she graduated at the top of her school and got admitted to an Engineering program. Instead she gave in to family pressures to marry my father and had me when she was barely 19.

She may have given up her academic dreams. In fact for a very long time I used to complain to my grandfather about his misdeed. "Look at her family. What more should she achieve?" he would ask. I daresay he is right. She is a success in every undefined sense of the word, on numerous immeasurable counts. She has always been a success in ways I have never understood. I call her every day. For five years now, every single day I’ve found her excited and waiting with some new story to tell me. Ever the social butterfly, she is always buzzing with activity and fussing over people and flitting around with her bubbly energy. Even our extended family brims with her fans. People cannot shop for weddings without her. People called her with their problems even when she was visiting me in the US. My friends who I don't see more than once a year, visit her every time they are in Madras. She takes care of her parents and, until recently, her parents-in-law. She single-handedly manages the finances and investments of all my dad's siblings who don't even live in India. She is the omniscient, omnipresent super daughter, super wife, super mom!

To people, I am always Veena's daughter and I would not have it any other way. Some day in the distant future I hope I become my mother.

Happy Birthday Ma!

Thinking on my feet

2009-08-28T20:40:00.011-04:00

Warning: A lot of retrospection and useless information (that is not fun or funny) coming up.

For the past 3 weeks I've been running 5-6 days a week. I seem to need no motivation. I seem not to be tempted to skip a day. At 7pm every day, I don my shoes, grab my trusty iPhone and am off. I've discovered that running for me is full of lucid moments.

Here are some of my thoughts crystallized from recent runs...

At all points in time I need a goal, a plan and measurable results. This is my OCD. At the same time, it is my crutch. It has thus far been the panacea to all my woes- personal, academic, professional, emotional, you name it. The pre-2007 posts in this blog, with their color coded excel grids and constant progress reports of my b-school applications, will attest my claim. You could say I overanalyze and that I do not know how to "go with the flow". You will be right, of course. But I have unshakable faith in my three pronged defense mechanism. For I've turned even the most uncertain phases of my life into saner, manageable times by breaking my life up into goals, plans and results.

It's been a little over three months since I graduated and I have no idea what I will be doing next. As I try to take stock of my situation I realize that I'm no novice to professional uncertainty. In fact my post-MBA days are merely a deja vu of my post-undergrad days. In my final year of college I gave up the job I got on campus because I decided I did not want to work for that firm. I voluntarily signed up for six months of being clueless about what I will be doing next. You could say I was 20 and didn't know what I was doing. You could say I somehow found the strength to veer away from compromise. Whatever be the case, I turned out fine. Then I did not want to stay in a technical job for too long. It took me three years of focus- the first two spent simply aspiring and patiently waiting followed by one year of micro-planning and executing, before I was admitted to the MBA program of my choice. During my MBA, it took me four months of grueling effort to get the internship I dreamed of. The odds were completely against me. The world of Finance was crumbling under recessionary forces. I was a career switcher and amongst the youngest students in my class. You could say I was 25 and cocky. You could say I somehow found the strength to stick to my guns. Whatever be the case, I got what I wanted.

Beware, this is hindsight painting a rosy picture of the bygones. When I was actually going through each of these episodes it felt like the end of the world, every time. It felt like I was forever swimming upstream. But swim, I did and still do tirelessly. Maybe I have to do it the hard way every time. Maybe I have to learn the same lessons in patience and perseverance to cross every milestone of life. I simply will have to find the strength. But as long as I have a goal and a plan that I'm implementing diligently and hopefully, the results should come by sooner or later.

Such is the nature of things I think about when I run. Which brings me to the question- Why do I run?

I run to sweat out my futile tears. I run to let out the anger I sometimes feel at the aberrant world. I run to be alone. I run to ward off inertia. I run to savor the impatience of one foot to get ahead of the other. I run for the silly pleasure of a fellow runner's wheezing smile. I run for the tiny success of beating my 9.5 minute mile with a 9 minute mile. I run for that unmistakably measurable progress. I run to overcome my fears that are, those that have been and others that are to be. If nothing else, I run to have the breeze in my hair.

Until next time....

Onslaught of the short hair fetish movement

2009-08-24T19:21:00.011-04:00

I recently chopped off my hair to a third of its length. I did it purely to cut in half the time I spend tending to my hair and vacuuming my house. My friends from all over the globe were naturally curious to see how the new me looked. My friends were (naturally) primarily of the male gender, at least the ones that wanted to see a picture. I dutifully sent one out. My inadvertent findings owing to this innocent, well-meant act of mine are startling. I got a bunch of comments. Most were something to the effect of :

"Oh! Didn't realize you had a long face. That's a compliment, take it from me" What a stunning discovery after all these years!

"Hey! Your nose looks sharper." My dream come true. Thank you.

"Well, if I've not mentioned this before... you look really young." Should I swoon now?

"Hey, heard about your cool hair style. Where did you get it done?" The only sensible question. It came from a girl, of course.

"You do know I've always been into girls with short hair, don't you? " Ahem. Ahem.

My! My! What do I say about such a deceptive reality? I always wondered what is it that men saw in long silken tresses, soft bouncy curls and make- believe waves. I thought maybe they liked the distraction, something to to hold on to, you know? But was it a waste, the hours I spent on scrunching and smoothing and curling and brushing? Did the males of the world go and get themselves a taste upgrade? Or do I hang out with too many utilitarian geeks? If only I'd known that the success formula lay all along in showing the nape of my neck. Sigh...

"Week" is my new unit of time

2009-08-21T15:14:00.007-04:00

These days I'm often reminded of the summer holidays of my childhood. I would behave like every day was the last day of the holidays. I would spend every hour of daylight on the roads, playing cricket and hide and seek with the boys. Or riding my bicycle till my legs were ready to fall off. The rest of the time I squandered away reading volumes and volumes of novels and comics. I could not sleep because I was afraid that the holidays will end before I did all that I wanted to. Invariably, the holidays were over too soon. With a heavy heart I would postpone my plans to the following summer.

I cannot help but compare. Now there is no school threatening to start next month, I have no place to be or deadlines to keep. This is the indefinite holiday, at least theoretically, that I always wanted. You would think I would slow down and savor such rare leisure. No! Not me. Time hurtles past at a manic pace, jumping one week at a time. Monday becomes Sunday within a blink of an eye. And I have a compulsive need to account for my time with a rapidly shrinking reading list of books, my overflowing browsing history of interesting nooks in the internet, a steadily increasing stamina for running and the rate at which I'm filling up my blogs.

What is this queer sense of urgency? Why this obsessive need to be busy? What is it that prevents people from enjoying an occasional slow phase of life? Why can't we just be? Is it the sudden absence of the travails of the corporate race that makes us grapple with the unfamiliar lull? Maybe we need tangibly productive items to check off on our mental time sheets. Or is it a fear of drifting a little far or for a little too long?

Whatever be the rationale, week after week I establish milestones and check points and pseudo-deliverables for myself. Maybe because I know no other way but to mercilessly tire myself to sleep, night after inevitable night...

Profundity in a garage closet

2009-08-16T18:14:00.009-04:00

Today I was looking for a new bottle of mouthwash and recoiled from my chance discovery. I found 2 extra large bottles of Listerine, a pack of 8 toothbrushes, a 16 roll pack of toilet paper, 500 diapers and extra large packets of several other things. No I don't suffer from chronically bad breath or from perpetual diarrhea. I don't have a baby either. I am at my uncle's house and these were the contents of his family's storage closets.

The giant packets boomed "These people are not going anywhere!" They are not indeed. My uncle and his family have lived in the same city for eleven years and in the same house for seven. This seems like an unrealistic amount of time to me. Justifiably so, given that I've lived the life of a nomad for the past five years and the fact that I can fit my entire life in 3 not too large suitcases. I'm still not sure what is more incredulous to me- the stability of their lives or its complete absence in mine.

However, I don't seem to crave for stability, not the geographic kind for sure. When I was a child I always imagined myself living in Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta when I grew up. Then I wanted to live in many different countries when I grew up. When I was an adolescent I could never comprehend how people could "resign" themselves to spending the rest of their life with a single person. What if they get bored, I used to wonder. People say I'm a grown-up now. I still have no clue what or where I want to be "eventually". All I know is I want to be right here, doing what I'm doing right now. These days I occasionally stop to wonder where I'm going or whether I'm going anywhere at all. But I certainly don't long for the kind of stability that makes me shop in Costco for a year's supply of everything.

On the wrong side of 25

2009-08-14T19:51:00.021-04:00

Yesterday I was filling out a health insurance application where I had to choose my age from the following bands: 0-17, 18, 19-25, 26-29 and so on. I just got bumped up a band! I've been 26 for a while now, but it was still oddly depressing to be so brutally confronted by reality. When I stopped obsessing about the number, the implications of it suddenly dawned on me. To be more precise, two little words popped into my mind- Money and Marriage.

Let's talk about money first. There was a time, not too long ago, when my bank balance went from five figures to zero every single month. Something like a rectified decreasing sawtooth graph:

Although my upbringing suggests no folly on my parents' part, I have grown into someone who puts most expenses to a simple test- "Does it pinch my pocket?" If the answer is no, I spend. If the answer is yes, I don't. The result? I bought most things that caught my eye giving not a thought to tomorrow. Sometimes I feel I picked up a $150,000 education with the same insouciance. I'm not too sure if my binary logic will work any longer, especially given my swelling student loan, all the trips I want to send my parents on, the house I need to buy and other impossible promises I've made myself and my friends. I even checked up on my mutual fund investments in India. Their abysmal values only increased my urgent zeal for financial prudence. It's incongruous that moving up an age band should make me grow up so much. Well I guess it is not such a bad idea to put away something for an impulse African safari, or A's $35,000 lens fantasy, or the day my birth control fails.

Now that brings us to the burning question of marriage. The excessive amount of time I spent with my parents recently served to confirm what I've always known at some level. They will not be the ones to find me a husband. They are pretty unconventional and liberal for Indian parents. But the real reason is their reluctance to take such a heavy risk, knowing their daughter. This means I will have to fend for myself. That's not so much of a problem. Let's suppose I follow Rachel's 30th birthday plan in F.R.I.E.N.D.S where she wants a year and a half to plan the wedding and know the guy for a year or so before getting engaged. Uh oh! If I plug in my own numbers into that plan, I should be with THE guy and planning the wedding already. That's the point when I reached my threshold for seriousness and grown up thought.

Why do I have a sinking feeling that 26-29 is not going to be too different from 16-19?

Back and Blogging!

2009-08-13T19:18:00.007-04:00

I relegated this space to cyber-oblivion for more than a year and a half, which is most of my time at Wharton. It was not a hiatus I planned. In fact, it might have been great if I blogged through business school like Iday (Oh yeah! For those of you who know us from application days, we are still the best of friends). But I guess I've always been a private person hiding behind a veil of vivaciousness. A veil, that held me back from writing about the events in the soap opera that was my life in the past two years. However, I continued to write on two other blogs I own. Come to think of it, I almost feel like I have a personality disorder that mandates me to keep the different parts of my life in perfectly segregated compartments.

To begin at the beginning (of my absence), Wharton was great! Business school was everything they make it out to be- transformational, enriching, reformative, a personal renaissance of sorts. I'm rather happy to declare that I did exactly what I wanted to in the last two years. I took the courses I liked and made friends with some really smart people who I learned a lot from. I struggled for four long months to find the perfect internship and loved the experience. It shaped what I'm looking for in my career. Outside the classroom, I was decadent. I took the opportunity to do a lot of things I always wanted to do. I traveled like it was my last chance to travel. I did a cross country road trip across the US, three trips to India/Asia, one to Peru and was out every weekend exploring new places on the East Coast. I also wrote a lot. The only thing that kind of suffered was my reading which is back on track now. On the personal front, to quote a cliche that sounds kind of wise, "I learned a lot about myself." No, I'm not sarcastic. I really did. To round it all off, notwithstanding many moments of doubt and despair, I graduated.

True to this blog's title, I find myself in between dreams yet again. Three months after graduation, I'm entrenched in a job search. Nothing uncommon, given the times we live in. Although I must admit, my situation is a result of a combination of the recession, crazy personal life crises and an uncompromising ambition to get what I want. I did a Private Equity internship and I want a related job i.e. a job non-existent for me, given the glut of talent out there. So that's that. But I'm not giving up, not yet.

So as you can guess, I've lately had time on my hands which is a shocking contrast to my life at Wharton. My parents were here since May and I took them to visit a zillion places. That could be another reason I don't have a job yet. They got sick of me and all the travel and went back to India last week. Ever since, I've been itching for things to do. So here I am back and blogging. However I'm not sure what I will write about. I remember the days when I was applying to b-school. I thought about what to write in my essays when I was running in the gym. Maybe now I can write about the stuff I think about when I'm running. Yes, I've come full circle! I guess I'll go wherever my pen takes me...

Interview Prep

2008-01-18T01:56:00.000-05:00

Ten days into interview prep, I still cannot say I'm confident about landing a job during interview week. This could be one of the banes of studying in a place with 800 students. The conversation in the halls is constantly centered around interviews and dings and closed lists and case prep. Walk into MBA Cafe at 7pm on a Saturday and you'll find the place buzzing with students steeped in case prep and mock interviews with their prep groups. The level of collaboration, given that everyone is competing against each other, is heartening to behold. When I say this I'm sidelining for a moment the cynical MBA who would say they are all ultimately motivated by selfish interests :D. Nevertheless, the intensity of the atmosphere jumps out and grabs your gut. It's quite an experience!

However, I believe that these weeks of preparation and the interviews themselves will hopefully increase my depth of understanding of the stuff I've learned so far by forcing me to pay more attention to detail. I think this is a good outcome to achieve irrespective of the status of the job search process. Now that I have indulged my craving to write at 2am, I should probably try really hard to sleep and ensure that the rest of the day is productive. Ciao!

Internship worries

2008-01-10T20:57:00.000-05:00

I should get a job. No, I will get a job. I might just get a job. I won't get any interviews. But I have a few interviews. But what if I don't get any interviews from the firms I'm really hopeful about? And I go on and on this way, night and day. The relaxed feeling from the break is gone and paranoia and lunacy have taken its place. Internship interviews are looming large and soon I will know who I'm interviewing with. There's nothing else on my mind.

I don't even know if I'm handling this right. I have a great group to prep for interviews with and I have time to become really well prepared. I'm making a conscious effort not to let my academics slip in the race for a job. I keep myself gainfully occupied all the time and am keeping close tabs on the caffeine intake. It still does not feel quite right or enough. Crazy! At least I'm glad I'm not stressing too much. Because when I think of ending the interview period without an internship in hand it does not give me a shiver or make me lose my mind. I'm happy about the level of perspective I seem to have. Hopefully I won't be a nervous wreck if I really am in such a situation :-). Time will tell...

The semester begins with Insomnia

2008-01-07T04:18:00.001-05:00

It's 4.18am and school starts today (can't call it tomorrow anymore) and I just can't get myself to sleep. What a way to begin the new semester! I always nullify all the good a break does to me on the last night of the break. I just cannot reset my sleep cycle (not that I have one). My body refuses to obey the clock when it comes to sleeps. And I think that is logical in a way, you sleep when you are too tired to function, which really happens only once in 48 hours or so. When I claim this, my friends say I'm perfect for Wharton and the jobs after. Whatever!

The winter break, however, was great. I did nothing related to Wharton, MBA or jobs, though I should have. I read a lot, though not quite enough. But then there's no such thing as enough reading. I finally gave Camus his rightful time, I made him wait for too long. But there's a different place and time for book reviews. I watched a whole lot of movies too, some of them for the first time and others all-time favorites. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Roman Holiday, Godfather I & II, Fight Club, Om Shanti Om, Schindler's List, Shawshank's Redemption, Simpsons-The Movie, The Man from Earth and a few more I think. 'The Man from Earth' was particularly good and all thanks to a friend who brilliantly recommended it on another such night of insomnia. I went to a party in California for New Year eve. I ate home-cooked south Indian food for the rest of my stay there, met up with some friends and slept in till noon the whole week and stayed glued to the internet. Bliss!

I think I will feel jealous of myself when I read this post again two weeks later... Nevertheless, here's to a new semester!

Happy New Year! And some retrospection

2007-12-31T16:47:00.000-05:00

I vividly remember this time last year. I was ecstatic about being admitted to Wharton and was still dealing with the enormity of the change my life was about to take. One year later and after six months of Wharton, life is still changing, inexplicably so.

I believe a large part of business school is the continuous change it entails. I came in naiver than I am today, maybe even less sure of myself than I am now. I discovered the much feared peer pressure, dissected it and would like to think I conquered it. I found new ways to stretch time to make the days seem longer than 24 hours. I found stimulating pursuits to replace sleep and achieved new levels of insomnia and new levels of inebriation. I learned to "deal" with email, to skim, sift and separate the important from the not-so-important. I even mastered the art of color coding, tagging, flagging and archiving to surpass human levels of organization. I confronted the American grading system, got bewildered, questioned every method I've employed thus far in my previous academic life and finally devised a way to make results proportional to effort. I made friends, friends I can call at 3am. I have friends I can discuss philosophy, economics, films and music with while getting drunk; I can even be my cynical self to them. I realized I don't miss India, neither do I think America is the end of my journey, I proved to myself that geography holds no significance in my life. I witnessed cultures from all over the world, analyzed them to death and ultimately decided diversity is overrated. I understood that everything is negotiable, that perseverance pays, that charm is a weapon, that diplomacy can delude.

