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.
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!
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 !
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)!
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!
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...........
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 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!
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- 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.
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.
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!
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...
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.
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.
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.
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????
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 hereColumbia 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...
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!
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
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! :DThis 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.
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 :-(
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!
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
My arduous journey through more than 15 essays of 4 schools (so far) has warranted a few observations.
One cannot even imagine writing winning B-school application essays unless:
1. One has great grades to boast about. It's better if the good grades are in extremely complex subjects which they chose out of real interest. Of course, overlooking the fact that one wants to dump that choice now to shift to a career in business for which again one has a such a good reason, other than big bucks, that Management is almost a "Calling" now. Or even better- one has done some research under a nobel nominee during one's academic life. Coming from the other end of the spectrum, one could have had such a "happening" student life that he can eloquently make excuses for a bunch of really bad grades. Examples of happening student life: one has studied through a scholarship awarded for his participation in the olympics(even better if one has won some medals) which naturally means one played sports right through college, one has been a drummer of a band that plays in some hip hollywood club, one has worked as a bartender and supported one's family of 4 right through college etc.
2. One is an extremely accomplished person 1/3rd of whose achievements are professional, 1/3rd extracurricular and 1/3rd personal. Mediocrity in any of the 3 realms runs the risk of projecting oneself as a one-dimensional or two-dimensional person as the case may be. In short, one has to be a...ummm the word is..."well-rounded" person.
3. One has had at least one(the more the better) phenomenal failure. More importantly, the failure, the remedy and the learning is life-changing and is big enough to make 500 words seem like too less a space to describe it.
4. One is unique. Examples: one has lived in hiding during war, one has fought for one's country, one has experienced a significant amount of character building adversity, one is blessed with extraordinary luck or unusual talents or belongs to a royal family or has famous parents which automatically take care of the uniqueness problem.
5. One has planned the next 15 years of one's life. Translates to an ambition/a vision/a goal simply unachievable without shelling out $140K in B-School. And of course one has crystal clear reasons to want to go to School X, reasons which are personalized, well researched, which cannot be found directly in the school's website. Stating reasons such as brand value of the school, job security after graduation etc. is a faux pas guaranteed to send one's application to the rejected bin. Visionaries are the need of the hour.
6. There is a single thing (Eg. World Peace, Self realization, Spiritual Harmony, Patriotic fervor etc), a thing that matters most to one, a thing that is the focal point of one's life to which one can attribute one's actions, reactions, follies, successes, basically one's entire life (if possible even those drunken parties and one night stands and visits to the gym and salon).
7. First of all, one has a set of ethics by which one lives. Second of all, those ethics have been challenged at least once. Finally one has gone through mental agony and successfully resisted the tempting devil to uphold one's ethical values so that one can now sport a stiff upperlip that one has attained moral highground over mere mortals.
Now now, don't let me fool you with my display of cynicism. I was just having some fun.
But I really do thank God for my passion for writing - I cannot weather through 30 essays of making myself look good unless I treat each essay as a creative writing exercise.
Update on essays:
I'm done with Wharton! I also finished one of Stanford's short essays, plodding through the second one now. My 5 day vacation ends today. I need to sleep by 1am from today :-(. But I'm glad I've used the hols to gain some ground with the essays. I'm in a rather comfortable position now! Enough of gloating and back to my essays now...
I was deeply disheartened when I read Wharton's essay questions. I realized how much I have to say and how little space there is. It is a good 2 essays less than Kellogg and has stricter word counts. I feared that I would have to compromise on my story. I began my incurable obsession that I would have to write like 2 lines for some of my anecdotes or even drop a couple of them to stay within the word limits.
Life suddenly looked grey with no forecast of sun. Just when I was beginning to panic the super-calm, super-organized self took over. I sat and stared at the essays for a good half hour, creating place holders in my mind for each of my stories. Slowly the storm clouds floated away revealing the bright smiling sun :-) ( I know, I do go overboard with my imagination at times!). I figured I could say most of the things I've managed to in my HBS and Kellogg essays and make up for the rest in my resume or just make a brief reference. Now that's not too much of a compromise.
So I'm done with 3 out of the 4 essays. They really tested my conciseness, but I'm pretty happy with the way they've come out. It's 3am and I'm about to start the "Failure" essay. Just decided to update my blog as I took a break. Breaks are even more fun when I spend them bragging in my blog :D. Ok back to my failure...
