ISB admit :)

I did it :) Got my dream admit, and now am a member of the ISB class of 2011...
5th March 2010 9:58 am will be etched into my memory for a long time. As, I was awaiting the ISB results for waitlists for the last 3-4 days (as the due date for the R2 selects to pay off their initial deposit was 27th feb), every no-number sms was getting my anxiety and nervousness to a new level. And, what a feeling it was when I read that message !!!

I had just got up 10 mins back and was still half asleep when I read it. For a moment, it was truly unbelievable. I was speechless, and just showed the message to my rommie gulti and hugged him. The next thing I did was opening the mail box and reading the below text:

"Congratulations! We are delighted to inform you that on the basis of a comprehensive and careful evaluation process, you have been offered admission into the ISB’s one year Post Graduate Programme in Management which commences on April 12, 2010.

We believe that your profile will add significant value to the diversity of backgrounds, outstanding talent and significant achievements represented by the students in our new class and also bring in a valuable perspective to our classroom discussions and international community."

Well, at the end of my MBA journey I would like to thank some folks without whom I would have never made this journey. First of all, my sis Charmie for helping me out with everything from reviewing my essays to interview preps. Being an MBA and a present generation entrepreneur, her experience was definitely worthwhile. Another important person in this journey would be Shubhra, my senior at Cisco who had made it to the ISB batch of 2010. She helped me right from the university selection to the interview process. Her timely help, in spite of the extremely busy schedule at ISB has been wonderful and really noteworthy. Abhishek Binani, my senior at college, and a long time LUG friend has been equally helpful. His help goes right to the days when I started considering an MBA from a global b-school. Being a MBA student at MBS, he was instrumental in providing me feedbacks for univ selection. His help in how to approach the essays and interview was more than needed. Suhas and Kavita from Jamboree were also more than helpful in the entire process with their inputs. In addition to the above mentioned ppl, a number of friends have helped me out including the resourceful PG forum and PGites.

In addition to all, I have to sincerely thank my present manager Raj and my ex-manager Murali for supporting me in my decision to go for a management education and helping me out with writing the recommendations.

ISB results out - Waitlist

ISB results finally came out on the 12th of this month, and they have put me on the waiting list. I was expecting results anytime from 10th as ISB had declared Round 1 results 5 days in advance. My productivity at work took a toll for those 2-3 days, and the wait was really killing me. Also PG thread for ISB aspirants was flooded with more anxious candidates like me. At 6 pm on 12th, Hofeza posted a mail on the bgl-isb aspirants alias that he got an admit. From that moment my heartbeat went up whenever my inbox saw a new mail. And I kept on refreshing PG, and read a no. of admit stories. My hopes were getting lower and lower and time was getting past. Finally at 6:45 I got an email about waitlist. I was filled with mixed emotions. I didn't understand whether I was happy or sad. To be honest, I was damn sad on missing out an admit, but after a few hours I started feeling ok about it, and felt that it is better than a reject.

So, to sum it up the wait has been extended by a further 3 weeks :(

But, the worst part of this wait is that ISB dosen't inform the waitlisted candidates about their respective waitlist ranks.

ISB Interview experience

After a depressing couple of months waiting for results, ISB interview call brought a cheer to the otherwise sad admission results. Results till now: Rejects from Harvard, Chicago and Yale. I got my interview call on 8th Jan and had my interview scheduled with ISB on the 16th of Jan. Couple of days went by searching for a business suit, and then I started to prepare a little. Special thanks to folks from PG bangalore subscribed to the google group bangalore-isb-aspirants-co-2011 to help me out with a mock session. Went to hyd a day before the interview, and started for the awesome ISB campus at around 11:30 (interview scheduled at 12)

I had my interview yesterday. It was more of a discussion. Trying to pen down the questions that I remember:
1. Why MBA with only 2 years and 7 months of work exp?
2. What value will you be able to add?
3. Your strenghts?
4. Questions about my leadership experiences and which leader do i look upto
5. Questions about work
6. About hobbies

In about 20 mins, I got the question do you have any queries for us, and I thought there was still a lot more to be said
Not sure what to make out of the interview. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Post interview I went to Microsoft campus, and then at the Xtreme sports bar for lunch.

Thanks to my friends Megh and Kushal for the hospitality at hyderabad. Overall the stay at hyd was great.

Dissapointment: Reject from Chicago

October was a hell of a hectic month. Submitted Yale on 8th and Chicago on 14th. Add to the application worries, the over hectic work schedule. Was very anxious with my applications and filling up the first few took a lot of time. Got my first official reject yesterday from Chicago. 11th was their last day for interview invites, and was anxiously refreshing my mail and the gmatclub forum for the last few days...Unfortunately, haven't got any positive response from either Harvard or Yale.