I learned all of this and more, way beyond what this blog can express. Here's hoping Wharton continues to be the enigmatic, priceless, eye-opening lesson in perspective it has been so far. I'm enjoying my journey. I hope you enjoyed my retrospective rant. Wish you a very Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving at Florida

2007-11-25T16:26:00.000-05:00

I was at Orlando for thanksgiving and had a blast. I enjoyed the weather and the 8+ hours of sleep every night more than anything else. We went to Universal Studios and Sea World, it was awesome fun. It's amazing how they have created a whole new world inside Universal Studios. There's so much for kids to do in the United States! Here are some pics which my friend clicked :D...

I came back to Philly last night and spent most of my Sunday morning writing a speech for my communications class and sleeping some more. Four days is just not enough to catch up on all the sleep lost at Wharton :-)

Birthday Blues

2007-11-07T21:40:00.000-05:00

It is my birthday tomorrow and Diwali too. And I have no idea what to do. I didn't even have time to buy a new dress. I should ideally be getting drunk tonight, I'm doing an all-night-long meeting instead. I can't party tomorrow night either because I need to be on a bus to NYC at 5.30am on Friday for the Wharton Finance Conference. I can't throw a party on Friday night because all my friends will get back from NYC really late. Saturday is out because the Wharton Diwali Party is happening then. And who parties on Sunday night (other than me, of course)?

I didn't want to crib at first. But cribbing on my blog somehow feels better than cribbing to people and wasting their time. I guess my current state of mind is a cumulative effect of the past couple of weeks, for I have been running around without pausing to think. I've not had the time to blog, write, read or do anything I really want to do. I have been learning so much in my classes without having the time to really absorb things. I am very tempted to question if I'm really getting what I want out of my two years at school. I thought I will at least figure my life out completely :-). Usually I don't have the luxury of thinking beyond academics, recruiting and extracurricular commitments. During a rare rebellious moment I feel on top of the world. And the rest of the time, I feel like I'm chasing an elusive, disappearing, almost chimerical ideal. I know this is just temporary sullenness, still it's a little too depressing to go down this path.

In nicer, more benevolent musings, I just realized that Wharton Round 1 interviews are starting next week. If anyone is doing their interview on campus, feel free to drop me an email (thembasaga at gmail dot com) and I will be glad to meet you, take you around Wharton if possible and of course give you all the moral support you want :-)...

That's it for now. So until a better mood graces me...

Just to avoid studying...

2007-10-22T23:50:00.000-04:00

I am writing this post when I should actually be studying for my Statistics final. But then anything beats studying stats and blogging wins hands down :-). The truth is I have no idea what to study.

In more exciting musings, I have a day off on Wednesday. I guess I will spend a part of the day shopping for clothes! I really need to sleep too, hopefully the drinks I am sure I will have tomorrow night to celebrate the last final will take care of the much needed extra sleep :-). I'm going to Florida for thanksgiving and need to research what fun things are there to do. I also have a meeting with the Follies team and a bunch of things to do for the Wharton Journal. (&#%* this post is turning into an exhaustive to-do list!) Speaking about the Wharton Journal, it is an awesome place to get the insider scoop on life at Wharton. All the major events that happen over the week are covered and there's some fun stuff to read too. The journal is living proof that people at Wharton do cool stuff and are not all quant jocks who only study, recruit, network and do other such boring stuff. So check it out at http://www.whartonjournal.com

I will sign-off as a painful all-nighter is staring at my face. Ciao...

B-School academics

2007-10-20T03:34:00.000-04:00

How would you react when you walk out of an examination hall with no idea whatsoever if you did well or not? I had my marketing final today and was rather bewildered when I walked out of the exam half hour early. This post is not a rant about how well or badly I am doing academically. It is about a certain train of thought I have been mulling over for a while now that came to a sort of culmination today.

What is the right approach to academics in an MBA program? Is there a right approach at all? Taking the issue of grades - Most people come to B-School to advance their careers or to find their calling in life. In my opinion, grades are not the deciding factor for success or failure of such pursuits. With heavy student support for grade non-disclosure policy, no employer really asks for grades or uses them to decide whether to make an offer to students. That said, it is really easy to stay near the mean grade at a place like Wharton. It is going from B to A that takes all the time and effort. The worth attached to that effort varies from person to person. For some it might be effortless, for others good grades might be a way of validating their mastery over a subject, for others it could be a mere ego trip. What is important to realize here is that it is a personal choice and endless comparison of grades with fellow students (trust me it happens even in grad school, even in B-School!) is a criminal waste of time and energy.

Coming back to the approach to academics, this is how I look at it. I believe it does me a world of good to measure my academic performance by how much I have learned, how much of new knowledge I have imbibed over the duration of the course. A mere number or a letter says nothing to me about how much of say, economics, I know after six weeks in a microeconomics course. Can I talk eloquently about what I learned in class, can I apply the concepts to real life situations? I would much rather answer in the affirmative to these questions. I know I am on the right track when I see the warranty card of my new iPod Touch and wonder what expensing method Apple might use to estimate the warranty expenses they are likely to incur. Or when I think about "price discrimination" when I choose two-day shipping on Amazon. I might sound like a geek, but I maintain that an MBA is all about application of the concepts you learn. I expect an MBA to change the way I think about the things I observe and I am extremely glad that at a most rudimentary level, it seems to be happening to me.

I guess I can now go to sleep, nonchalant that in the larger scheme of life today's Marketing exam and Monday's Economics exam and Tuesday's Statistics exam are all inconsequential!

Walnut Walk

2007-10-08T23:43:00.001-04:00

I never once imagined I would go pub crawling in lingerie and coat :-) and I did just that on Saturday. Yep, bedroom casuals below the waist and business formals above the waist, that's "Walnut Walk" for you! The girls looked uber sexy and the men, hilarious, as we marched all night from pub to pub. The weather was awesome, a tad too warm for October but just right for the occasion... The highlight of the night, however, was a bunch of random guys on the road who insisted on pulling down their trousers and taking pictures with us :D.

My plans for the spare time that I don't have...

2007-09-30T13:25:00.000-04:00

There are just too many exciting things to do at Wharton. There is something for everybody and more. I'm already loaded and rearing to take on more. I got the two positions that I really wanted, I had decided to shoot for them even before I reached Wharton :-). I will be taking up some more work in one of the professional clubs. I am part of one sports club and will join one more shortly. Then of course, there are various ongoing community service activities that I intend to participate in. Time management is key when it comes to managing academics and parties and clubs and your personal life. And I must say, I am hanging in there for now.

Last week was called "Hell Week", fondly describing the numerous exams, submissions and cases due day after day during the week. It gives you the impression that if you get through this week, and you do so only once, you are apparently over the hurdle. But I think that is misreading it completely. It's just that this week is the first of its kind at Wharton, once you get through it, you learn to expect it and to accept it the next time. So I feel the worst is yet to come and it seems quite logical because recruiting has not even begun yet. So many more hell weeks are in store :-). I know I sound unusually cheerful about it. Maybe I found an efficient way to manage my time, or I learned how not to be stressed, or it is all the liquor from last night's party lingering around...

Perplexed

2007-09-26T03:33:00.000-04:00

I have been wondering what to do with this blog. I will not claim that I don't have time to write anymore, because I believe I will make time for anything that is important enough to me. But the fact remains that I have let the blog languish for nearly 2 months now. I am not sure if I have any readers anymore, but I apologize to the few who remain.

This blog has been an important part of my MBA application period. It has been a scratch pad for my writing, an organizer for my thoughts, instant champagne to celebrate my successes and a stiff drink to drown my failures over, above all, it has led me to some of the better friends I have made in my life.

I know it is sort of obvious that I should not let it die, but I really don't know what to write anymore. I can blog about life at Wharton, but I am scared it might become one long rant. I might forget that the reader is most likely not at Wharton. But then again, I could write this blog for myself and not bother if people understand what I am talking about, but that goes against the philosophy of this blog and I need not publish such writing anyway. So I have decided I will write about things that strike me as interesting during the course of the day and hope it helps people form their own pictures of Wharton/B-School life or at least serves as a fun 2 minute read.

So I will be back with more soon...

Blogging finally!

2007-08-03T22:36:00.000-04:00

I arrived at Philadelphia on 25 July. For nearly a week I was just running around setting up the apartment, getting internet access, groceries etc. etc. The place feels like home now and after nearly 10 days I found more than 5 minutes to spend online.

Preterm has started and I am superduper busy. I have a reasonably light courseload for preterm but there are so many other things to do. Today I went on a trolley tour of Philadelphia organized by Wharton. The city really has LOT of character and history. The tour guide had a piece of trivia for every building/structure on every road.

The amount of information I am trying to assimilate and the number of choices is simply overwhelming. And the people are awesome, the endless partying is even better. As a result I suffer from a severe lack of sleep. Oh yes, Already! My life feels like it is on fast forward. Wonder how crazy it is gonna be when classes start in September :-).

More later...

California so far...

2007-07-17T21:38:00.001-04:00

I intended to blog everyday about what I do here in CA, but never get around to it somehow. So here's how my days have been like so far...

Saturday was a bright sunny day and we decided to visit Monterey Beach. "We" is read as my extended family of 11 adults and 3 children. And it was probably one of the craziest days to go there. It was really cold at the beach and we could not even get the kids out of the car. There was a lot of fog at first. When the fog lifted it was like curtains being raised to reveal hazy mountains in the distance. It was such a beautiful sight, too beautiful to capture on a photograph. So I did not click any :D. In other attractions, my uncle and I repeatedly ran up and down a sand dune simply on a whim and totally whetted our appetites for the yummy Mexican dinner that followed :-).

I met a bunch of my undergrad friends on Sunday for lunch. 3 of us decided to go to San Francisco. We stopped for a lovely view of the bay, bridge and city at Golden Gate Bridge Vista point. The lights were just coming on at downtown San Francisco and I had to tear myself away from there just because we went too late and had other places to see. We had a blast driving down crooked street (twice that too!). Then we drove around downtown SFO for a while before returning. It is a really charming city and I hardly saw the place. I'm definitely going there again and again and again... Hopefully I can drive there myself the next time.

Other than the tourist routine, I have also been making social calls, for I have a lot of family living in the Bay Area. Yesterday I visited Stanford with an uncle. The campus (at least the parts I visited) has an old world charm because of its stately stone architecture. The main library was awesome! I loved the silence and roamed for a long time among the rows and rows of leather bound volumes. I didn't have enough time to wander over to the B-School though.

And I just loved that fountain...

Will write more from LA this weekend...

Typographical'l'y chal'l'enged :-(

2007-07-16T15:15:00.000-04:00

Please replace l' with l throughout this post. And 6' as 6, 0' as 0 and so on. Thank you in advance.

Currentl'y my typing l'ooks 'like this:

abcdefghij
kl'm
nopq
rstuvwxyz 123456'7890'

The above lines were the letters of the alphabet and then the numbers typed continously without spaces/enter.

The keys
j
m
q
type enter on their own. Quite obvious from above I guess.

Del'ete was typing enter for a whil'e. Now it's al'right. Now it's suddenl'y not again.

"""""""""""""""""""''- That was the l'eft shift key hel'd on for a few moments. The right shift key decided to be a little saner and does nothing.

And the enter key worked every fifth, sixth or tenth time I hit it. And now it doesn't work anymore.

If you have not guessed by now... I shared some of my morning coffee with my keyboard :D. Everything that makes sense in this post (and logging in to blogger etc. ) was typed using the on-screen keyboard.

Oh! Do I love it!

Thanks again for putting up with the crap. Hope you enjoyed my misery!

Moved, physically this time

2007-07-11T21:57:00.000-04:00

I reached California a few hours ago! The roads are awesome :D.

My flight was uneventful and boring. The persons seated next to me were old people visiting their son/daughter in the United States and all I exchanged with them was a few smiles and nods to all their ravings and rantings about their previous visits to the states. The immigration official was not even bothered as to why I was entering the US at California instead of Philly. So my chronic obsession about immigration was also totally wasted :-).

Right now I'm barely awake. I'm desperately trying to beat jet lag by sleeping only at night. Two more hours to go before I sail away to the land of nods. Will write more after I return...

PS: If you don't get the title of this post, refer to this

Uncles galore!

2007-07-04T10:33:00.000-04:00

My paternal uncle who has come on vacation to my place bought me a brand new Nokia N95 phone! And he also bought me a financial calculator for B-School :D. My maternal uncle who I am visiting in California before I reach Philly is going to buy me all my winter clothes and other stuff that are better in the US than India. How cool is that?! I don't know if an admit to Wharton warrants all this, they seem to think so anyway. Do I see green???

I know I sound like a kid. But that is how they pamper me and I am not really complaining at the moment. You will agree with me when you see my HUGE shopping bill :-)...

On the moving front- I still have to buy $$$ and I'm procrastinating it forever for no apparent reason.

Moved, Virtually

2007-07-03T02:46:00.000-04:00

You might have hunted for this blog on Hella's list. Maybe you also found it, considering you are already here. I just moved from the applicants section to the students section. But not without a pang of emotion. My entire application journey flashed before my eyes as I watched my blog disappear from the list of applicant blogs. I hope my student life is as fulfilling and eventful as the past one year...

So now you can find me here and here :-)

Thanks to everyone for reading my blog all this while and do come back for more!

Last minute lists

2007-07-01T03:04:00.000-04:00

I'm out of India in 10 days. People keep calling to wish me or meet me once before I go. My departure keeps coming up in every conversation. But strangely, I don't feel I'm going anywhere at all. I definitely don't feel I'm going "back to school" because right now I'm just going on a 2-week holiday. This inertia is something I've never felt before and I'm sure it's not going to help me get acclimatized to school quickly. I keep telling myself this is because I don't know what to expect in the next few months and I'm just a little reluctant to let go of all the familiarity. But I'm not really convinced with my own excuses.

Moving on to less uncertain things... Now I think I know what are the things I need to pack and what are the other miscellaneous things I need to wrap up before I go. I will put down the list here for people who might find some use for it over the next 2 months or so...

Packing List:
I'm listing out just the categories of items. The specific things in each catergory varies from person to person and may be very different depending on where you are traveling from. A little googling can find you many really extensive packing lists.

Documents (Education, B-school related, work related, medical prescriptions and health history, travel related, financial documents, insurance, driving license with international permit. Ensure that documents needed during travel are easily accessible )
Photographs (in standard sizes and the negative/soft copy for later use)
Money (Cash, Travelers' checks, credit cards)
Important phone numbers and addresses
Medicines (with prescription)
Clothes
Prescription Spectacles/contact lenses (carry a spare)
Toiletry (just for a month till you know your way around the new place)
Footwear
Accessories (bags, watches, belts, jewelery, goggles etc.)
Books
CDs, DVDs (that you absolutely must carry)
Gifts (if any)
Food items (this is specific to Indians)
Utensils (mainly cooker and tawa, this again is specific to Indians)
Backpacks/briefcases etc.

Things to wrap up before leaving:

Change of address wherever applicable
Car driving license with international permit
Eye, dental and general health check up, immunization shots
Closing of back accounts/credit cards/other subscriptions
Leave signed checks, signed empty sheets of paper etc. at home for emergencies (this might be specific to Indians)
Leave copies of all documents at home
Buy travel insurance if needed
Change money
Reconfirm flight(s)/seats/on-board meal selection
Weigh luggage to ensure you are within the limit or make plans to pay for additional baggage
If someone is receiving you call the person and reconfirm flight timing. If not make plans for transit from airport to apartment/hotel/wherever

I might have forgotten some things. So I will add to these lists as and when I come across something I've missed.

Too much of this good life?

2007-06-28T23:53:00.000-04:00

Right now the most fortunate thing in my life is having an uncle who has, or rather had a bag manufacturing business AND who sent us large bags (and smaller ones too) every time someone in the family went abroad.

Now, to give you an idea of my misery:

My shopping done, the obvious next step was packing, which I(read my mother) started yesterday. And I have LOTS of stuff. I wonder what the Lufthansa guys were thinking when they set the 46kg weight limit on luggage. Don't they know Indians at all? Last night we packed a bag completely with way less than half my stuff and thought it's good to go. But we found that it weighed only 20kgs :-(. Now that's disastrous. Thankfully we have a bag of the next size at home (refer previous paragraph about uncles and free bags :D). Now we have to unpack the packed bag and use the larger one instead, which is really nothing to crib about, but I hate packing (which my mom makes me sit and watch) and I'm on vacation and hence entitled to crib just a wee bit.

Now about other bags... I bought a couple of really nice handbags recently and they make me feel like a girl again :-). I'm also surrounded by a hundred "not so nice" plastic bags containing all my shopping and my room looks like a warehouse. You will find me huddled up and sleeping in whatever space I can find between the bags and my books.

I'm getting a little too used to joblessness and it's heavenly. I don't laze around but I love not having to account for my time or use it gainfully to earn my living :-). Pity the fun has to end so soon. C'est la vie...

Shopping, Swimming, Studying. And yeah, Flying Ants too!!!

2007-06-16T15:06:00.000-04:00

My shopping list is shrinking!!! I bought my luggage today and 4 pairs of Jeans yesterday. I still have to buy formal wear and some other miscellaneous stuff. I'm so glad I can finish shopping sooner than I expected :-). And I totally enjoy my hour or so of swimming everyday...