Important announcement (Drum sounds!)
Juggler has completed her Kellogg essays. More importantly, they have lived through the wrath of her critical eye.
Bow! Applause! (Receding drum sounds...)
Ok I will drop the third person now. It is just the lingering effect of writing the "Critical Assessment" essay. I don't know if I should attribute it to writing in the third person, but it was undoubtedly the easiest one to write.
Now I'm on to Wharton's essays. Thinking of calling it a day and beginning afresh tomorrow. Maybe I will fill some applications now or read a book or watch some tv. Wow! Life is suddenly more beautiful and relaxed and there are so many nice things to do. G'nite blog...
Yippie! I'm done with the all-encompassing Career progess, Goals, Why MBA, Why now, Why Kellogg essay (I've not yet answered why Kellogg though, 'coz I have to mine through my research for that). I rewrote it 6 times. Fitting all that I want to say in 2 double spaced pages was an uphill task all the way. Now I'm panting and wheezing :-), but I feel much better because this essay figures in 5 of my schools in pretty much the same form. Despite all my whining, I really enjoyed writing this essay :-)
I have 4 more days off. So tomorrow I will work on Harvard's Ethics essay and Kellogg's Evaluative Assessment essay. Then it's on to Wharton. I really need to think about the failure essay, I've not written something like this for Harvard or Kellogg. So it's going to be a completely new one.
I have a great update on the recommendation front too. I sat with one of my recommenders and discussed Harvard's recommendations. I showed him my Career Vision essay and we discussed on how he should integrate my goals into his responses. Now he will answer the questions and send them away in a couple of weeks. All the other recos should follow suit too. So that's a big job done! I have to do this exercise with my other 2 recommenders next week sometime.
It's so nice to wake up really late and not have to worry about getting up early for work the next day. So I'm going to be my good old nocturnal self and go to bed at 4am :D. It's like I'm in college again! And yeah, I bought 2 Calvin and Hobbes comics (I have 5 in all now) to fill the 5 minute breaks I take while writing essays... they are so much fun and help me unwind instantly. And of course, all the laughing keeps me from obsessing endlessly about my essays and this and that. I'm off to read one of them now. Ciao!
I am done with 4 of the 6 Kellogg essays. I am left with career progress and critical assessment essays. And I've been really struggling with the career progress one. I know what I want to say, but I simply cannot decide how to say it. Everything I write sounds terrible to me. I already rewrote it 5 times in 5 different styles. I can't believe this is happening :-( I'm giving myself until Friday to complete all Kellogg essays. I really hope I get a major brain wave this evening.
I have 5 days off starting Saturday. I want to be done with Harvard, Kellogg and Wharton completely at the end of this loooooong weekend. Then I can take the rest of the month for Stanford! This is the ideal scenario. There's no way I'm going to meet these deadlines if I'm gonna be stuck with such a huge writer's block :-(
Back to work, will lament about my dismal progress later.
The title of this post was inspired by a cool book by Dave Eggers. But the actual reason to celebrate is that I've written up 3 (4A, 4C,4D) of the 6 Kellogg essays. In just 3 days. Now that's what I call speed!!!
I'm pretty satisfied with one of them, I'm gonna edit the others till I feel the same about them too. I've reserved this weekend for the all encompassing Essay1. Essays 2 and 3 should not take more than a day each. So by Wednesday I should have all the rough drafts for Kellogg ready. Yippie!!! (Maybe I'm cheering too soon, but I'm happy with myself for being so disciplined...) And yeah, I got so engrossed in the Kellogg essays, I forgot about doing Wharton parallely. Duh! But it's worked out pretty good, so I guess it's okay. I will begin with Wharton soon...
It's 2AM and I really need to sleep. It's gonna be a long day tomorrow. Sigh... Gnite blog!
After a lot of deliberation, I finally decided to apply to Kellogg also in R1. That makes it 5 online applications, 25 essays, 1 resume, transcripts and 12 recommendations to be completed by end of September. It seems like a lot, but I've made a plan which makes it look achievable.
I hope to complete all essays of Wharton and Kellogg by the end of August. I want to finish all parallel essays between these 2 schools before I tackle the disjoint ones. By answering common questions (rather those that have common answers :D) asked by both the schools at one go, I will save a lot time, coz I don't have to think about the same topic from scratch again. I'm taking this approach only for these 2 schools coz I feel I will be customizing the same stories for both. For all other schools I will take same route as I did for HBS, complete the whole set of essays before I move to the next school. W and K in one month is achievable, but I'm stretching it considering that I'm going on a 4 day Kodaikanal trip, which will invariably give me at least a 2 day hangover... Will give it my best shot anyway.
