BoB!

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!

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!

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

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!

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

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!!!

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!

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...

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!!!

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!

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!

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.

$$$

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

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)

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!

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...

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

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

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

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.