I was getting worried that I might not be able to take waiver exams because I could not find books that have the relevant material at my library except for 2 subjects. I don't want to buy books as I cannot carry them and ironically, buying the course texts will be a waste of money if I manage to waive the courses :-(. But things became peachy again once I saw the dates for the waiver exams I want to take. They are spaced out and give me enough time to borrow books and prepare even after I get to Wharton. Anyway I was secretly wishing I won't have to study too much before school :D. Now I can play hookey, guiltlessly that too!

A very funny thing happened a couple of days ago. I was sitting at my comp and suddenly something fell into my left eye. No amount of jumping up and down, rubbing, scratching or splashing water could get the thing out. Finally, when I managed to twist my left eye completely out of shape and peered into it with my right eye, what should I find but an ant sticking to my eye-lid. Yes, a RED ANT. I tried removing it with my finger, a dry handkerchief, a wet handkerchief, a Johnsons ear bud and other such objects in rapid succession, but to no avail. The dead ant was hanging on to my eye with its tiny little tentacle (as I found out much later). I had to finally visit the doctor who initially put up quite a fight to locate the ant, while telling me all about flying ants/insects and how they put their tentacles to effective use in such situations. Then I, by now very familiar with the art of nearly gouging my eye out, helped him locate it in a jiffy, quite dexterously, if I may say so myself :-). He then anesthetized my eye with an eyedrop which in turn made my tongue and lips numb too. I sat clenching my fists and gritting my teeth as he held my eye open and pinched the ant out with a pair of forceps. Gross? Oh yeah!

Now I have to use eye drops which flow into my throat and make me sick and an eye ointment which sticks my eye closed for about an hour. I never thought THIS will happen in my life. Kudos to the ant!

10 days out of a job

2007-06-11T00:01:00.000-04:00

My last day at work was 31st May and my team gave me a really nice farewell. I had to cut a huge cake, make a speech and got a lot of unexpected gifts from friends. I got quite sad during the last few days at work but managed to spend considerable time with all my good friends and hopefully will keep in touch with all of them.

Until 3rd June I was really busy with packing (I wrapped each of the 100 odd books I owned in Bangalore with polythene and taped it, you can imagine how long that takes!), last minute meetings with friends, social visits that my mom insisted on, delivering the stuff I gave away, calling people on my phone book before I surrendered my phone etc. Those 3 days were more hectic than my full time job :-).

I have been in Chennai for a week now. I thought it will be really weird not having a job to go for every morning(or afternoon :D) and I expected to take a long time getting used to it. Thanks to the long list of things I need to do before I leave India, I don't feel much of a difference. On the very day I landed in Chennai I had to rush to get my learner's license, enroll in car driving school and begin my immunization schedule. I also got a new internet connection at home, enquired about money exchange, travel insurance etc. etc. etc.

We are rebuilding the house we used to live in. It is the house I lived in for 22 years and much as I hated to see it demolished, I am still very excited about the new plan and all the ideas I have for the house. So I've been spending a lot of time with my mom picking out wall shades, tile patterns and other fixtures, giving specifications to the carpenter etc. And I must say I'm enjoying it and am quite sad that I will never live there again and will not even stay in India long enough to see the completed house.

The "Get Started" packet arrived from Wharton and I'm done reading the 2 booklets in it. Wharton allows students to waive courses and the waiver information guide (on a CD) is a whopping 350 pages long. Being an Engineer, I cannot waive even a single course by credential. However, I have a list of courses that, with little or no effort, I might be able to waive through exams . Waiving some courses will go a long way in reducing my first year course load. So I'm rather unsuccessfully trying to motivate myself to learn the basics of these subjects.

I went shopping yesterday and bought a bunch of clothes. I still have loads of things to buy before the end of the month. Because I'm not very fond of shopping I'm trying to space out my shopping expeditions so that I don't get frustrated and give up too soon. At least the traffic situation in Chennai is better than that in Bangalore and does not add to my reluctance to go shopping. And yeah, now that I have paid all my previous bills, the wallet is steadily getting thinner :-(. On a side note, I found a really nice swimming pool and will go swimming everyday from today!

I might sound quite busy and excited, but there are a few things I miss about Bangalore:

My friends at work. I have many friends in Chennai, but they all have jobs to keep.
The weather which was getting really nice when I left.
Weaving erratically through the crazy Bangalore traffic, I don't have enough opportunity to do that in Chennai :-)
My trusty 2-wheeler :-(, although I have a friend's spare vehicle to use in Chennai.

But I guess my mom's food and all the time in the world to do as I please pretty much make up for it... That's about it from me at the moment. I really will blog regularly henceforth...

A long overdue update...

2007-05-18T02:35:00.000-04:00

I'm writing this post more out of pity and a sense of duty towards my blog than a true inclination to write :-). Things have hit a lull on the MBA front especially after getting my visa and I don't know what to write.

In the last 3 weeks- I bought my tickets, paid the deposit for my apartment, bought furniture and just got started on my shopping. I'm yet to pay for any of these things (Yes, I seem to have a lot of people who want to spend money for me) and am going to swoon when I dole out all that cash one of these days :-(. I bought 4 pairs of shoes/sandals, a pair of shades and the watch you see in the picture :D!

I found buyers for my 2-wheeler and other household stuff in Bangalore. But I get to keep them till 3 June when I leave Bangalore for good. I also found someone to takeover my room and saved my flatmate a roomie-hunt.

I have 10 working days(with 2 weekends in the middle) at my job. I still have a lot of work and looks like I will have to slog all the way till I leave on 31 May. I am a little undecided on whether it feels good or bad to have a lot of work until the very last day. At times I feel nice and important. At other times I just want to go home and sleep.

My mom is coming to Bangalore at the end of the month! I have to pack something like 80 books, a cupboard full of clothes(I think I should get rid of most of them and buy a whole new wardrobe before I become a pauper student :D), a computer and its table and other miscellaneous stuff that I have acquired over the last couple of years. My mom is indispensable in such a situation!

I'm really looking forward to my month in Chennai. I mainly want the home-cooked food, the beach and the lazing around. I am conveniently leaving out the shopping because I hate shopping and hate even more to think that I cannot postpone it beyond the last week of June :-(. Relocating is such a pain and doing it 50Kgs is nightmarish.

Since it's making me a little morose, I will stop writing now. More on my plans for my stay in Chennai and my California trip coming up!

BoB!

2007-04-24T12:54:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Clear Admit and all my fellow bloggers for putting me among the top 10 applicant bloggers of the year. It feels really good that you find my posts useful. Hopefully this blog will continue to provide insights on life at Wharton and B-School in general.

Congratulations to all the other winners!

I hold a US Visa now!

2007-04-24T00:34:00.000-04:00

I had my visa interview in Chennai yesterday and I got my visa! Now I just need tickets to get to Wharton...

Coming up: A detailed post on my preparation (documents et al) for the visa interview....

I cast my vote!

2007-04-19T02:14:00.000-04:00

I cast my vote for the Clear Admit BoB contest a couple of days ago. I was very familiar with the nominated applicant blogs, so I hardly had trouble voting. But I must admit that I had not read too many of the student blogs. I was familiar with only a few of them and I did not want my vote to be biased. So I did a whirlwind tour of all of them and picked my favorites and sent away my ballot to Clear Admit. I really wish all of them had moved to the new blogger and categorized their posts. (Fat chance, I know. They have busy B-School lives after all)

Now all I can do is wait for the results. I hope some of you voted for me :D. All the best to all the nominees!

Resume tips

2007-04-16T15:12:00.000-04:00

There is an oft-used marketing strategy - "State, elaborate, state again". The resume is where you can state your case. It can be used as both an introduction to your entire application as well as a concise summary of your professional and extracurricular life. So the resume is an important marketing tool and here are some tips to use it effectively:

Numbers
Typically your essays will talk about your experiences, learnings, ideas and opinions. Whereas your resume can be used to list out and quantify your achievements. The size of the teams you led, the $ value of your sales targets, the amount of business you earned for your firm, the % increase in efficiency you achieved for the software you developed, number of promotions, academic/professional awards, prestigious scholarships etc. are all quantifiable entities that will make your resume impressive. When a person reads your resume he/she should get an idea of your achievements and should want to know what made you achieve them (which is what your essays will contain). So, numbers look good on your resume and your resume is the best place for numbers.

Language
Although you will be using bullet points and resume-speak, grammar is important. Short crisp sentences in simple past tense without too much of passive voice really helps. Do not make your reader guess the expansion of your abbreviations.

Format
Choose a resume format that does not look too cluttered and allows enough space to say everything you want to. I personally believe that a very simple functional template works better than those that offer more decorative value. Make sure there is clear demarcation between the various parts of your resume, namely, educational background, professional experiences, extracurricular interests. Ensure that you give all the relevant dates for every activity.

Redundancy
Do not try to overload your resume with explanations and description and thereby introduce redundancy between your resume and essays. Save the verbosity for the essays!

Coverage
Make sure all the significant aspects of your education, profession and extracurriculars are listed in your resume. Missing out something could mean giving an incomplete picture of your candidacy to the adcom, specially because the resume could serve as a quick reference to your file and should contain all the key points you want your readers to remember about you.

Length
Normally, schools specify the acceptable length for the resume. If not specified a 1 or 2 page resume is ideal. I used a 2 page resume for all my schools because none of them restricted the length to 1 page while some specified a maximum of 2 pages. So don't go overboard with the length.

Hope you find this post useful...

Your angel essay reviewers!

2007-04-09T14:33:00.000-04:00

In this post I will tell you who can effectively review your essays and how. I will try and keep this post short :D

The author
You have to be the first reviewer of your essays. Ideally you should not stop rewriting an essay until you are comfortable enough to show it to someone else. While reviewing, pay attention to both content and style. While someone else might be in a position to comment on your style, only you can decide what is the best content for an essay. A reviewer will only be able to critique your content. He/she cannot create the content for you. Hence, for each essay, ask yourself if you have chosen the best story you have. Think if there is something else you can use to make the essay more effective. Creating a tight story is the first step. Look for glaring logical gaps in your essay. Systematically fill them up, till the essay is logically sound and convincing. If you do this incrementally each time you edit an essay, you will be well on your way to a perfect essay :-).

Partner in crime
For me, this reviewer was a person who was also applying to B-School (to the same ones as me in fact). But it takes a lot of trust to do that and I would say I just got lucky! Basically, you need someone who is familiar with the application process. He/she should be in the thick of things to have a reasonable chance of judging if your essays will sell. A fellow applicant is of course just an idea. A current student/recent alumnus can do the job too. But they are really busy and it's unreasonable to expect so much of time from them unless they are your friends. If you have a friend or colleague who really is interested in the process, or is ,say, applying next year, you have your ideal reviewer. You can coach him/her a bit with some sample essays of successful applicants. You can make him/her read school websites to understand what kind of people your target schools attract. Make sure you give them all the information they need to do this favor for you.

Clueless do-gooder
This is a person who does not know you very closely, someone who can give an outsider's take on your essays. This is the reviewer whose role is closest to that of an adcom member. It is difficult to get a stranger to review your essay for you. So get someone who is just a recent acquaintance/friend/colleague. You should be able to count on this person's goodwill and his/her language skills. All you need this person to do is to tell you if your story sounds like bullshit, did he/she find it plausible, convincing, impressive etc. Basically get an objective opinion about what did not go down well when he/she read your essays for the first time. If this reviewer has good lingustic skills, then he/she is the best person to candidly comment on your style, voice and language also.

Lie detector
This has to be a person who knows you really well. Family and close friends fit the bill well. They just need to check if the essay portrays the real you and if you have written in your real voice and tone. This reviewer should ensure that your true personality shines through your essays. Since this reviewer will be a person you are close to, you can take the liberty of troubling them a wee bit more and demand a little more of their time, sleep and effort. This review is the checkpoint for you to make sure that you are not trying to be the ideal B-School candidate, something that the adcom can see through very easily. This review should help you drop all your facades.

Human Spell Checker
As I said before, do not trust the spell checker in your word processor. You can do the spell check yourself. If you are not confident of your spellings, get someone who is good (even bright school kids will do, you can bribe them:P) to do it for you.

Do keep in mind that you need only the above roles in your reviewers. Having 5 unique reviewers is not very practical and is very time consuming. You will need atmost 2-3 reviewers with a reasonable overlap of the roles I have outlined. As the title says, they are angels,send them thank you notes, take them out for a drink or a dinner or something. Do not let your gratitude go unexpressed.

PS: This post is not a usual "how to review your essays" post because I did not intend it to be one. I believe there are only 3 things to review: Content, Style, Grammar. I feel that it is the selection of the right reviewers that gives you your best shot at submitting winning essays. Hence the slightly unconventional (maybe even tangential) post. Feel free to leave a comment for any clarifications you might need to find this post more useful.

Funding your MBA

2007-04-06T09:50:00.000-04:00

You might think funding is one thing you can think about after getting accepted to B-School. But think again! What if you get accepted and then realize there is a problem with arranging the funds needed to cover your MBA? I personally know people in this situation and hence I thought I should write this post to forewarn those who are just beginning their application journey.

As we all know, the MBA is an expensive expedition. Most applicants hope to fund their education through loans and scholarships. Scholarships are not easy to come by and they seldom cover the full cost of the education. Given the hectic academic and social schedule, it is not practically possible for MBA students to work for their living. So how will you fund the $100,000 - $140,000 you need to pay for your MBA? This is a question you should ask yourself even while you are selecting the schools you want to apply to.

If you are a US citizen or a permanent resident:
I am not an expert on this, but I believe there is federal aid/loans that cover a sizable portion of your expenses depending on your financial situation. So your financial concerns should be lighter than those of an international applicant.

If you are an international applicant, here are the things you need to consider:

Are you applying only to top 10 schools in the US?
If yes, rest easy! Almost all the top 10 schools in the US have a need-blind application process and have a guaranteed loan program for every incoming student. Most of these loan programs do not require a US co-signor. This makes life really easy! You can just go ahead and apply and worry about finances only during visa time (I promise a separate post on this if and when I get my visa :D).

But the top 10 schools are also the most difficult to get admitted into. So you might add a couple of lower ranked schools to your list. This is when you need to be careful. Typical questions to ask yourself before you decide to apply to a school:

Does the school have a loan program for international students?
Does the loan program require a US co-signor? Do you have someone willing to co-sign for you?
What is the interest rate for loans with and without co-signor? Is there a significant difference?
Does the loan have guaranteed approval or do you need to go through some credit check before your loan is approved?
How long does it take for the loan to be paid out?
How are you expected to sustain yourself till you get the loan money?
Will you need to bear the cost of tuition even before the loan money reaches you? If so, can you manage it?
Does the school offer some special financial assistance for people with your background (if you are a minority applicant)?
How do current students from a similar background as yours manage?

These are questions for which the answers may not be readily available on the school's website. After all everything in life cannot be handed to you in a platter :D. Google, current students/recent alumni, the school's financial aid office and fellow applicants (who have information) are the resources you should capitalize on to get your questions answered.

Other sources of funding you can explore:

Can you borrow enough money in your home country itself? Are the domestic loans competitive when converted to $?
Does the domestic loan cover living expenses also? (This may not be the case, the loans may be restricted to tuition and other academic purposes)
Do you have personal sources of funding (e.g. immovable assets, shares etc.) which you would be willing to liquidate/mortgage?
Will your parents/spouse/relatives sponsor you?
Will your employer sponsor you? If yes, what are the terms? (It is counter-intuitive if you want to switch careers but will have to go back to work for your employers if you avail the sponsorship)

As a future MBA student, you will want to make intelligent financial decisions. The answers to these questions will help you do just that and also save you the disappointment of realizing that you cannot attend a school you had your heart set on.

To reiterate, it is not enough to like a school's program. Attending the school should be financially viable too. So...Read the fine print. Look before you leap!

Some useful posts I unearthed right now :-
Clear Admit - admissions-tip-thinking-about-financing
mba.com - Paying for your MBA
MBAPodcaster-Financing your MBA
An LBS student's experience

Nominated for BoB!!!

2007-04-06T02:53:00.000-04:00

It feels really good to be nominated by Clear Admit for its Best of Blogging Awards!

My thanks to Clear Admit for considering me for this award. Personally this means a lot to me because it is a recognition of the effort I put into my blog. When I was scouring the web for resources at the start of my application journey, I stumbled upon Clear Admit. Since then this website has remained my best source of information on all things "MBA". I urge other applicants also to make the best use of this wonderful resource. This post is a small gesture to pay my tribute to Clear Admit!

Essays!

2007-04-04T12:51:00.000-04:00

This post will outline a method of tackling the essay writing process and some subtleties worth considering. I will not talk too much about how to collect the content for your essays, as my previous post addresses it already.

First of all, there are 2 ways to begin with the essays. You can complete your essays one school at a time or you can group together similar questions from various schools. The first approach is more holistic while the second, although seemingly more efficient, might produce a very haphazard result. It is still a personal choice you will need to make.

Here are a series of steps you can follow to answer a single school's essay questions successfully:

Create your story...
Sit back and take a good look at the essay questions. Make sure you understand what exactly they are asking for before you plunge into answering them. Then it is time to figure out what goes where. Before beginning to answer the questions, make up your mind about what are the examples you will use for each of the questions. There might be a few compromises you will need to make, especially if the school has lesser number of questions. It is better to make these compromises early than realizing you missed a very important example after you have finished all the essays. Hence fitting the pieces of your story into the questions makes for a tighter story and will also avoid redundancies.

While creating the content for your essays remember that there are some implicit questions to be answered for almost every school you apply to irrespective of whether they are stated or not:

1. Why School X? Why now?
2. How will you make a difference to the school
3. Career progress
4. Career goals

If not asked, the onus is on you to find a suitable place to fit in the answers for these questions.