I want to give Stanford's "What matters most..." essay as much time as possible. This essay is particularly special to me. I know the answer to the question, making the reader see my passion is the challenge. So I feel I can edit this essay infinitely. It's going to be really difficult for me to become happy with this one... My plan is to start on this essay right away and keep writing till I'm happy. I have to finish it latest by mid-september, which gives me a month and a half. As for Stanford' other essays, I already have all the content on paper in some form or the other. I will work on these in the first week of September.
That will leave me with Chicago. There are 2 important essays, the other 3 are 100 words each. So I'm planning to do Chicago last and want to finish it by midseptember too. By then I would have written the same career progress, goals, why MBA essay thrice. So fleshing it out a bit shouldn't be too much of a problem.
I want to spend the rest of September, having a look at each school's essays as a single story and add some final touches.
This weekend I will start on my online apps and send out the recommendation requests. One of these weekends I should also work on my resume and transcripts.
Whew that was one big plan!!! I will come back to this post now and then and make sure I'm keeping up these promises.
Essays update:
HBS - ethics essay is pending and some rework is needed on "other info" essay
Kellogg - "Outside of work I..." is almost done
Chicago - "Value to your study group..." is done
The weekend was not completely useless as I expected. 5 out of the 6 HBS essays are in "almost final" stage. I will improve them if I get ideas from other schools' essays. Otherwise I would dare say that I do like them as they are now. It's a luxury to say that after one month of toiling on these essays. Now that I have most of the stories on paper, that too with such stringent word limits, I hope to move faster with the other schools' essays. Being a self-proclaimed creative writer doesn't hurt either, I experiment a lot :D
Stanford is shaping along nicely, only in my mind though :) But I do have an idea of what goes where just the way I promised yesterday. Staring at the essays does help I guess! As for Chicago, first of all I don't know why I picked it, maybe because the 100 word essays seemed like a real challenge. And you bet they were. But I wrote only the "value to your study group" essay. I have figured out which book/play/movie I will recommend, but I'm yet to write about it. I blame my slacking partly on my illness and more so on the fact that I hate the 100 word limit. How the hell am I supposed to wax eloquent about the book I love in just 100 words? As for the "one thing that most people do not know about me" essay, I can think of such things, but none that I would want to reveal to the admissions officer :). What a question! God!
The weekend has been pretty good on the non-MBA front. I slept well, did some quality reading and yes, I shopped. Bought some clothes and a long desired scented candle- one of those short stout ones and yeah the scent is lemon meringue (dunno what I'll do with it though, I definitely don't want to light it up when the power goes off... :D)
Now I'm off to watch some tv and will hit the sack by 12. Gotta be in office before 8 you see.... Ciao!
I'm floating in the air. My feet are so numb with cold, I cannot even feel them. My head is weighing a ton and my back threatens to ache till I die. I'm running a 102 degrees temperature and I cannot taste a thing.
Does this sound like a great Saturday??? Why can't these disasters strike on a week day, I could at least take a day off :D.
To put the cherry on the cake, I'm not too sure if I can keep up with my essay plan for the weekend. I wanted to do the following:
- Become happy with my 5 HBS essays. (Simply put- edit them. The ethics essay is still non-existent to me, I'm trying very hard not to think about it. Maybe I should be thinking about it. Whatever....)
- Write the three 100 word essays of Chicago.
- Make an outline for Stanford essays. Figure out what goes where. (Stanford has made life extremely complicated with the 2 "recent experiences" short essays. I don't know which ones to choose. I'm very excited about the "What matters most to you?" essay and hate the short ones at the moment.)
As far as HBS essays go, I'm reasonably happy with 3 of the essays, but would love to revisit them. I need to work a lot on the remaining 2 essays. I've written one of the Chicago 100 word essays and I think 100 words is simply RIDICULOUS!!! I stared at the Stanford essays for an hour and of course, I'm still stumped :(
It's Saturday afternoon already, I'm not able to sit in front of the comp, my eyes are beginning to burn. So I'm off to sleep. There goes my weekend plan :(
I might just sit up tonight and get back on track. I really hope I have such an achievement to boast about tomorrow :D
Yesterday was a good day for my writing. The words flowed effortlessly. It felt like I'd had a couple of vodkas :-). I made a reasonably good rough draft of my "Undergraduate Academic Experience" HBS essay. It was fun to recreate those 4 years on paper! It got pretty nostalgic...