Pasting the deny letter below:

Thank you for applying to Chicago Booth's Full-Time MBA Program. Your application has received the careful consideration of our Admissions Committee. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer you admission to the Class of 2012.

The superb quality of this year's applicant pool presented the Admissions Committee with some difficult decisions. Three members of the Committee reviewed your application in its entirety before our decision was made. Applicants are evaluated on several criteria, including academic preparedness, professional achievements, communication skills, extracurricular/community involvement, leadership, self-awareness, understanding the value of the MBA experience, and fit with Chicago Booth.

We certainly appreciate the effort you put into this process, and we wish you every success as you continue to plan for your future.

Submitted my first B school app (harvard)

Submitted my first application Harvard on 30th, just a day before the deadline. Feels good after writing essays and spending time with my recommendors. It was indeed a complex process and took a lot of time. But the whole process was fruitful and spending time on it was worth as you end up figuring out something about yourself from a new perspective.

First of all, let me talk about my essays, first question was "What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such?". I got a good chance to look at all my achievements and it would tough to narrow down to three. In the end I chose two from my work at cisco, one involving a leadership experience and once involving a technical /functional team setup. And for the third one, I chose to write about my venture mprogramming.com, a unique Mobile Programming IDE which allows users to leverage the advantage of web and cloud computing and to program on the go.

Second question was "What have you learned from a mistake". Well this was a tough one. I finally caught 3 such incidents and chose one from my days at college where we had made a big mistake.

Coming to the optional essays, I chose the one on academic experience and community experience. I have portrayed my role in a club called as LUG @ NIT Durgapur.

Am keeping my fingers crossed.
Need loads of luck :)

At the same time, have started working on my next fast approaching deadline: Yale 8th oct

B School Application

Well now that I am done with step 1 i.e. GMAT, I am proceeding to the next step B School Application. From my experience till now, its extremely complex and does take a lot of time. After a certain point personal Choices do weigh more than rankings. However, Business week's b school rankings were helpful coz of the amount of info it contained. Business week does a wonderful survey and populates data starting from no. of applicants, success rate, how many are interviewed, scholarship amounts, avg gmat, avg gpa, work exp to mention a few. It as really useful in shortlisting the univs in a short time with a busy work schedule. After pondering over all the options wrt US, UK, Australia, Europe, Canada and Singapore, I have zeroed in on a few univs from the US. As of now, I plan to apply to the following univs

1 Harvard,
2 Chicago Booth
3. Duke Fuqua
4. Cornell Johnson
5. Yale SOM
6. ISB

Attending information sessions from Chicago, Columbia and Duke did help me to a good extent in finalizing the univs. My selection was limited because of my criterion of a graduate loan without a collateral and without a cosigner. After the global meltdown, many of the univs have taken off the International no-cosigner graduate loan, and hence I was stuck up with limited options. And considering that Indian Male IT is a dominant group in the application pool, I stand at a huge disadvantage as far as getting into my dream univ is considered.

Wish me luck. Deadlines for all the 6 univs are nearing in and so is my nervousness and anxiety.

My GMAT Experience - 730

Was a little held up with gmat preps and then with the apps, so couldn't post on the forum.
Sharing my gmat experience

Gave my GMAT on 16th July '09 and scored 730.

Background info abt me: I am an IT engineer from India. I started preparing for the exam around February, but was unable to seriously prepare and gain any pace for 2-3 months mainly because of work pressure and lack of seroiusness. To add to the work pressure IPL and T20 world cup were the major distractions.

Materials used during the prep:
OG 11
OG 12
OG Verbal Review
Cracking the GMAT- Princeton (didn't find it much useful)
Princeton Verbal Workbook
Manhattan GMAT SC
Kaplan 800

Apart from these materials, I used to browse through beatthegmat and manhattangmat. manahattangmat's forum has detailed explanation for lot of problems by Stacey and Ron.

Tests I gave
GMAT prep1(right at the start without any prep) - 690
3 Manhattan tests: ranged between 630-680 don't remember the exact scores
Powerprep1 - 710
Powerprep2 - 700
GMAT prep2 - 730
GMAT prep1 (retake) - 660 (screwed up verbal big time..got a couple of phone calls in the middle of the test)
On an average, I ranged 48-51 on quants in the practice tests and 28-40 on the verbal

Exam experience:
Quant was pretty straight forward. Didn't face any difficulty at all and ended up the section 15 mins before time. I found the difficulty level to be a little more than the GMAT prep tests, but definitely less than the Manhattan ones. I used to end up Quant around 20-30 mins before time in GMAT prep and power prep tests.

I was really surprised at the verbal score as, I was not expecting a good score there. After a few decent SC and CR questions, I got two tough RCs and couldn't even make a work out out of the 2nd one. That scared the hell out of me. And then the level of questions went down and I didn't face much trouble. CRs were all straight forward, and SCs were of medium difficulty level.