Bullets...
Putting it down in writing really helps to clear out the fuzz in your mind. You may not yet know the stylistic aspects of how you are going to present each essay. Still, create a separate file for each of your essays and jot down an outline for each. You can then build on this outline to create bullet points, and then rearrange them to have a good sequence. This is the most visual way to make your story unfold before your eyes even before you write it.

Flesh it out...
Now your content is ready. It is now time to convert your essay into logical paragraphs. Paying attention to tense, grammar and voice (as elaborated below) convert your bullet points to complete sentences. When arranging your content in paragraphs make sure one flows into the next. You can use your introduction to set the stage for the essay, to inform the reader as to what to expect. Or you could begin with a bang like the opening of a dramatic scene. The same goes for the conclusion, you can use to summarize or to finish with a flourish. Simply use your imagination!

Embellish your essay...
The rest of the work is decorative. You can add quotations, sub-headings, conversations, citations et al. If the online application preserves the formatting then you can bold, italicize, use 5 different fonts, indent, subscript, superscript, whatever you please!

Written Language
Mind the language in your essays. While it is important to write in your true voice, you simply cannot be completely colloquial or have sloppy grammar in your essays. It is not necessary to use flashy, flowery, exotic words in your essays. The primary aim is to get the point across. Impressing the reader with your linguistic genius is only a fringe benefit :D. A purely functional vocabulary is more than enough to write a good essay. The idea is to make the reader feel you are talking to him/her, to create this effect you need to take care of 2 things

a) Active voice
As far as possible use active voice in your essays. Essays in passive voice sound like technical specifications. I'm sure techies will understand what I mean here. Active voice is more personal and speech-like.

b) Tense
Take care to see that your essay has uniformity of tense and smooth transition between tenses when needed.

Concisely:-

Slang is blasphemous
Passive voice is a little inhuman :D
Grammar is important. Period.
You are expected to know your spellings. Don't trust the spell checker in your word processor.
Paragraphs make the reader's life easy.
Shorter sentences improve readability and sustain the reader's attention
Choose between British and American English and stick to it.
Punctuate your essays!

Style
You can be humorous, witty, poetic, prosaic, lyrical, formal, semi-formal, technical, didactic, narrative, conversational etc. etc. Take your pick. But make sure it works well. Don't allow your essay to become a bad joke or a tiresome monologue or a constipated technical document.

Keep your audience in mind
Remember that your reader need not be familiar with your industry/ your extracurriculars. So unexpanded abbreviations are a big no-no. While quoting examples remember to give some context to the reader. Explain the hierarchy of your team to demonstrate where you fit in. Do not ramble away technical details of your project. If you are saying something which is culturally very specific to your country, take a couple of lines to explain it to your reader. To cut it short, empathize with your readers. Do not bombard them with jargon and hence give them a chance to question your ability to be sensitive in a diverse cultural environment (namely, B-School).

Sob stories
When it comes to failure related questions, DO NOT rant, crib, whine, pass the blame or make lame excuses. Sob stories make the reader question your leadership skills, adaptability in a team and your maturity level. State the facts as they are and focus on what you are doing/did to overcome your setbacks/failures. Openly admit your weaknesses and describe how you are addressing them. Show the adcom you are mature and down to earth.

Honesty
Being unclear about what you want to do post-MBA and hence speculating a little about your future is one thing. But fibbing about your past and cooking up achievements is another thing altogether. A "story" may sell, but is the dishonesty really worth it? This is a question of personal ethics and I will leave it at that.

So... Happy Writing!

PS: I will write a separate post on reviewing essays and deciding who reviews your essays.

Your fact-file- A preparatory ego massage...

2007-03-28T16:31:00.000-04:00

Once you are done with your GMAT, there typically should be some time before the essays are released (if you intend to apply in R1) or before you begin to work on your essays. Irrespective of whether you have the luxury of time before beginning on essays or not, it will really help to create a fact file for yourself. What I mean when I say "fact file" is a bulleted dump of every single thing you have done in your life that is worthy of mention to someone who does not know you at all. I would suggest not to be too concerned with the "worthy of mention" bit, trust me, it could bog you down real bad. So first- just put down every single thing that stands out in your memory.

While jotting down stuff, to maintain a semblance of order I would put them into a matrix of buckets as follows (matrix because there will be unavoidable overlaps):

Facts:

Academics
Test Scores
Professional Experience (jobs, salaries, promotions)
Extracurriculars with dates

These facts will feed into your resume and application forms later :-)

Incidents in:

Professional life
Extracurriculars
Personal life

The above incidents can be further broken down into:

leadership experiences
teamwork experiences
introspective stuff that led to self-realization (hyuk!!!)

Strengths:

by nature
acquired by experience

Weaknesses:

currently addressed
hopeless and potentially damaging (which will go unmentioned in the essays of course:D)

Wow factors, some examples:

Supreme Academic/Professional honors, quantifiable achievements
Olympic medal(s)
Huge family name/business
Unique personal circumstances/background that contribute to diversity
Entrepreneurship (serial entrepreneurship gets a bigger WOW!)
Anything else you can articulate well enough to excite the reader...

This is just a sampling of categories, add whatever you feel makes sense for you. Once the fact file is lengthy enough and your ego has been massaged well enough, it will be time to knock off all the things you have been fooling yourself about until then. Mercilessly remove each thing you would not buy from someone applying to you for a B-School admission. Cut every claim that you cannot support with an example from your life. Scour the file for contradictions, doing this early will ensure that your essays are consistent with each other.

This file can always be a work in progress. You can come back to it and add/delete things as you navigate through your applications. It will be a single reference point for all the information and inspiration you need when you write essays. There will be times when you look at this file and think "Wow! Have I done so much with my life?" and other times when you think "My lack-luster life can be shrunk into just 42Kb (it would be disrespectful to choose any other number!), even without zipping. Sigh..." .

I will end this post with the message that this grunge work is definitely worth it. It really helps you focus your thoughts and consolidate them so that you don't miss the better stories when you do the real work.

Congratulations Ganja Turtle!!!

2007-03-27T04:49:00.000-04:00

Huge Congratulations to Ganja Turtle for being admitted into Chicago-GSB's Class of 2009!!!

I believe that his campaign to get off the wait list was one of the most creative efforts I've ever seen. His hopes and dedication (during a time when all one wants to do is curse his luck) were not in vain. And I thought all the creativity and sincerity he showed deserved a special tribute on my blog. Hats off to you Ganja Turtle!

Congratulations to Wharton R2 admits!

2007-03-24T02:10:00.000-04:00

My hearty congratulations to all people admitted to Wharton in Round 2! This must be a really exciting time for you. Boy! Do I remember how it feels :-)! Party hard to let it sink in :D. And then the boring paper work will start... Do feel free to email me with any queries you might have about matriculating to Wharton. I would be glad to help.

Admits in Bangalore/Chennai, how about meeting up?

Update on my matriculation:
My I20 is ready and is on its way to me. I have made arrangements to wire my deposit and will be mailing across my matriculation materials next week. The only pending item after that will be visa.

Do not waste the $250 GMAT fee. Do some research!

2007-03-23T13:04:00.000-04:00

The $250 you shell out for writing the GMAT includes sending your score to 5 schools. The usual attitude is to get the GMAT done away with before starting on school research. It might seem like it is too early to shortlist schools before your GMAT, especially if you take the test early in the year. But considering the hefty cost of applying to each school, it makes a lot of financial sense to decide on the schools you intend to apply to (at least 5 of them) before writing the GMAT and hence save on the cost of sending additional score reports. This post will mainly cover the kind of school research you can do along with your GMAT preparation to have a reasonably final list of schools on test day.

I would divide school research into 2 parts:

Reasearch to identify suitable programs that meet your needs
Research to show fit with the school and alignment of your requirements with the schools' individual offerings.

The second part is more about the specifics of your chosen schools/programs. This research will unearth the microscopic school-specific data that will go into your essays to demonstrate that this school is the perfect place for you :-) (A separate post on this later maybe).

The first part is more about you and your needs. This research is mainly aimed at deciding whether you would want to attend a particular school and it is the part you can do before your GMAT. The following aspects greatly help you decide if you want to go to a school or not:

1. Rankings/Reputation
Whether you like it or not rankings exist and applicants, schools and recruiters do bother themselves with the rank and reputation of b-schools. I know these things are relative and should not matter ideally. But we don't live in an ideal world. However, the importance of rankings varies from person to person. There are 5 rankings in order of importance:

Business Week Rankings. Started in 1988, published once in two years.
Financial Times Rankings
U.S. News and World Report. Published yearly
Wall Street Journal Rankings. Started in 2000 published yearly.
Economist Intelligence Unit Rankings

Do keep in mind that rankings are based on fixed criteria which may not be exhaustive. So, while it it is reasonable to want to study in a well reputed B-School, using the rankings as the sole criteria for school selection is not a very wise thing to do.

2. School website
The school's website is arguably the best source of factual information about a school. After narrowing down to a list of say 10-15 schools based on rankings, I would advise you to spend considerable amount of time going through each school's website. They have truckloads of information about academics and the culture of the school. Some schools even have interactive forums in which you can get your questions answered by current students/adcom members. From the website you should be able to glean enough information to decide whether a school has the required academic offerings for your chosen specialization, whether a school has enough extracurricular activities in your area(s) or interest etc. The website also tells you a lot about the teaching methods of the school (E.g. 100% case based, 50-50 lecture-case model). Another important piece of information a school's website offers is about the culture of the school. You can easily figure out if a school encourages a lot of teamwork, if it focuses more on leadership development etc. All this information put together should give you a fair idea whether a school is right for you or not.

3. Talking to people/Blogs/School Visits
It might be a little difficult to find students/alumni to talk to. But it's definitely worth spending the time to find people to talk to, especially if you cannot visit the school. Visiting the school is the best way to get a load of the pulse of the school and to see first hand what the general attitude of the students is. Talking to a couple of students/alumni can give you an idea (albeit a narrow one) about what life at school is like. Alumni can also give valuable information about job opportunities available post MBA. Reaching out and getting to know people who have been through the experience can really help you decide if you will be happy in a school. You definitely don't want to spend 2 years amidst people you cannot bond with...

4. Recruitment statistics
The school's website is the best place to obtain recruitment statistics which is a very important consideration before you zero in on a school. When you think of an MBA you also think of ROI and these statistics indicate your likely ROI after 2 years. However do remember that the statistics will be a little skewed by the highest and lowest income figures :D. It is also a good idea to visit the websites of the companies you are targeting and/or speak to people from these companies to find out how they perceive your target schools when it comes to recruiting.

5. Personal preferences
An MBA is 2 years of your life and you should really enjoy it. This means you need to make many choices. Do you want to live in a city or suburbs, how big should your class be, should the school be pet friendly, is night life important to you, how big a loan are you ready to take, other family constraints that you need to take care of, the list is endless. I feel personal preferences are equally, if not more, important than some of the other criteria I have outlined above. So do evaluate them before you decide to apply to a school.

Research is time consuming. But what I have described above can be easily done between your hectic workload and rigorous preparation routine. Keep the detailed research about club activities, courses, professsors etc. for after your GMAT. I feel it is enough to get answers for the basic questions before you shortlist 5 schools to send your score for free. Even if you change your mind later, you can always add/change your target schools. After all it's just about money. So don't excessively pressurize yourself and shift your focus from the test.

$$$

2007-03-05T05:04:00.000-05:00

Wharton awarded me $20,000 through a combination of a fellowship and a need-based grant. This means they met the 10% stipulated student contribution. Now I don't need to show any personal sources of funding as I have a guaranteed loan for the entire remaining amount :-). They've also mentioned that I could also get some corporate fellowship in addition to this.

My financial woes are fast-disappearing! I totally love this :D

The much dreaded GMAT

2007-02-28T06:57:00.002-05:00

Jan/Feb is the time most R1 applicants start hating their jobs (after the year-end appraisal), start thinking about their future vision (or lack thereof), indulge in higher contemplations such as one's stagnant career/life and thus zero in on an MBA as the ultimate salvation. The first logical step of course is to get the GMAT out of the way. This post is intended to give the reader an idea of how to effectively plan one's GMAT prep, ace it and hence not waste time and $$$ on a second attempt :-). So here goes...

Preparation time:
The amount of time to budget for the preparation depends on the current and expected workload over the subsequent 2-3 months. Writing the GMAT in the first quarter of the year gives you ample time to prepare and attempt it again in the unfortunate event of a bad score and still have enough time to apply in R1. So the general idea is to finish the GMAT(final attempt) by June/July. I would say 2 hours everyday (including weekends) for 6-8 weeks is ample preparation time to get a score above 700 or even 750. Discipline is key here. If you miss preparing for a day you need to make it up over the weekend. Instead of going strictly by time, I found it more effective to go by a weekly plan. Every Monday I made a plan for the week and stuck to it, catching up on the backlog over weekends. Also keep in mind that while preparing for the GMAT you need to shortlist 5 schools to send your score to for free. Budgeting some time for researching schools will save $$$ because you can avoid wrong choices made in a hurry. (Will write a separate post on managing the school research parallely)

The benefits of an error log:
Maintaining an error log and revisiting the errors at regular intervals,say every week, will help you to identify patterns in your errors and thus your problem areas. It is better to note only the questions/problems for which you went wrong and not note the answers. This way when you revisit the log you can solve the question again from scratch. The outcome could be:
a) you arrived at the right answer- this is the ideal scenario and it means you are improving (unless you just made a lucky guess)
b) you arrived at the same wrong answer as the previous time - this means you have not learnt from your mistake
c) you arrived at a wrong answer different from your previous answer - this means you are making wild guesses and better review the underlying concept first.
To summarize- an error log is a dynamic indication of positive/negative(or lack of) effects of your prep. Used effectively, you will find that the error log shrinks week after week culminating in no errors or a bunch of minor silly mistakes.

Materials I found useful:
1. The Official Guide for GMAT Review (OG- 11th Edition)
2. Kaplan 800
3. Other material available on online forums

Tests to take:
1. Powerprep (till 2005)
2. GMATPrep (since 2006)
3. Tests downloadable from various online sources.(I used google to find them)

Sites with good material and forums:
1. TestMagic
3. SentenceCorrection.com

Too much material might end up confusing you. It's better to get an idea of all the stuff available and decide which are the ones you are going to use instead of hoarding everything aimlessly. Once you know what material you will be using it also becomes easy to plan your study time accordingly. Participating actively in the GMAT forums is very helpful. You can greatly benefit from the different approaches described by various people. The forums also foster healthy competition and you can get an idea of where you stand vis-a-vis the competition.

A sample plan:
Month 1
week 1 - Barrons/ Princeton or some easy material to familiarize yourself with the GMAT pattern
week 2 - OG (11th Edition)
week 3 - OG
week 4 - OG
every week end - revisit all errors from the error log and identify weak areas

Month 2
week 1 - Kaplan 800, 1000 CR 50-60 questions each day
week 2 - SC 50-60 questions each day
week 3 - CR, SC 30 questions each day
week 4 - RC target doing 25 GMAT passages or so.

Month 3
first 20 days - 1 test each day from various sources.
next 5 days - Revisit all errors marked as important, read your notes if you have made any. Solve a few problems of each type everyday so that you don't lose touch.
D-Day - 3 : GMATprep1 (2006 software) test and analysis
D-Day - 2 : Princeton2 , Powerprep2 (2005 software) test and analysis
D-Day - 1 : GMATprep2(2006 software) test and analysis.

3 months is a lot of time. The above plan can be implemented easily in 6-8 weeks.

One piece of advice:
Last 2-3 days it's best to relax and not study anything new. Take it easy, write some tests, and sleep well.

PS: I deleted this post by mistake. So had to post it again, sorry to the people who had commented

The Wharton Interview (helpful for R2 interviews)

2007-02-19T09:14:00.000-05:00

I hope this post helps people doing their Wharton R2 interviews...

The Wharton interview is...

...conversational
I do not mean to say you can ramble away. I mean that it is not a stress interview and is meant just get to know you as a person. The idea to judge your communication skills and to figure out if you fit into the Wharton community. There are a few standard questions, beyond that the interview can take any turn depending upon your experience, your persona and your conversational ability. It is possible to guide the interview so as to bring out the best aspects of your past if you are a glib talker.

Another thing which I feel will work to your advantage in the interview is your body language. If you have met Wharton students, you will agree with me that many of them ooze confidence. The interviewer will probably look for confidence in a prospective Wharton student too. Your body language says a lot about your confidence and maturity.

The interview report should ultimately indicate that the same person wrote the essays too :-)

...blind
The interviewer sees only your resume. In my case the interviewer took a couple of minutes to read the resume at the start of the interview. So I'm not sure if she even read it beforehand and come prepared with questions. This means that you can reiterate the examples used in your essays. But if you have important stuff that you could not mention in the essays due to lack of space, the interview is a good place to bring it up. An advantage of having examples different from the essays is that they will supplement what you have already mentioned and give a fuller picture of you to the adcom. Promotions, salary hikes and other recognition which came by after you submitted your application can also be stated during the interview.

...not decisive
The interview is just a part of the process and is not the sole elimination criteria. The Wharton interview is not "a make or break". You could get in because of a good interview, you could get in despite a bad interview. There is no reason to be nervous at all. Look at the interview as just a tete-a-tete and talk like you would to someone who has met you for the first time and is getting to know you. There is no right answer for the questions, it is HOW you answer them that matters.