I just came back from gym and lunch. My energy level peaks after every workout. So a visit to the gym just before lunch keeps me wide awake for the rest of the day. I'm barely awake all morning. But that's a totally different issue altogether :D. I start work at 8am, that's all that matters. I'm waiting to go back to my nocturnal self after october. But then again, maybe I won't, maybe I will stick to my new reformed self :-)
Today I have to write up a draft of the "Other Information" HBS essay. Then I will be on schedule to complete rough drafts of all 6 HBS essays by the 31st July. If I don't ass off, I could even have a couple of "nearly final" ones. Looks like I don't have to kick myself after all. And I can go back to loving myself! :D
I'm simply not happy with my progress. Last week has been extremely unproductive with respect to essays. So I'm in a state where I have to complete 3 essays in 7 days to meet the deadlines I'd set. Sigh...Otherwise the weekend seemed long for a change. I watched a play, Hysssteria, by Evam. It was a nice way to spend my sunday evening, for it's been a really long time since I watched a good play. The Electricity Board of Bangalore has this crazy "Load shedding on Sundays" mania. So there was no electricity from 10am - 6pm yesterday. Why on Sunday dammit?!!! But the truth is I don't miss anything but the internet. The weather is so amazing that I can spend the whole day on the terrace. So fan, a/c, cold water etc. are not concerns at all. I can still write essays on the laptop or on paper if it comes down to that. I catch up on quite a bit of reading on such Sundays. And of course, the day turns out to be mcuh more fun than sitting in front of the tv/comp or day. Still it's my birth right to crib...So that's it for now. Remind me to kick myself if I don't stay on schedule.
I saw 2 movies last weekend - Before Sunrise and the sequel Before Sunset . The movies are worth the mention for their subtleness. There are just 2 characters, an American guy and a French girl. And all they do is walk (talking all the time) around Vienna in the first movie and around Paris in the sequel. The movies are all about the dialogs...How do we fall in love? We don't always pick up someone at a bar, wash down a couple of drinks, end up in bed and find the person irresistible. That happens only in hollywood movies! We don't always catch a person's eye, pretend to look away, keep bumping into each other, shake a leg to a few songs, run around a couple of trees (in Switzerland, of course) and fall in love-pronto. That happens only in Bollywood movies! In reality, we meet someone, maybe he/she looks good, maybe we've not even seen each other yet. But we go yak yak yak. We talk about our lives, convictions, families, memorable anecdotes, everything under the sun (from how we love the rain to how much life sucks) , till we find each other irresistible. Love, I feel, happens when we find an amazing intersection of ideas or values, or when we supremely admire each other for being someone we can never be, the "complement" in a word. Now, that's real life!"Real life" is what these movies captured. As I said, these movies were all about the dialogs. The director has so subtly transformed a chance meeting to love, not through a series of disjoint events, but through continuous conversations, one seamlessly flowing into the next. I'm not one for super-romantic movies. But the subtleness in these got to me:)It's been a long time since I saw a movie I could so relate to. Hence the rave review. I know it's as far as it gets from MBA applications, but what the hell, I had to blog it!
I want to have a common place from where I can track the infosessions. I'm just compiling links that will take me to the info session announcement page of each of my target schools.
HBS
Wharton
Columbia
Stanford
Chicago
Kellogg
I've been meaning to write this post on safety schools for a couple of days now...
The concept of safety schools itself is sort of crude. A safety school is one in which you have a very good chance of (still not 100%) getting admitted with your credentials. But it does not stop there. You should still love the program and you should still be able to get where you want to be after you graduate. So you should be spending the same amount of time for shortlisting a safety school as you would for a dream school. Be it researching the school, talking to an alum/student, making a school visit or attending an info session, a safety school is as important as a dream school.
Personally, I am of the opinion that you should consider a safety school only if at least one of the following situations applies to you:
- You absolutely hate your job and simply have to escape the grind this year to keep your sanity.
- You have a plum job waiting for you (at your current employer's or elsewhere) and they don't give a damn which school you are from as long as you've got an MBA.