Tips to get more air time
Quoting examples as part of your answers will not only get you more airtime but will also make for convincing answers. Examples are also a way to elicit pertinent follow up questions which is a great way to delve deeper into your experiences and viewpoints. Deep discussion in fewer aspects is better than superficial answers for a large number of questions. It is better not to sound too studied. In fact I would recommend minimal preparation . It is more than enough to know the facts and let your answers flow with the conversation. Going with rehearsed answers for the standard questions might make you sound boring and less confident. However, extempore may not work for everyone, it's a personal choice ultimately. The interview(specially at hubs and on-campus) is supposed to last for 30 mins, but I'm sure there are many people(including me) whose interviews stretched for 10-15 minutes longer. Longer interviews are an advantage most of the time.

Alumni vs Hub vs On Campus
The choice of the type of interview is usually a combination of your schedule and what you expect out of the interview. If convenience and lower cost is the chief concern, then alumni interview is the natural choice. If you want to return to your home country immediately after MBA then you might want to know more about the opportunities and the network available in your country. An alumnus will be in a better position to give you valuable information which will help you to make an informed decision if you have to choose between multiple schools later.

If you want to visit the school before you decide to attend, then the interview is a good reason to make the trip. Also the on-campus interviews are conducted by second year students who will be able to shed light on the life at school. You can also get a feel of the atmosphere and the culture of the school which is an important factor which can sway your decision to or against the school. People who live reasonably close to philly should not miss this opportunity. I say this because I know how difficult it was for me to compare the cultures of different schools using what I read and the few people I could talk to.

Choosing the hub interview means traveling within your country, unless the hub is your city itself. This definitely is not as convenient as the alumni option. The hubs are conducted by members of the adcom and they may not be able to answer some of the questions you might have about the curriculum, job opportunities etc. The flip side is that there will be someone in the adcom who has met you and spoken to you and might support you in case he/she really liked you. This is something you cannot achieve through an alumni interview where you rely solely on the report mailed in by the alumnus. At least during the interview, adcom members tend to be neutral to the industry you belong to/aspire to enter. This could be an advantage and a disdvantage: An advantage because you have a fair chance to showcase your achievements as opposed to talking to a person who belongs to/knows a lot about your industry and hence might undermine your credentials. A disdvantage because you may have specific questions about a particular industry and a veteran in that field or someone who has friends in that field might be able to answer you better.

Links for preparation
Clear admit wiki
Accepted.com interview database

Interview experiences of a few bloggers (R1 applicants):
Rungee
Cornfed MBA
Ganja Turtle
Uniqpath
Scarecrow
Mine

All the Best for your interview!

Disclaimer: This post is a summary of my opinions formed from my own interview experience and those that I have read so far. This is by no means a generalization of all Wharton interviews and I maintain that there is no such thing as "a typical Wharton interview".

Apartment Search Over!

2007-02-11T02:04:00.000-05:00

Thanks a ton to everyone who extended support and valuable advice in my woeful post about my apartment search.

I have a few nice updates on the matriculation front. First of all, I found an apartment! I will be taking over a current student's apartment. My future roomie and me had our eyes on this building all the while, it's one of the safer apartments at a reasonable rent. Now we just have to sign the lease. Here I would like to note how helpful the B-School community is (Wharton and all other schools). When I was trying to shortlist places I mailed pagalguy asking for the contact of a couple of Indian girls so that I could discuss the safety factor with them. I mailed one of the girls he pointed me to and the very next day my apartment search ended. Within 24 hours, she replied answering all my questions and also offering her apartment. So people, it really really helps to reach out to people, even those we don't know personally.

I faxed my verification authorization to Kroll on Thursday. The very next day I got a mail saying that the authorization has been processed and that they will begin the verification process shortly.

Wharton has said that the financial aid committee will meet this week to process the first batch of scholarship applications. So I should get my scholarship result and the loan amount I'm eligible for within 2-4 weeks starting Monday. I have completed my I20 application except for the financial details for which I need to get my loan information from Wharton. So I guess I can complete my I20 application in a month or so too.

The list of things I need to do is slowly disappearing :-). I have been meaning to start on the suggested readings for B-school, but I'm stuck up with my classics mania. I'm simply not able to draw myself to the business/management section at the bookstore :-(

Housing... Aarrrrrrgh...

2007-02-06T09:40:00.000-05:00

I have made and changed and made again and changed and made again..... a list of Philly apartments I need to consider. Now I almost know the Wharton housing guide by heart. I also have a photograph of the apartment locations etched in my memory. I shoot an email to a current student as the questions pop into my mind. The response invariably changes my criteria for the apartment search and hence my list of apartments :-(. I'm beginning to hate it even before I start calling apartment managements to discuss availability, rent, lease terms blah blah...

It seems fairly simple to sign a lease remotely, most of it can be done on the phone. But I'm somehow very skeptical about moving into a place without checking it out in person. Neither am I ready to go there in July and then search, all the good places will be gone by then. My future roomie and me discuss this endlessly, we are both confused and nowhere close to knowing which apartments to consider. Ok, I guess I have fully vented my frustration now :D.

Other things such as I20 application, verification, preparing to send my acceptance deposit etc. are underway and happening smoothly. Life would be perfect if housing were to fall in place soon enough :D

New Blogger

2007-01-29T05:54:00.000-05:00

The new blogger is UBER-Cool!!!!

A few days ago I moved to the new blogger(I was holding off due to the fear of losing my template) but was heartbroken when I realized that I will have to abandon my strawberries if I want to utilize the free style editing of page elements etc. I tried to pick a template and modify it to have all the chocolicious strawberries and realized that it was just too much work. So I very reluctantly decided to keep my old one.

Today something came over me and I just decided to go ahead and edit the whole thing no matter how long it took. I began with a template that had no colors at all and you can see the results! To get it to look exactly like before, I had to tweak the template code quite a bit and I'm impressed with myself for all the html/CSS I still remember from college :D.

So I get to keep the cake and eat it too...

Concerns of Early Career Applicants

2007-01-28T09:29:00.000-05:00

An early career applicant who is that the beginning of his application research asked me some very good questions, the answers to which I will post here with his consent.

1) As an applicant with relatively less work experience, did you feel you were at a disadvantage? Did it take an extra effort from you to convince the schools that you were mature enough to attend school now? I will have 3 years of work experience when I enroll, and by heavens I know I am ready. What advice would you give to an applicant like me whose work experience is way below the average work ex of every school!!

Not really. Disadvantage is just a perception. 3 years experience when you enter is reasonable, although it is on the lower side. Of course there is a greater onus on you to articulate yourself in a way the conveys the following:

-> Your experience maybe less in terms of time but rich in terms of quality. There needs to be demonstrated leadership and diverse team experiences.
-> You are very clear about your goals and know exactly how you wish to achieve them. On the flip side, because you are younger than most applicants, you might just get away with being a less clearer about what exactly you want to do. However, if you choose to take this path, you run the risk of sounding immature and not ready. So it's better to talk about your goals in a definitive manner than being vague.
->As for the maturity aspect, you can bring that out in your interview better. So your aim should be to write essays in which come off as a person who knows what he/she wants and displays the potential to achieve it. This is enough to get an interview invite :-)
-> Do a really well thought out job on the "Why now?" question.

2) Is it ok if one talks about one's experiences outside of work to show leadership, failure, etc etc or do the adcom expect people to focus on incidents from work? I know that it should be a good mix of both, but frankly I have many leadership experiences outside of work, but very few and not so stellar experiences from work. It is my understanding that the work ex is one of the most important aspect of one's candidature. So to summarize, will it be ok if one talks about work in just one (why mba) essay?

Of course! In fact your application SHOULD be a balanced mix of work, XC and personal experiences, otherwise you will come of as a very one dimensional person. Pick your best stuff from work and put it in the career progress part of your app and that's enough. Other essays can span over the better parts of your life :-) This is what they expect of and recommend for early career candidates.

3) Now that you have been through the application process, do you feel that the insights obtained from the various incidents are more important than the incidents themselves ( with respect to essays) ? I mean, is the adcom looking for insights one has gained from the incidents rather than the enormity of the incidents/achievements?

Yes, definitely insight and learning is what matters and shows that you are ready. However, quantifying the achievements in your resume or in the application will not hurt.

4) I hear a lot of people saying that goals have to be precise and well researched. Ok I get it, so lets say, I have genuine interest in management consulting and entrepreneurship. So what is being expected when people and adcom say precise and crystal clear?

This is a concern for career switchers and all they have to show is the interest. Obviously if you are, say, an accountant or a software engineer you will not have any experience per se to justify your shift to Consulting. This is where the research comes in. You can do the following:

->research what the consulting role is all about
->what sort of skills are required to be a good consultant.
->what are the experiences you have had in your life that makes you feel this the right career for you. This is the most important part. You need to logically relate your goals to the skills you have displayed/acquired through your experiences.

Disclaimer: Most of my answers are based on how I approached the application process and may not be the best way to do things.

The Wharton scholarship essay

2007-01-27T11:07:00.000-05:00

I've been getting quite a few queries about the scholarship essay for the fellowships/grants at Wharton. This post will hopefully collate the information I collected to help me complete the essays. I will also write a bit about the approach I adopted.

I believe there is a single question that rankles every applicant. I will address it here:

Should I make a case for need or merit?

Most of the fellowships are merit-based. The need based grants are for people who are in dire financial circumstances. Given this fact, it is a trifle too risky to make a case only for need. Ideally one should devote most of the space to demonstrate merit and make a mention of need if he/she will really be unable to meet the part of the expenses not covered by loans. Since the financial aid office does not see the rest of the application, one can pick and choose from examples used in the application essays. However, the personal statement is only 500 words long and it would be wise to use one's discretion and wisely pick only 2-3 best examples to elaborate on. I personally feel this will be more effective than attempting to summarize every achievement within 500 words. It is not enough to just talk about achievements here, real merit can be demonstrated if one's learnings and how these learnings will enable him/her add value to the Wharton community is evident.

I feel the resume needs to be utilized really effectively here. Remember it's just a single page. So it can be used to quantify all your achievements and serve to trace out the milestones in your life(for which there is no space in the personal statement). A crisp resume with all the important stuff (bulleted and aptly bold faced) that logically leads to the explanations in the personal statement might just do the trick.

Another space-saving thing I came know is that it is not necessary to mention any particular fellowship(s) you are applying to. They themselves determine which ones the applicant is eligible for and evaluate him/her for all of them.

Hope this information is useful. Feel free to leave a comment about any query that you might have.

Whew!

2007-01-22T10:24:00.000-05:00

I finally faxed my scholarship essay and resume to Wharton. I'm supposed to have done it a week ago. For some reason, I was not satisfied with what I wrote and had to edit it again and again till I felt it was good enough. Thanks to iday who expedited the process with his prompt feedback. Now all I can do is wait for the scholarship decision to come out. Not that it will change my decision to go to Wharton, still it's something to wait for....

So now I'm at liberty to research the housing scene and figure out the logistics involved in signing a lease remotely from India. Looks like I might also have some people who can check out places for me in Philly. A cousin of mine lives there and my future roomie mentioned that she has a couple of friends in Philly who might help us out too :-). I'm hoping having people there will make the process a little smoother.

I'm running out of stuff to say on this blog these days. If there's something you want me to write about leave a comment, I will be glad to share whatever I know. Please do not ask me to post my profile and my goals and other such mundanities :D

Ciao!

The Anticipated Ding(s)

2007-01-17T12:16:00.000-05:00

I finally got denied at HBS. I will get a similar result from Stanford tomorrow and do not want to write a separate post for that :D.

For nearly a month now, I've been thinking about all things "Wharton". So naturally, I feel nothing now...

There are some things money can't buy...

2007-01-11T15:49:00.000-05:00

...An MBA is not one of them!

It comes with a HUGE price tag (More on this later maybe).

I guess this is written in bad taste, the bad taste lingering from the scholarship application :-). I've made some progress with my personal statement for the financial need application and my resume is ever-ready. I will submit them next week and go back to blissfully pure creative writing.

I'm going to Chennai for the long weekend, will be back on Tuesday. So I might be a wee bit tardy in responding to mails.

Plodding through the paper work

2007-01-05T09:26:00.000-05:00

I guess I'm now faced with the boring part of the application process. I loved the never-ending cycle of writing, reviewing and rewriting essays. Now I'm loaded with paper work and am trying my best to motivate myself to do it. I have been doing Wharton's scholarship application at snail's pace. I am more excited about the housing and am making a list of apartments that I like from last year's housing guide. I'm doing this 'coz I like to see the map and imagine living in philly and riding a bike on those roads etc. Otherwise I know it's way too early to think about housing, all I can do now is dream :D.

I'm reading the Hitopadesha (although my sidebar says something else). I absolutely love the names of the animals in the book :-), although I always need google to translate them from Sanskrit to English. I guess I will finish all the unread books on my shelf in the next couple of months and then I can buy more!!! Starting tomorrow I will get my exercise routine back on track too (hopefully)...

So have a great weekend everybody. It's Friday, so I gotta eat out today :-)

Happy New Year and a long overdue update

2006-12-31T09:57:00.000-05:00

First of all a big apology to all of you for not replying to your comments/e-mails. Thanks a million for all the wonderful good wishes!!! I also thank all my blogger friends for the encouragement and support they have extended throughout my arduous application journey. And of course, thanks for taking the time to read all the good and bad stuff I've been dishing out regularly.

Since 21 December, I have been caught up in a whirlwind of work, I went home for 3 days last weekend and I tried really hard to enjoy the fact that "I'm into Wharton" but never had enough time. And when I visited the admitted students website and when I got the admit pack from Wharton, I went crazy with all the information I was suddenly bombarded with. Being my usual obsessive self, I had an attack of paranoia about a whole bunch of things. However, this weekend has been a blast. I'm reading blogs and catching up on e-mail and most important of all- sleeping. After talking to a couple of students, I have rested my fears and am smiling again :-) Also, the enormity of going to Wharton has sunken in finally and I keep telling myself "Wow, Wharton!". Yes, I've ruled out the possibility of HBS and am more keen on Wharton than Stanford :D

A couple of days ago, I went to a party with all the Wharton students who are in India. It reinforced my impression of Wharton and the people at Wharton. I met both Indians and non-Indians and they are all really friendly, down to earth, very smart people. I had fun getting to know them and am glad that 2 yrs at Wharton is about a lot of fun and partying too :D

That's it from me at the moment. All the Best to all the Round 2 applicants as they submit their apps and prepare for the "hit the refresh button" game. Wish you all a very Happy New Year and here's hoping all of us have a great year ahead. Have a Blast!!!

PS: I'm sorry about all the e-mails I have not responded to. I'm not in a position to review essays 'coz of my work load. I will respond to any other questions that you might have as soon as possible from now on. On a side note, I purposely do not respond to queries about my identity. I prefer to maintain at least a semblance of anonymity whenever posssible :-)

W-H-A-R-T-O-N!!!!!!!!

2006-12-21T10:21:00.000-05:00

And I'm in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Words fail me at the moment...

Made it to Chicago! Yippppppppieeeeee

2006-12-19T12:47:00.000-05:00

I'm grinning ear to ear now:D!!!!!!

I just got the call at 11pm IST. I could not wait to get off the phone, for I wanted to call my mom, my friend and my uncle who decided to gift me the iPOD which I was supposed to pay(or rather already paid) him for :-) and of course write a post. At least this post comes when I'm still totally excited.

This is super cool!

Accepted at Kellogg!!!

2006-12-19T07:37:00.001-05:00

Yes! I saw the mail first thing in the morning when I came to work. At exactly the same time a huge catastrophe popped up too. So my blog had to wait for nearly 8 hours before I could sneak in some time to write a post.

Ah! The sweet taste of success...

Amidst Nightmares...

2006-12-16T03:52:00.000-05:00

I'm having nightmares where Colonel Aureliano Buendia hands me my ding letter from Wharton with a vicious look in his eyes. The next moment hundred-year-old Ursula smiles at me saying it's only a dream and I have 5 more days to go. Then I dream that my Chicago decision gets lost and I never come to know what the final decision is.(Don't ask me how this can happen). Guess I should resume reading Freud to interpret these dreams. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

One Hundred Years of Solitude was amazing, but now I'm worried if I got a tad too involved in the book(as I do with everything I read). So I'm going to read really light stuff(see sidebar) for the next few days. Let me see if I get some pleasant dreams then...:-). I really wish I could fastforward 5 days and get it done with.

The HBS hub interviews in India happened over the last 3 days(or is still happening). It makes logical sense that they will give every candidate invited to interview the choice between alumni and hub interview. Going by this logic, every Indian applicant who has to get an interview invite has already received it by now. So I've completely lost hopes on HBS. What I don't understand is their justification for waiting till 17 Jan to announce a ding that is decided more than a month earlier.

As for Stanford their latest newsletter claimed that they have sent out "a lot of invites" and they still have " a lot of invites" to send. I came across speculations that this implies that they have 50% invites to send out still. I would just say that there is reason to harbor some hope still and leave it at that. But the irritating thing is if one doesn't get an invite by 20 Dec, then it's a long wait till early Jan before the adcom comes back from winter break. This is agonizing to say the least. Maybe I should stop hoping about Stanford too and just be in peace. It's simply impossible though.

Now that I have poured it all out, I'm off to do something more constructive :D

PS: It's ironical how the title of this post and the title of my blog contradict each other so perfectly!

Waiting it out...

2006-12-11T12:38:00.000-05:00

My blog's begging me for an update and I'm staying away from all things "MBA" to help me get through the grueling wait. I've also decided not to write posts that list tips to tackle the admissions process until the admission decisions are out. I can't get myself to dish out advice before I actually know for sure that my way works :D. So this post will just be about what I've been doing to fill my time while I wait it out...

I've been having a delightful time as I spend hours buried in books. Reading is an addiction to me and I used to read a lot even while I was applying, but there was always the time constraint and the nagging feeling that my essays would benefit from the extra time. Now I'm back to sitting up all night when I cannot make myself put a book down. I splurged at the Strand Book Festival at Bangalore. I made 2 trips and bought 15 books.

Some of these are books I've been meaning to read for a long time, some of them just caught my fancy, some of them I've already read but didn't own a copy. I've already finished reading Grapes of Wrath, Lord of the Flies and Of Mice and Men in the last 10 days. That leaves me with 12 more to go. I guess I will not be buying any books over next 2 months or so.

I've also been creating an online book catalog which I will link up on my blog once I'm done with it. When I was in college I promised myself I will buy at least one book every month once I start earning. Looks like I've more than kept up my promise for I have collected over 100 books in the last 2.5 years. The sad thing is some of them are in Chennai, so I can complete my online catalog only after my next trip to Chennai in a couple of weeks.

I bought myself an iPOD! I got it sent from the USA 'coz of the hefty saving I can make. It's on its way to Chennai and I will pick it up when I go home, after which my life will become much more musical :-)

That's all the updates I have. Now I will go lose myself in the world of the Buendias...Ciao!

My Wharton interview (insert huge grin)!

2006-12-04T07:46:00.000-05:00

I'm really happy to say that "My Wharton interview went off very well!"

I had my interview at the Mumbai hub this morning. My day began with an interesting start. First of all I had to wake up at 5 am, which is simply unhealthy for a purely nocturnal creature like me. Since I'm not familiar with routes in Mumbai my uncle and aunt insisted on accompanying me. We made a train journey in a surprisingly empty Mumbai local, had a relaxed breakfast and leisurely strolled down to the McKinsey office in Mumbai where they dropped me off. I was right on time at 8.45am. But poor li'l me had no clue that it takes 5 minutes for a lift to come down from 3o odd floors. So I was waiting for the lift when I should have been seated in one of the overseized couches in the plush McKinsey reception. And to add to my agony, when I reached the 21st floor, the receptionist with the plastic smile informed me- "The interview is on the 24th floor ma'm". Thankfully the fire exit was nearby and I did not have to put up with the tardiness of the lift. I ran up 3 floors, 3 steps at a time. I leave the state of my suit, hair and face to your wildest imagination. I went in and there was this guy smartly dressed in a suit, waiting for the interview too. On enquiry I found out that his interview was at 9.45. I thought I was done for, but nice guy that he was, told me that I was right on time, that the interviewer and the receptionist themselves had just come in. Phew! I will gently remind you here that I went through all of the (e)motions mentioned above in an interval of no more than 5 minutes :D

I had exactly 5 more minutes to smooth my hair, stop panting like a dog, check my dress and shoes:D and all the other girl stuff:-). My interviewer took me into the room at 8.55 sharp. She put me at ease in no time. She asked me if I lived nearby and I promptly informed her that I came from Bangalore and that I had spent the past 2 hours travelling to the venue. This must have explained my rather dishivelled (I'm just assuming this, 'coz I'd not seen a mirror in the last 2 hours :D) appearance. Thus we come to the end of my "interesting start".

My interviewer was a really expressive person with a lot of smiles to offer, which made me comfortable instantly. She took a full 3 minutes (don't ask me how I know the exact number...) to peruse my resume completely and she said "Crystal Clear". A small "yippie" to myself and a polite "thank you" and a smile to her. She started off with "What is your current role in your organization". I gave her an idea what the product was and what I do, clearly separating the technical and non-technical aspects of my job. Then she asked me "Why do I want an MBA?". I took the liberty of telling her that I would elaborate on my goals before I get there and did just that. I spoke about my goals, why those goals (which covered nearly 7 years of my life:-)) and how I think an MBA can get me there. Then came "Why now?". Simple, honest answer followed. After that she switched topics by saying "So we have spoken about your leadership at work and extracurriculars..." Here again I took the liberty of telling her that my list of extracurriculars is not complete and elborated a little on the left out aspects. She wanted to know about "1 strength and 1 weakness". I gave her a true strength and a true weakness (I don't care if it damages my prospects). Then I gave her a discourse on what I expect out of Wharton and what made me apply to Wharton.

That's pretty much the list of questions as such. But I had the luxury of guiding the interview in whichever direction I wanted. So in the course of the conversation we spoke about Social consciousness, IT industry- who are the major players, Mumbai life (Although I've never lived there, I've been there enough number of times to know a lot about it and of course, I love Mumbai!), the disparities between the upper and lower economic segments of any city. We also touched upon topics like idealism, why Indians return to India from the US, the safety net in European countries etc. I don't know how it happened, but our conversation was peppered throughout with such extremely interesting digressions. Finally I got to ask her some questions, for which she gave me very detailed, insightful answers.

She gave me feedback (which I did not ask for of course :D). The words "exciting", "impressed" and "successful" were used! I thanked her, told her it was very nice talking to her and left. I ran out of the door and called my anxiously waiting mother to share my exultation. When I noticed the time I realized we had been speaking for 45 mins (15 mins more than the stipulated time). I'm sure the guy who was waiting for his turn must have cursed me :-).

I don't know if this will convert to an admit, after all the interview is not the make or break in Wharton's holistic process. I came out feeling completely satisfied and that is all that matters to me at the moment. I will not blame the interview if I don't make it.

So now I'm back in Bangalore and really need to sleep. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz........

My Chicago Interview

2006-11-16T12:57:00.000-05:00

I had my Chicago interview with an alum this morning and it was nothing like what I had expected out of an admissions interview! The usual Why MBA, Why now and Why Chicago were there. But there were lots of other delightful conversational elements to the interview. We discussed things like my fears, my way of handling uncertainty in life, pros and cons of being an only child (which I am), why I became an engineer, why I work where I work, what do I do. I had to profess my commitment to my goals and why I think they are practical, how will I embrace and adapt to change, which one will I go to if I have to choose between the schools I'm applying to.

Then our conversation took a tangential turn towards Chennai (where I grew up, he's from there too), the good old music scene in Chennai and how it has become lack-lustre due to all the westernization, my school, his school, tamil brahmin outlook and upbringing, Indian roots and values etc. etc. (My apologies to my non-Indian readers, for giving such an India-centric discourse). We also spoke about creative writing and books. We discussed our views on objectivity, capitalism, life, the universe and everything :-). On a more serious note, it was a relaxed candid conversation which brought out the person in me.

He assured me that his feedback will be positive. However he also mentioned that he cannot influence the admission decision which will be based on the rest of my application too and the only thing that may deter me from getting in is lack of work experience. His comments were "You are a young woman with a lot of dreams, I like your energy and don't worry you will make a magnificient B-School grad"! It was music to my ears :D

He urged me keep him posted and approach him for anything that I might want. He was a very approachable and extremely dynamic person. I'm really glad we had so much in common to talk about.

I'm taking a break! I will start preping for Wharton sometime next week.

PS: Although I have covered everything that we spoke about, this was not the exact chronological flow of the conversation.

Update: I just checked my Stanford app status. It says "Your application is complete and currently under review." Someone might be reading my Stanford essays right now. I really hope he/she likes them :D. I really like it when things are moving...

I love Wharton :D!!!!!!

2006-11-15T13:30:00.000-05:00

Yes, I got an interview invite from Wharton a while ago. After a lot of deliberation I decided to go to the Hub interview at Mumbai, India. I decided to shell out all that money mainly because I don't want to go through the tension of waiting for replies from busy alumni :).

There's a connection between "a day before the deadline", Wharton and Me. My app turned complete on 25 October, a day before the deadline. I got my interview invite today, a day before the deadline. Will they give the decision also a day before the deadline? Ha Ha. Maybe Wharton won't but Chicago will. Yes, the Chicago adcom just sent a mail saying they are releasing their decisions on 20 Dec instead of 4 Jan. This makes my wait shorter by a good 15 days. Cool!

Now I'm overflowing with love for these 2 schools. Of course I need to sleep now if I have hopes of doing well in the Chicago interview. Gnite! Tonight's gonna be a happy night!

Update

2006-11-13T12:05:00.000-05:00

My Chicago interview has been postponed to 16 November. It's good 'coz I get some time to prepare. Although it will be a miracle if I really get some preparation done. I went back to work after a week and found truckloads of work waiting for me. So I left work at 9pm :-( I will try and get back early tomorrow and the day after.

As for Wharton, I have my fingers crossed. The reality is I'm trying not to think about it so that I don't get all negative and morose before my Chicago interview.

Other than that I'm numb, brain dead and sleepy at the moment. I'm off to bed. Gnite!

Woe is I

2006-11-11T20:30:00.000-05:00

I just reached Bangalore after my trip home. This trip did me a lot of good because I could check mail only once a day for the past 9 days. I was forced to be at peace and not think about my apps. And of course 4 days flew by in preparing for and attending my friend's wedding. I managed to revive my slumbering social life.

Now that I'm back, I've decided not to check e-mail "hopefully" any more, the disappointment each time I see a bunch of promotional mails is irritating (to put it midly). I hate to be among the last to get the invite from Wharton, the wait is excruciating. I hate it even more if I have to wait all this while to just get a DWI. 16 Nov will seal my love or hate for Wharton. Till then we will continue to share a vacillating love-hate relationship. One consoling factor is that people whose app turned to complete on 24 Oct have started getting invites only on Friday. Hoping there is at least a vague semblance of chronology in the process, I should get my invite, if I'm getting one at all, in a day or two. I guess that's enough speculation about Wharton for the day.

I seem to have the same rotten luck with Stanford. My application status still says "Submitted" while others are seeing their's turn to "Complete, Under Review". Murphy seems to love me. "If I can get denied,I will" OR "If I get an interview invite, I will be the last one to receive it". I feel like an eternal optimist rapidly metamorphing into a wretched cynic. (Just the usual drama, don't you care about it :D)

A different Birthday!

2006-11-08T08:20:00.000-05:00

Today was the most different birthday I've ever had. One of my best friends got married today. So I had an added reason to celebrate. My group of 5 friends from school spent the past 3 days together and we had a lovely time. We've known each other since kindergarten and have been really close for the past 14 yrs. We've literally grown up together. Although another one of my dearest friends was not with me to celebrate my b'day, I was really happy to be with my friend on her wedding. I have taken a week off from work. Yes I decided that this wedding was worth spending some of my vacation leave on :). It was great reminiscing our school days together :)

On the application front, I wish I'd got an interview invite as a b'day gift :(. But of course it's still 8 Nov in the US. So there's hope still :D. I have my Chicago interview on Sunday. I think I will start preping tomorrow.

That's it for now. Ciao!

Kellogg Interview Done!

2006-11-02T11:30:00.000-05:00

I had my Kellogg interview today and it went off pretty well. I am a little disappointed because the interviewer seemed slightly disinterested and cursory. This was one feedback I read about Kellogg interviews repeatedly and maybe I should have expected it. But of course I'm not complaining, it was pretty good!

First the interviewer set the stage, set expectations and explained "the role of the interviewer and the purpose of the interview" in the entire process. We ordered our coffees meanwhile. Then we started off with the usual "let's start off on an open-ended note, you could maybe talk about your experience and I will ask you questions as we go on". I then had to describe "an area of development and how I have adressed it". We then branched off to talk about "one time when I made a significant impact on my team at work and how important is my role in the team and how important is my product to my company". I had to then follow up this answer with "what I think are my strengths". We then talked about "few technical details of what my product actually does, who are the customers and how would they use it?" Then we went on to discuss "what my company does and what is their current strategy". Finally I spoke about "a leader/manager I admired and what are the traits I think a leader should have". Now that was the end of my career stuff.

We moved on to "Why MBA, Why Kellogg?". This is where my "actual goals, how I would achieve them and why the path I'm thinking about will get me there" came in. Then I had to answer a couple of follow up questions about "the exact expectations I had from my post-MBA job". And that brought us to the end of the interview and I could ask my questions. I had 3 questions to ask and I did.

I had not touched my coffee till that moment. I drank it while the interviewer took some notes. We indulged in some small talk, paid the cheque(I was not allowed to pay) and left the place.

On the whole, very average interview, no stress, no grilling, nothing exceptionally interesting. I did reasonably well, no faux-pas and I will leave it at that. This interview will not reduce my chances of getting in. I learnt a lot of things which I will use in my Chicago interview :-)

I have bolded the questions instead of listing them out because I wanted to capture the flow of the interview. Hope you find it useful!

Looks like Chicago-GSB liked my essays! :D

2006-11-01T10:26:00.000-05:00

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaah! I got an interview invite from Chicago-GSB!

Today is the day they begin to send out their invites. I was hoping for one, but didn't imagine I would get it so soon :-). I was chatting with a friend on google talk when I suddenly noticed that I had 2 mails in my gmail account. I was almost praying that one of them should be an interview invite. And it was! Maybe it does pay to submit early, 'coz my application went to complete status even before the deadline :D.

I'm grinning ear to ear and am not low anymore. Thanks to everyone who cheered me after my previous post.

Low

2006-11-01T01:57:00.000-05:00

I have decided to postpone submitting my Columbia app till end of November, mainly because I came to know from the adcom that they start reviewing regular decision apps only from 10 Jan 2007. Now, there is so much conflicting info about this on the net. There are sites such as the one I quoted earlier which have the admissions staff claiming that there is an advantage to applying on the early side of the regular decision. So I decided end of November is still early enough to have an advantage if there is one :-)

I'm suffering from super low motivation, which is another factor that is hindering me from writing my Columbia essays. People have been getting interview invites from Wharton. I try hard not to think about it. After all my application turned complete only on 25 Oct. But it's pretty bugging that I submitted on 1 Oct, 12 days before the deadline, and have still been brutally victimized by the randomness of their processing. People who submitted 5 minutes before the deadline saw their app go to complete on the same day and have started getting interview invites :-(. To top it off, there is just one all-encompassing answer - "The process is random, complicated and non-chronological". All this makes me dread that I may get dinged directly. I know I am overimagining, but I am! And I'm unable to prevent myself from doing so. So be it.

I don't know whether Harvard's and Stanford's silence is a boon or a bane. I alternate between loving and hating their process :D. Sometimes I feel it's good I don't see a bunch of applicants constantly updating some thread about the number of times they hit F5 every second. At least I just feel low, I don't stress. If I join that group I think I will freak out completely.

As for Kellogg, I already know 2 people from Chennai and Bangalore who have got interview waivers. I keep wondering whether it's a good thing to have an interview or not. Anyway I have my Kellogg interview tomorrow. So wish me luck!

Back in the game!

2006-10-26T00:15:00.000-04:00

First of all a big Thank You to all those who commented on my previous post to wish me. It feels great! Congratulations and All the Best to all those waiting for Round 1 interview invites.

The first thing I did this morning was to check my Wharton application status. Finally it turned to Complete Round-1 with all materials received. Whew! Given my screwed up luck, I was expecting it to turn Complete only at the very last hour on the 26th. Or even worse, I thought I will have to mail the adcom to find out why mine is not "Complete" yet. Yes, I did imagine quite a bit. I'm just being the obsessive me.

I've started work on my Columbia app. I have figured out what to write for each essay. I wish I did not have to craft a completely new essay. The essay about the manager I admire is going to take a lot of time. I'm going on vacation from 3-12 November. I want to submit my Columbia app by 2nd November because a) I will not be permanently connected to the internet from home. b) One of my closest friends is getting married and I want to enjoy her wedding and my vacation. So I'm going to work my ass off this weekend and get the essays ready. 1st November is a public holiday in Bangalore :-), so I will fill in the online app and submit on 1st mostly.

My diwali holidays were good. 5 days away from my apps was very relaxing. Mom's cooking rocks! I met my friends from school after many months. We went shopping together to buy a wedding gift for the one who's getting married. It was awesome fun and a lot like old times!

That's my update at the moment. I better dress and get to work now :D !

The much awaited vacation begins now!

2006-10-18T04:58:00.000-04:00

Whew! 3.5 months of sheer toil culminated this morning when I submitted my Stanford application. Stanford's essays were the most beautiful ones in pdf form :-) ! I have submitted all my applications except Columbia. Yippie....

I have some more nice updates too...

My Kellogg application says "Complete" and they are waiting for me to complete my interview. I got my Kellogg interview invite and I've also spoken to my interviewer. We've fixed a tentative date for the interview.
My Chicago application is in "Complete" status.
My Harvard and Stanford apps say "Submitted". I don't think HBS updates it at all, I'm not sure about Stanford.
My Wharton app says "Received" and I expect it to turn to "Complete- Round 1" soon. So much for submitting early!

I feel both good and bad right now. Good - becauseI made a plan, stuck to it and finished everything on time, in spite of work pressure and illness and other obstacles. Bad - because the gruelling wait starts now. I have no clue what my chances are at these schools. I am not expecting to get in, I'm not expecting to be dinged right away, I'm not expecting an interview invite. My mind is just blank and I prefer it that way. Otherwise I will obsess endlessly and lose a lot of sleep over something I have no control over anymore :-)

The vacation starts now! I'm going home tomorrow night and will be only "occasionally connected" till the 25th of October. After I come back I will be busy for say 10 more days with my Columbia app and Kellogg interview prep. After that, I don't know what I will do with all the time. Of course, I'm on a hiatus from some activities, which I will promptly begin again. I will still have time to spare(I think)! It will be really nice to come back home early some day and laze around and do whatever I please :D.