- You are a rich(or not so rich) already successful entrepreneur and just want to learn stuff, you don't care about the school's brand, the alumni network etc.
- You are just looking for a refreshing change for a couple of years while you pick up a cool degree. You have no clue what you want to do with the degree.
If you don't belong to these categories but are still thinking of safety schools, think twice. Don't you have enough grit in you to wait it out another year? Don't you want to give your dream schools another shot? Isn't there anything you can do to improve your chances next year?
This is the thought process I went through before deciding that I don't want safety schools this year. I am willing to wait another year, or as long as it takes, or till I feel I have to get into B-school that year no matter what. I guess this explains my highly ambitious list of schools. I want to give it my best shot this year before I think of safe options. Yes! Ever the optimist, that's what I am :D
Essays Update:
All my 5 schools (for round1) have released their essay questions :) And guess what? Looks like my story fits in pretty well in each school's set of essays! Cool huh? :D
As for my progress, HBS' "Career Vision" essay and "3 Achievements" essay are ready for review by friends. And as I promised in my previous post, I started on the Significant Leadership Experience essay and have completed the first draft. So I can goof off tomorrow:) !!!! I love being on schedule. This is turning out to be a great weekend already.
Oh yeah, gym routine is on full swing ***Grin***. I totally love myself now.
HBS' Career Vision essay is almost a finished product now. Yippie!
I've also written up the 3 Achievements Essay, but it's far from finished. Hoping to wrap that up by this weekend. And of course I also have to begin another essay and bring it to some shape by Sunday. That's a lot of work!
I was in Chennai last weekend and on Monday for my dad's birthday. It was blazing hot. All I did was sleep at home, eat yummy food made by mom, and write essays. And yeah I met one old school friend after 6 years, we had fun catching up on each other's lives. I feel so grown up at times :( But I'm just 23...
Have some thoughts which I will blog tonight. It's back to work now!
After nearly two months of mercilessly deleting/ shelving everything I wrote, I have finally been able to like (only slightly, mind you) what I wrote in my HBS Career Vision essay today. I guess the key is to bring out the passion. Oh yes! All the stuff I've written so far had all the facts, answered the question bang on, were grammatically correct, had a decent structure....blah blah... but it was not my voice, not my life. In fact I would have hated my life if it really was like what I'd put down.
So the moral of the story: Of course we all know what we want to say... But are we saying it right? We better, 'coz no B-School wants a sputtering, confused, disoriented twit. Or anyone who sounds like one.
So after all the self deprecation, I'm smiling today... While I should actually be sleeping for I have to be at work before 8 tomorrow. (Did I mention 8 AM???)
And the gym routine is really suffering... :(
TOEFL is also out of the way now. It's full of sitters, definitely too easy for Indians. I scored 243-300, which means I can actually max it if my essay gets full marks :D.
The school selection was wierd. There were 2 Harvards, Harvard-Radcliffe and Harvard- something else, didn't know which one has the business school. But because there is only one HBS I'm hoping it will reach the right place. If not I can always get TOEFL waived off. I don't see why they should have a problem after my 42 in GMAT Verbal.
It's just 7.40 pm and I'm home already. It's been really long since I did this, it's almost nostalgic. I'm trying to contact students/alums of my target schools. But seems like no one checks e-mail ( Feels better than thinking they don't reply...). Sigh!
Anyway it's coffee/music/essay time. S'Long blog :)
This weekend has not been too great. That's because the week's been so tiring. I slept for 5 hours during the day yesterday and spent most of my time watching Friends on DVD and catching up on my books/blog reading. Today there was a scheduled power cut from 9am to 3pm. But there was no power till 6pm. So I read Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis today, it was slightly depressing.
I have a rough draft of my career vision essay for HBS. I'm yet to answer the why HBS question. Nevertheless it's nice to see my "vision" on paper. Hopefully I will wrap up the draft by tonight.Which reminds me, I'm taking my TOEFL at 9am tomorrow, so I have to sleep at least by 2am :(
I cooked very nice pasta for dinner yesterday and had it with some yummy coffee. These days the weather is perfect for coffee anytime of the day!
I really need to get back early from office at least 2 days a week, it never seems to happen :( And yeah, I also need to hit the gym everyday starting tomorrow. Sigh! I make so many empty promises to myself.
Ok I'm off...Back to coffee and career vision! Oh and I'm going out for dinner so gotta get ready too... So that explains the "hit the gym" resolution :D
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