This calls for some celebratory posts (which I will write in the near future)!

One day weekend...

2006-10-08T13:08:00.000-04:00

I absolutely hated it!

Last weekend flew by while I was just running around helping my roomie prepare for her flight to the U S of A. Yesterday was a compensatory working day for the enforced holiday on Wednesday for a statewide strike. I had a very hectic day at office yesterday because my new roomie shifted in last evening and I had to leave at 5. The result? I slept like a log last night, woke up at 11am today with every inch of my body aching and begging me to go right back to bed. I repeat- I hate one day weekends.

I had not bought groceries and essentials for the month. My house was in a complete mess last week, so I postponed all monthly shopping, cleaning and any effort to restore normalcy till my roomie left. 12 hours a day at work throughout the week didn't help the cause either. Today, I spent the whole day stocking up the kitchen and fridge, cleaning my room and sleeping :-(. No TV, no reading, no application work.... My break, which was supposed to end yesterday, got extended by a day.

It's 10.45pm and I just logged on to catch up on all the activity in the blogosphere. But it's very silent here also. Is everyone having a bad weekend like me??? Or are they spending the time constructively on essay and applications :-) ???

This is one hell of a cribbing mail. I guess I deserve to crib once in while too :-). I will be back in action tomorrow, no matter what time I come home from work. Till then- Ciao!

Chicago submitted!

2006-10-04T14:51:00.000-04:00

I submitted my Chicago application today! That makes it the 4th application I've submitted in the last 5 days :D

I'm gonna take a 3 day break and start reviewing my Stanford essays on Sunday. I'm just calling it "a break" to feel good. The truth is I have hell a lot of work in office and I think I will be returning home at ungodly hours this week. Moreover Saturday is a working day to compensate for today :-(. Anyway I have the luxury of time. I have already written the essays and foresee changes only in Essay 1. I can easily submit in a week or so.

It's 12.30 am and I'm off to sleep...........

3 Applications done!

2006-10-01T16:55:00.000-04:00

Yes! I submitted Kellogg yesterday, Harvard and Wharton today. I was not planning to submit so early, I wanted to submit exactly one week before each deadline. But I was done with everything for these schools. Moreover, things are getting more and more hectic at work. So I wanted to use the long weekend and not have to submit after an endless day at work. I might miss something and repent it forever.

Now that I have lost my fear of the submit button, it feels really good to be well ahead of time. The essays look awesome on pdf! I also got a book to gift one of my recommenders. Tomorrow I have quite a bit of shopping to do. So I will submit Chicago tomorrow (if I have time) or on Wednesday ('coz it's a holiday). After that it's two weeks of rewriting Stanford essays before I hit the button again. I'm waiting for the day when I will come back home from work without a plan of action for the evening/night... For that, I have to wait till end of October when I will submit Columbia :D.

It's 2.30 am and I'm just not sleepy. Why am I so damn nocturnal?!!

I actually hit the SUBMIT button!

2006-09-30T05:09:00.000-04:00

I just submitted Kellogg Part 1. I checked and rechecked and rechecked my data form endlessly. I could not get myself to submit my essays first, so I picked Kellogg part 1 as a rehearsal to submitting the entire application for other schools. If I obsess so much before submitting a data form, I don't know what I will do with my essays. I foresee uploading and deleting my essays a zillion times before I hit submit for each school :-(

My roomie is flying to the US on a long term assignment next weekend. So I'm gonna be doing large scale shopping with her this weekend. I think she's gonna shop for a few months or a year. I hate long hours of shopping :-(

Ok she just called me and I'm off to a shopping spree right now. Ciao!

What a gratifying feeling!

2006-09-29T15:05:00.000-04:00

I got my Wharton essays read by a Wharton alumni who is much older than me. And guess what! He really liked them a lot!

This is particularly important to me because so far all my readers were pretty young (except my uncle), or they are applicants themselves, or they just know me well. This Wharton alum is quite senior and has different expectations, so the fact that he likes my essays is a good validation of how appealing my essays are to different types of readers. I know this is no guarantee that the adcom is going to like them, nevertheless I feel a wee bit more confident about hitting the submit button.

Another nice update- I got a 300 on my TOEFL.

I have a long weekend coming up, I have Monday off and Wednesday's off too. I think I will be submitting HBS, Wharton, Chicago applications and Kellogg Part 1 by Wednesday. I would rather submit on holidays than after a long day at work. That will change my schedule a little, for the better though.

Right now I'm brain-dead, my eyes are refusing to stay open. So zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......

Kellogg Essays- A round of celebration ends!

2006-09-26T10:59:00.000-04:00

Kellogg- A great mix of conventional and fun essays

What I like most about the Kellogg essays is their word limits or lack thereof. Another thing I really like about Kellogg is the mix of topics for the short essays. If the first essay is too cramped for space you can use the "significant leadership experiences" essay or the "how did you persuade people" essay to elaborate your professional achievements that you could not fit into essay 1. If you find that essay 1 covers your professional life adequately, then these essays will work really well for talking about some important extracurricular activities too. And there is always the "Outside of work I..." essay for extracurricular activities/ interests/ hobbies. This essay is a real boon, I have not found so much space to focus on my interests in any of the other schools' essays.

Frankly, I was really glad that the ethical issue essay is optional. I guess that says all that I feel about that essay. The open ended nature of "I wish the admissions committee had asked me..." is really cool. This is a great chance to discuss some aspect that does not fit into any of the usual B-School questions. It could be about a unique experience, your ancestory, how you overcame a traumatic problem. Or it could double up to do the job of an optional essay to explain a gaps in workex, poor grades/GMAT etc.

The "uniqueness" essay is also pretty open ended. You can choose from background, values, academics, activities, leadership skills. This essay can be used to discuss a couple of specific incidents or a general overview of your life in a different country or a mix of incidents from various realms of life. The liberal 2 page word limit will allow you to do all this and more if used judiciously.

It's important to remember that essays are supposed to be double spaced. So the 2 page essays can be about 1000 words each and the shorter ones 400-500 words each. I guess the lack of word limits is in a way illusory, but the good thing is I did not keep checking the word count after completing each line of my essays. So the illusion does make for a peaceful writing experience :D

Another important thing about Kellogg is the emphasis placed by the school on "team work, collaboration, community experience, cooperation, collective learning experience...". Although the school does not explicitly ask you to demonstrate team skills, I'm sure it's one quintessential quality they look for in your application. So make sure to weave in stories that highlight what a good team player you are!

Update on my applications:

Harvard and Wharton essays are in final form (hopefully), apps are filled and ready to be submitted. Yippie!
Chicago's long essays are ready
2 Page resume is ready. Thankfully I can submit the same one for all schools. None of them specify a one page resume

Target for October 2nd (End of long weekend):

Have Chicago and Kellogg app also ready to submit. That will make 4 schools complete.
Remaining recommendations submitted/ready to submit, have to nudge the recommenders to action :-)
Submit Kellogg part 1 (Am waiting for my damned TOEFL score to reach me. Grrrr)

Also check out: My take on Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, Chicago essays.

The Ultra Cool Chicago Essays

2006-09-23T14:52:00.000-04:00

Chicago- up close and personal, every question has a hundred answers...

Let me begin with Chicago's 100 word essays. At first sight they seem really easy and you might even wonder how they actually fit into the typical B-School admissions criteria. But think again! These are the most personal questions I've seen. Of course Stanford has a personal question too, but it does not explicitly ask you to get personal, you can choose something not too personal. These essays are different. For example, one essay asks you about a little known part of you. Now most of our traits, most events in our lives are public or they are too personal to talk about. This question calls for a lot of judgement. You obviously cannot talk about, say, the worst breakup you've had or your secret crush :D. This essay is a great opportunity to discuss something that is not directly evident in the rest of your application, some great characteristic that you could not bring out due to lack of space maybe, or a very traumatic situation you faced in your childhood, basically something that is little known for a good reason.

Recommending a book/play/movie to the adcom- this is my favorite question. It shows that they are really interested in getting to know what attracts you, what stimulates your emotions, what kind of person you are. This question will or should give the reader some insight into the way you think and your outlook in life. It's not enough to write up a review/critique here, it's very important to say why this book/play/movie is ingrained your mind, what is in it that made a difference big enough to make it the best book you've ever read.

What value will you add to your study group? This question is a bonus. While answering "Why Chicago", you will ideally write numerous ways in which you will contribute to the school. Now you can concentrate only on extracurriculars and other non-academic contributions while answering "Why Chicago". Your academic contributions can be moved into this essay. You could weave your superior mathematical skills, sharp analytical skills, innovative ideas, out of the box thinking etc. etc. into this essay; 100 words is a lot to do that!

Coming to essay 2, here again Chicago gives you a great opportunity to talk about some issue you are very passionate about. Say you live in a underdeveloped country, I'm sure you would have seen enough to talk about. Or if you work in the non-profit sector, your work will expose you to many such issues. But pick this question only if you have very good evidence to support why you think it is a pressing issue. And because they call it an editorial, I'm not too sure if you can talk about personal experiences here.

I found the question about your colleague's view of you very refreshing. If you are smart you can actually lead the reader to see exactly what you intend him/her to. You can even ask your colleague who spends most of the work day with you to describe you using a list of adjectives and work them into your essay. Or you could ask your colleague to tell you his/her first impression about you and create a story around it- something like "this is the effect I have on people". Or you could use this essay to supplement your career progress by quoting a couple of incidents from the professional realm.

Coming to the all-in-one essay that asks you write pretty much an autobigraphy in a mere 1500 words. Here also they've got pretty philosophical and asked you to describe "the path" that led you to pursue an MBA. You can't obviously leave your career completely out of this essay- Fat Chance, but you can minimize describing what you did in your career. I say this because Chicago apparently has a detailed resume, at least it did last year, I'm yet to check this year's application. Assuming they have it this year also, you can push most of the "What you did" to the resume and actually describe a series of incidents in your life (both professional and non-professional) that have influenced you to seek an MBA. Next they want to know what or who influenced you to apply to Chicago, I guess this is to see what kind of research people do before they decide where to apply. They also have a "Who?" element to this question. You could discuss a role model who is a Chicago alum, the students you met during the school visit, at the info sessions, through discussion forums. It's a good chance to rave about the GSB Community and how well you fit in :-). The remaining parts of this essay address the usual career goals and "Why Chicago".

On the whole, most of your typical MBA essay responses will go into essay 1. The other essays offer hell a lot of leeway for creativity and humor. I had fun writing them. I hope you do too!

Also check out: My take on Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, Kellogg essays.

A jolting discovery!

2006-09-21T18:13:00.000-04:00

Out of curiousity I had a peek at the extracurriculars section of the HBS application. I started filling the application long ago but I somehow never went to this page till today. I got a bittersweet surprise. HBS gives me 250 characters each to describe 4 extracurricular activities during college and 4 after college. I did expect them to give me space to list the activities but not to describe them. So I sat and filled out the extracurriculars section completely. Now should I laugh or cry? This means I'm going to make a lot of changes to my essays, all the descriptions will have to go and all the learnings will have to grow!

I feel like giving myself a pat on the back for finishing the essays earlier. Now it's very easy for me to just remove the redundancies, I already have ideas for the new-found space. Had I realized this 15 days later, I will be kicking myself for all the rewriting I will have to do in the last moment. I think the undergrad essay and other info essay will have to change significantly. The other essays are fine for HBS. But I think they won't be so fine for other schools if their applications are anything like that of HBS. So I will spend a lot of time tomorrow and this weekend to investigate the applications of each school and decide how to change my essays. My plan will allow this, I just need to move things around a bit :D.

So people out there, rush and complete the data forms in your applications. This will really help you to better utilize the space in your essays. Ok it's 4 am. Ciao!

One more packed month coming up!

2006-09-19T14:19:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I realized that I have exactly one month to go before I submit 5 applications. And I'm completely swamped at work, I have increased responsibilties, increased deliverables, people to manage, multiple roles and lesser and lesser time at home. I've not been coming home before 10pm :-(.

So far I've been prudent. I anticipated the workload and that is the one of the main reasons for completing my essays so soon. But I don't want to relax and lose steam at this stage. I want to use the next one month to edit/rewrite/perfect my essays school by school keeping the complete picture in mind, to trim down words wherever possible, research the schools some more and incorporate my research into the essays, fill out applications, sit with my recommenders etc. Since I want to manage so many things at once, I've made a solid and colorful plan :D.

I've specifically marked days for essay editing, recommender management, buffer time, application forms etc. so that I don't have a chance to slack on anything whatsoever. So by 18th October (one week before Stanford's deadline) I would have submitted all 5 applications. Then I'm going home for 5 days to celebrate Diwali. I will work on Columbia app once I'm back and submit it by the end of October!

PS: I WILL complete my writeup about Chicago and Kellogg essays this weekend...

Supershrunk Wharton Essays

2006-09-16T17:22:00.001-04:00

Wharton- very conventional essays, very few essays, very few words...

To me Wharton had the most frustrating set of essays, it's the only school that did not allow me to write all my stories. I just spent 2 hours chopping Wharton's "Career Progress, Career Goals, Why MBA, Why Wharton, Why now" essay. It's very very difficult to do justice to all these questions in just 1000 words, more so when the school has just 3 other microscopic 500 word essays :-). I know I'm exaggerating, 500 words is anything but microscopic. But that's how I feel now. I wish I could throw a fit and get some more words from Wharton :D. Maybe Kellogg and Stanford have really spoilt me with their liberal wordlimits. Or maybe I want to say too much :-). Kidding aside, no applicant would want to choose between important stories that collectively show you in the best light. But Beware! Wharton might just make you do it. Wharton essays are a true test of your zipping abilities. Discretion and conciseness are the need of the hour.

First of all you might end up spending hours wondering how to distribute the space in the first essay between the various questions it wants you to answer. Secondly because of the wordlimit you might not be able to provide too much of anecdotal evidence in the first essay itself. To make your story strong elaborate key professional incidents in the one of the other essays and refer to them in the first essay. Of course if you can elaborate everything in the first essay itself then you are God!

Another problem you might face is with the failure essay. You may not find a failure significant enough to talk about, your failure might be too significant to talk about, you may be tempted to make a masquerage out of the failure essay and talk about an incident that's simply not a failure etc. As long as you have an incident where the expected outcome did not occur, a worse outcome occured, you learnt something from it and applied it to your life, you are safe. Just articulate it well.

Thankfully Wharton offers a lot of choice in the remaining essays. You can create a balanced story by choosing essays and stories that will highlight your personal and extracurricular life and complement the professional side projected in essay 1. Now again, if you use one of these essays to elaborate on incidents refered to in essay 1, then you might have to compromise a little on the non-professional you. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that the ethical issue essay is optional. Although I did write on this topic for HBS, that was too futuristic and will not make sense here. The "What do you do best and Why" is the only open-ended question. Practically anything can be twisted around to answer this question. But the word "Best" is the key. While you need not be THE BEST at it, you will have to justify why you really are good at whatever you choose to talk about. So this essay could be a little tricky if you don't pick the right topic. The remaining essays work differently for different people, but they are fairly standard questions.

Wharton essays are like the blurb of your autobiogrpahy. You need to write just enough to attract the readers and make them want to meet you to get to know the rest of you!

Also check out: My take on Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Kellogg essays.

Recommendations submitted & The long long Stanford Essays Deconstructed

2006-09-15T17:02:00.000-04:00

I again have something to celebrate about. One of my recommenders submitted his recommendations today! That is one recommender less to manage and a big job out of my way now. I also sent my TOEFL score reprot to Kellogg, something I kept constantly forgetting to do. Now I'm just waiting for my printed score report to reach me so that I can submit Part 1 of Kellogg's application. So here's another celebratory post. This time it's about the Stanford essays.

I had planned to finish one post each for all 5 schools by now. But I've been returning from work after 10pm everyday. So the entire application process is suffering :-(. I have not touched my essays after Monday. But I guess it's good to take a break from the essays before beginning to review and rewrite them. So now I'm officially into total rewriting mode.

Moving on to the Stanford essays...

Stanford- virtually no word limits, just one question that will scare the shit out of you and make you feel a loss for words...

Let me start with the advantages of Stanford's approach to essays. Stanford like Harvard allows you to focus on whichever aspect of life you want through the "What matters most to you" essay and also the other essays to a large extent . You could get carried away with Stanford's topics, but it's important to remember that it is a B-School application essay after all. So all the essays put together should reflect your professional, personal and XC life to paint a complete picture. But these essays definitely give you the freedom to move things around endlessly.

Stanford is one school that gives you something like 1500 words (Career Aspiration essay) to divide between your goals and Why Stanford. This is really cool, 'coz you can make a really good case about why stanford is perfect for you. At least you are not stifled by a super stringent wordlimit that forces you to write about your dream school in 150 words :-). This essay will be a winning one only if a large portion of it is devoted to how you can contribute to Stanford, moreover this is probably the only place where you can do it. People who use the "What matters most to you" essay to talk about something very specific in the personal or XC realms might have to use this essay to talk about their career progress also. If you are planning to use this essay for your career progress then keep in mind that this is phrased as a futuristic question; it will do you good to discuss your career progress in the context of your goals and thus maintain the futuristic tone. Otherwise this is a fairly standard but really long Career Goals, Why MBA, Why now, Why school essay. We should try to completely capitalize on this essay to give the adcom a compelling reason to admit us!

Although I hated the idea of the 2 short essays initially, I think they give a real advantage. If you notice, for the first two essays you need to define a theme and stick to it- you need to have a smooth flow between the anecdotes you choose and they need to fit into an overarching theme. The 2 small essays, an addition to last year's questions, do not pose this problem. Of course they might take 2-3 stories away from your other essays, but as far as essays go I feel- The More The Merrier :D. These essays are cool because there's something for everybody.
For example:
1. "Tell us about a time when you did something that was not established, expected, or popular"
You can use this essay to project innovation, risk taking ability, entrepreneurship, even a failure and what you learnt from it.

2. "Tell us about a time when you felt effective or successful"
You can use this essay to describe a personal achievement, something that need not have produced measurable results on a very large scale. It is pretty abstract and can be worked to project your perception of success.

3. "Tell us about a time when you had a significant effect on a group or individual"
This essay is a godsend if you who have a lot community service to talk about. If you've never done any community service this essay is still a godsend- you can use it to show that you have a humanitarian side despite your jetsetting busy career. You can use this one to talk about any good deed you did for someone in the last 3 years. Of course you need proven impact on the group/individual, but selecting a powerful experience should do the trick.

4. "Tell us about a time when you tried to reach a goal or complete a task that was challenging, difficult, or frustrating."
This essay is perfect for a failure/setback that you want to talk about, it can be dressed as a difficult challenge and worked to your advantage by explaining all the lessons you learnt. This essay is also good for describing complex professional assignments, starting a new venture/club, a self disciplined effort etc.

The short essays don't really give you additional space because the recommended wordlimit is still 11 pages, same as last year. But they do give you a chance to isolate key incidents that may not fit into your theme and describe them in detail.

Finally, What matters most to you and Why?
This essay is the most open-ended, teasing, paralyzing B-School essay I have come across. This essay forces you to be personal on some level. When I say personal I don't mean the nature of the stories you pick, but it is really difficult to articulate your reason to someone who has never met you without getting personal and introspective. The "Why" is what makes this question difficult. This essay can be anything, you could write up a broad account about your life and what shaped it into what it is today, you could write about a single experience you went through and how it changed your life, you could write about a single characteristic or personality trait that defines you, you could write about your family, your children - the options are limitless. Whatever you choose, it has to be life changing or you should not be able to imagine living without it. Read more on my approach to this essay here.

For someone who enjoys writing and has lots to say, Stanford essays are a dream. If you can also get creative with them, nothing like it!

Also check out: My take on Harvard, Wharton, Chicago, Kellogg essays.

Celebratory Post! & HBS Essays Deconstructed

2006-09-10T14:28:00.000-04:00

I have completed all 5 schools' essays (H, W, S, K, Chicago) within the deadline I'd set for myself, i.e TODAY. And of course I finished them yesterday itself! To celebrate I decided to write a post describing the insights I gained while writing each of these school's essays. Yes I know it sounds ironical (may even sound dumb) that I want to celebrate completing all that writing by writing some more. That is the curse (or fortune) of being a creative writer you see :D. I can write tirelessly...

Most B-School applicants are well into their essay writing sojourn. I feel now is a good time to share my insights about how to fit the same story into different schools' essays. Most of us apply to around 4-8 schools. So we have 4 different schools, 4 different sets of essays but a single applicant and a single story. At first this realization can be paralyzing. But improvization is an art, a manager's art :-). I call it improvisation because we cannot invent a new story each time we are faced with a different essay stub, we simply have to make do with the experiences we've had so far.

Now a single post convering all 5 schools would be a big hindrance to your readability and my writability:D. Moreover it will be too much to sustain within the average human attention span. So I've decided to write 5 different posts, one for each school.

Before I begin my ramblings about the HBS essays let me establish a thumb rule here. Honesty is an absolute must while writing essays. Once we decide to spin stories this particular problem ceases to exist and this blog post is worthless :-)

Harvard Business School - the school with the most stringent word limits, the school I would die to get into :D...

HBS essays are not rigidly structured like the usual B-School essays. There is no single essay where you can talk only about your profession, no single essay where you can talk only about your extracurriculars unless you consciously choose to do so. HBS essays make life difficult because you can wonder endlessly whether you should pick a personal, professional or extracurricular incident to talk about for 3 out of the 6 essays. The balance is very difficult to achieve. You might need to make a huge compromise for you might end up writing all 6 essays and then find that you have 3-4 more good anecdotes from various realms of life still left to say. Harvard really tests your discretion, judgement and above all your conciseness.

HBS is the only school that gives you 400 words to write about undergrad alone. This is both a boon and a bane. A boon for people who have not really been involved in any XC after undergrad days, such people can use this essay to talk about all the XC they managed along with their "gruelling academics". A boon for people with a low GMAT, such people can use this essay to prove that they can handle the academic rigor at HBS. A bane for people who have lots of experience and could have used this precious space to talk about more recent and more indicative accomplishments than about something that happened in a previous era. A bane for people who are still involved in lots of extracurriculars, they have to devote at least a part of this essay to academics and rest of it also is restricted to 4 years of undergrad, space that could have been used to talk about current involvements that cannot be worked into the other essays.

The ethics essay,I know I know, It's a pain to write something on such a futuristic note and yet keep it grounded in your past/present experiences and yet sound convincing. But don't underestimate the power of research. There's truckloads of material available on ethics. Some exploring and reading should give you a fairly large number of ideas that you can relate your past, present and future to. So start googling and clicking around right now!

Coming to the career vision essay, first of all we need to note the phrasing here - "Career Vision". They are not simply "goals"like other schools. This is another indication of the legendary mission of HBS to create great leaders and visionaries. It's better to have a concrete goal for all schools, more so for HBS if you want them to take you seriously. This is particularly true for younger applicants who may not have too many stories of professional leadership to talk about and who have a tougher time explaining why they are ready for an MBA from HBS so early. In general HBS wants demonstrated leadership potential. Weave as many leadership episodes as possible into your saga, taking care not to go overboard and sound like an alpha personality.

HBS' style of asking questions has its own advantages. You can portray yourself in the best light by talking a lot about one of personal, professional and extracurricular aspects, whichever has the richest and most interesting experiences. Admittedly, it is a more prudent approach to strike a balance between the three. But I feel the risk is well worth it, if you feel you can pull it off. For example if you are a very young applicant you can pick 2 achievements from extracurriculars, or your defining leadership experience could be a personal one. Similarly people from a very heavily represented demographic such as the Indian IT pool or Investment Bankers, Management Consultants etc. can differentiate themselves very well. HBS does not force you to talk about professional experiences alone, so you can avoid talking about experiences which you feel will be very similar to those of others belonging to your demographic. An Indian engineer for example can stand out by talking about his/her proficiency in the creative arts, or deep knowledge of Indian scriptures/mythology/vedas, ballet dancing performances, adventure/wildlife photography etc.

Thus the key to the success of your HBS essays lies in choosing the right mix of stories to talk about. It's just takes a little foresight, a little more courage and a lot more introspection and digging into your past to paint a refreshingly unique picture of yourself.

Ok I'm off to do some serious rewriting ***Snicker***! Ciao...

Also check out: My take on Wharton, Stanford, Chicago, Kellogg essays.

At Peace with Columbia!

2006-09-05T13:30:00.000-04:00

I simply had to know what I should do about Columbia (just being my usual obsessive self). So I dug deep into the internet and I came across this. Read the answer for the question "What is the timeframe for Regular Decision applicants to receive decisions?" and you will ***Grin*** like me too. So that answers my doubts about Columbia. Their website did confuse me though. But whatever be the case I will just go ahead and apply by end of October. This is mainly because I really like the program and I don't want to replace Columbia with some other school.

On the essay front, I'm done with "Why Wharton" and "Why Kellogg" finally. This means I have completed 3 schools' essays- W, S and K. By the end of this week I will be done with all 5 schools (except Columbia) :D. I want to spend the rest of September to do the following:

Revisit all essays and harmonize them. I have improved my essays as I progressed through the schools. So I want to say my story in the best possible way for every school
Prepare my resume
Remind my recommenders and make sure my recommendations are ready
Prepare my transcripts for self-reporting. Get official ones if needed for any school
Fill out the online applications

Why do I feel I've forgotten something????

Smiles... Sighs... Grrrr... The Columbia Crisis...

2006-09-04T10:43:00.000-04:00

I'm done with Stanford essays. I sent them out for comments last week itself. So Stanford is almost out of the way now!

This weekend I finished all of Chicago's 100 word essays. To write a personal essay in 300 words is fairly easy, to bring about the same effect through 3 disjoint micro-essays is very difficult and a tad frustrating. But I loved the challenge and have managed to show a different aspect of my personality in each of the essays. So I'm happy on the Chicago front!

I'm adding some finishing touches to (read rewriting) my Harvard Ethics essay. I've got the content straight though. Now that I've finally put an end to my procrastination- A huge sigh of relief!

My "Why Wharton" and "Why Kellogg" bits have taken shape, but lot of work to be done still. So I'm pretty angry with myself for assing off. I will finish them today.

Just back after a 11 straight hours at work. I have to start work on essays right away if I want to sleep at a decent time :-(

Oh yeah... There's an important thing I wanted to discuss here

Columbia says:

"September term Regular Decision applicants will receive a final decision from Columbia Business School within 12 weeks of the date that a complete application goes under review once the application review period begins. Be sure and check the options and deadlines page to see when the review periods begin."

Read the bolded text again. Although this has been troubling me, I pushed it to the back of my mind. Only today did it dawn on me that even if I submit my Columbia app in October (I'm not planning for Early Decision) it will go "under review" only on January 10th 2007. The earliest I can get my Columbia result is late February.

This is almost equivalent to applying in Round 2. So much for the Rolling Application Process. The only way I can get to know my chances in this amazing school at the same time as my other target schools is applying for Early Decision. And I don't want to do it. This is very sad :-(

I really wish someone would tell me that this is not true, that I can apply in October and get to know the result in 3 months :-(. You guessed it- I daydream a lot...

Of Dinners and Parties

2006-08-31T07:42:00.000-04:00

How can a poor applicant stick to self imposed deadlines if she is invited to dinners and parties everyday??? :D

On Tuesday I left office at 9.30pm and went out for dinner straight from work. On Wednesday I left office at 5pm. I did get some work done but I went out for dinner again. Today I have a party at work, we are being wined and dined for a successful delivery of our product!

And today is my deadline to answer Why X school for H,S,W,K. I'm done with Why Stanford and Why Harvard. So I've not slipped completely. But slipped I have, albeit only slightly :D. I think I can still complete the stuff I mentioned in my previous post by this Sunday.

So off to the party now!

Whew! 4 schools almost done!

2006-08-28T08:29:00.000-04:00

I can't believe I have almost completed the essays of 4 of my target schools.

Harvard (sans Ethics essay)
Stanford (sans Why Stanford)
Wharton (sans Why Wharton)
Kellogg (sans Why Kellogg)

Yippie!!! I'm 4 days ahead of my schedule. My plan was to reach this stage by Thursday 31- August and then use friday and the weekend to complete Harvard's Ethics essay and to mine through my school research to answer Why X school for each of them.

But this weekend was very productive.

I completed Stanford's mind-boggling "What matters most to you and Why"
I rewrote Harvard's "Other info" essay
I added some touches to Stanford's career goals essay leaving only "Why Stanford" to be answered

Great! So my revised (more relaxed) plan is:

Complete all the "Why X school" parts by Thursday 31-August
Complete Harvard's Ethics essay and Chicago's (remaining 2) 100 word essays over the weekend

What matters most to me?

2006-08-26T03:39:00.000-04:00

Right now what matters most to me is completing a draft of the "What matters most to you and Why?" essay in the next 2 days. Why of course is obvious, I want to rewrite it a million times in September! :D

This essay has been a journey in itself :-)

I figured out 2 approaches to tackle this question and wondered which one is more sensible:
Write out all the interesting/significant events of my life and find a common thread between them.
(Or)
Think of the theme and write out all the incidents keeping the theme in mind.

The first approach seemed too much like a trial and error method. Moreover although I might find a thread connecting the incidents of my life, it need not be what matters most to me. I feel the purpose of this question is for the reader to understand what single thing motivates one's actions and responses to the events of life, a single thing that has shaped one's life into what it is today. I cannot achieve this through the first approach. Moreover the moment I read this question I knew what my theme should be. There really is something that matters more to me than anything else :-). So I decided to go with the first approach.

Identifying the theme is only a tiny step of my journey. After all the essays I've written so far, I know very well what are the significant events of my life, I also know what personal characteristics and beliefs I need to highlight. Weaving all these things together under a single umbrella is a real challenge.

I've finished a third of my draft and have gained some insights which might help others caught in the same maze as me:

The key to the success of this essay lies in picking something you are really passionate about. Only then can you bring out the passion through 2000 words. Picking a theme for the sake of establishing a common link between things may not work very well. Moreover, from what I gleaned from their website, Stanford looks for passionate people.
I don't want to give the usual advice "Do not say what the adcom wants to hear". Honestly none of us will be willing to say that money, power, fame, luck, men/women etc. matter most to us. Even if we do choose one of these things we would wrap it in a nice package that does not make us look greedy or frivolous or unethical or immature. Of course you want the adcom to like you after they read your essay. So invest time to make an intelligent choice, pick a theme that will highlight your personality and values.
The essays of other schools are primarily factual, they want you talk in detail about experiences and incidents mainly. In that sense this essay is very different. The reader has to grasp why something matters to you. Of course facts/incidents will have to serve as examples. But your thought process needs to shine through. It's not enough to say you how you achieved something, it's more important to say why and how the achievement relates to what matters most to you (your theme). In other words, the reader should never lose hold of the theme throughout the essay. Coherence is a key factor.
There is a liberal word limit. Although my other essays are shorter and I can give more than 4 pages to this essay, I'm looking at a self-imposed 2000 words limit. I'm not taking the risk of going overboard and giving too much of unnecessary information.

That's it at the moment... And doesn't anyone like my delicious new template? :-(

Ok back to my essay.

Pulling myself together again...

2006-08-23T16:13:00.000-04:00

After assing off over the weekend, I've had a hectic time at work this week. So I have not touched my essays for the past 4 days. Today( it's 1.40 am, so it's yesterday actually) I came back home at 10pm, immediately booted up my comp and got cracking at "What matters most to me". I came up with a cool idea and am quickly warming up to my theme. This essay is a killer for sure and I'm confident I'm going to rewrite it a minimum of 5 times before I'm happy with it.

I've promised myself I will come home early tomorrow and complete the first draft of this essay. I have not been getting to work before 11am and I have so many things to do that I don't leave before 9.30pm. I've resolved to get to work by 8am tomorrow, which means I really should hit the sack now. It seems like ages since I read a book or watched TV :-(

Home and Back!

2006-08-20T22:44:00.000-04:00

I went home to Chennai this weekend. I got very little done on the application front. But I had planned for this. So I'd made up for the time even before I went. I will not go to Chennai again until mid-October when I will be done with my apps. So I took my mom for a movie and spent time with my dad and grandparents. I took my little cousins who've come from Sharjah for pizza and ice cream. I humored them in their plans to start a pet shelter and a restaurant for animals! They are exactly what I was at their age, absolutely crazy about animals (I Still am :D). I spent a lot of time with my uncle and aunt who I met after 3 yrs(I think). I ate my mom's home-cooked food, slept well and had a nice time :-)

Applications Update:
I started filling out the forms of Stanford, Columbia and Chicago. I filled out some basic stuff and sent out the recommendation requests. One of my recommenders has also acknowledged that he's got them and he will work on them in the next couple of weeks. I'm waiting for Kellogg and Wharton to release their online apps to send out their recommendation requests.

Essays Update:
I've incorporated my uncles comments into almost all my essays, they look better now! I started Stanford's career goals essay. I have written out the goals part. I have lots and lots of work to do on the "Why Stanford?" part. I also created a sort of mind map for the "What matters to you most and why?" essay. I am clear about the things I want to say in this one. I will soon figure out an interesting way to narrate the stories. I aim to complete these 2 Stanford essays by 31st August. Looks achievable at the moment...

It's 8am. I gotta slog till 5pm if I want to meet my deadlines. Ciao!

I'm not lending my Uncle!

2006-08-18T04:32:00.000-04:00

One's magnanimity is another's good fortune!

Two days ago I serendipitously (yes, that's a word) met my uncle online. When I say "uncle", don't you go imagining a 50 year old man with a rounded pot belly and a loud laugh. He's rather young, has an MBA from Haas-Berkeley and he's a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur. We were chatting about this and that when he suddenly remembered that his little niece was applying to B-Schools this year. For him, reviewing my essays was the most natural offer to make. For me, it was a windfall!

Of course, I put on my usual snobbish show at first. I said I will see his comments on a couple of my essays and send him the rest if his comments were good enough. But he knows me too well to take my "attitude" seriously :D. So I sent him all my Kellogg and Wharton essays. Poor guy spent his evening reviewing them for me and his night chatting with me. I'm sure my aunt (his wife) loathes me for this. I wouldn't be surprised if I got a howler from her soon. And guess what! His comments are superb. He also gave me some great ideas about how to make my story tighter. The funny thing is he was worried if he was being too critical. I quickly reassured him that the more he chastised my work, the better. So that's one more ace up my sleeve in the application game!

I have these uncles (you heard me right, there's more than one of these great guys) who my friends want to borrow all the time :). Not all of them review essays, but they do come in handy at other times. Now this is what I call Luck. I'm sure if you read my uncle's comments on my essays you will pay through your nose to borrow him from me. Ha Ha Ha.

Back to his comments now! Ciao