I am blogging after 6 months now. That is quite a long time indeed. And all this time, it's not just writing/blogging that I managed to ignore, but also other Joy-de-vivre.
Thankfully I came out of the grueling MBA application season successfully as I got into a school of my choice with relatively less financial burden. The application season 2008 was unprecedented (Some observers compare it with the 2001 season. However, the peak in the applications received in the present season dwarfs the one recorded in 2001) as the applicants faced extraordinary circumstances besetting their respective paths. When I took the GMAT in July, things were relatively calm and promising. Nevertheless, that was the lull before the storm and with the collapse of Lehman-Bang Economy-Brothers all hell broke lose. The application numbers soared by the second deadline and the incessant layoffs in the workplace cast a gloomy picture of the future. In addition to this, somewhere around October-November all US educational loan lenders discontinued their "No-Cosigner" loan programs which crippled the international applicants. Consequently many applicants like me had to alter their school lists midway the application season to factor in the affordability and ease of scholarship factors. The travails of the international applicants still persist with Barak Obama's regime tightening the screws on the H1B visas and immigration laws.
I applied to five schools which were Columbia GSB, Wharton, Darden, Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) and University of Toronto (Rotman). I was rejected without interview in the first three. Waitlisted and later accepted in the fourth and admitted with a 40,000 dollar scholarship in UfT (Rotman). I decided to join Rotman because of a multitude of reasons, ROI and easy immigration being pivotal ones. Moreover, as a Management Consulting aspirant I was aiming only for those schools where the Mckinseys, BCGs and the AT Kearneys of the world recruit. I do not mind staying in Toronto post graduation compared to say NY or Chicago. So Rotman made a lot of sense to me.
Sometimes I ask myself, should I have waited for a couple of years more to let the rough economic weather subside or to gain some more work experience before applying to B Schools? Well...I guess there is no conclusive answer to that. Yes, I may probably have made it to an M7 (or A8 as some Americans like to put it) with some patience. However, I would most certainly miss out on the invaluable opportunity to witness the extraordinary changes taking place in our economic formats from an academic viewpoint. The challenges before present MBA student's are real and overwhelming. They may chose to buckle and slump in depression or they may use it as a cornerstone in their lives and play an active role (which they inevitably will) in shaping the next stable economy. Our batch will not have the luxury of fancying million dollar bonuses and spa retreats. We will be urged to restore and rebuild what has been destroyed and plundered by excessive greed of.....No,not just the MBAs.....but the entire system. We humans have an irresistible inclination to find a fall guy. But this recession was no one man's or one profession's machinations but a collective failure to check our cupidity.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Depressing Times
These days I am trying to avoid taking a peak at newspapers or news channels as they are laced with terrible news.
Bombs, riots, accidents (Stampedes) have become everyday occurance. To top it all the US financial meltdown is threatening the entire world economics. These days a menacing rumour is doeing rounds. It says that ICICI, one of the most respected private sector banks in India, is on the verge of collapse threatening life savings of numerous people. I saw people frentically waiting outside ATMs yesterday. The panick is understandable. People trust these banks with everything they have got. Moreover, these people having savings account in such banks shouldn't pay for the cupidity of the bosses. In case ICICI falls, it is highly unlikely that Reserve Bank of India will bail it out. However, such situation seems very improbable in the light of present statements from the Bosses of RBI and ICICI.
Next to me in the queue in one of the few functioning ATMs of ICICI was a watchman who looked extremely perturbed. He confessed that he had not slept for past 48 hours as he could not locate any working ATMs and considered his limited savings gone.
Indeed..these are tough times.....The gool ol days seem so yesterday
Bombs, riots, accidents (Stampedes) have become everyday occurance. To top it all the US financial meltdown is threatening the entire world economics. These days a menacing rumour is doeing rounds. It says that ICICI, one of the most respected private sector banks in India, is on the verge of collapse threatening life savings of numerous people. I saw people frentically waiting outside ATMs yesterday. The panick is understandable. People trust these banks with everything they have got. Moreover, these people having savings account in such banks shouldn't pay for the cupidity of the bosses. In case ICICI falls, it is highly unlikely that Reserve Bank of India will bail it out. However, such situation seems very improbable in the light of present statements from the Bosses of RBI and ICICI.
Next to me in the queue in one of the few functioning ATMs of ICICI was a watchman who looked extremely perturbed. He confessed that he had not slept for past 48 hours as he could not locate any working ATMs and considered his limited savings gone.
Indeed..these are tough times.....The gool ol days seem so yesterday
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Columbia Application submitted
Past months have been truly hectic with Columbia essays and new responsibilities in office. So now I am officially the member of a new service line "Securitization" in which I am getting to see from point blank how structured finance harmed US economy. The training was good and candid. In one of the practice projects where we worked on a closed ABS, I could see a heap of securities marked subprime.
Moving over to my MBA applications, I submitted my Columbia application on 12th of September and it went under review on 19th. A week long delay was caused due to one of my recommender's inability to submit his review on time. Columbia is my first MBA application and hence I was very cautious with my essays. I am ashamed to divulge that I took a complete month to draft my final essays. My essays got good reviews from my friends and relatives (Including a Harvard alumni). However, I don't think I am very convincing with my "Why MBA now" part. Neways, the learning curve has been steep and the rusty writer in me has all of a sudden galvanized. No wonder I'm back to blogging.
Over to Wharton essays.
Moving over to my MBA applications, I submitted my Columbia application on 12th of September and it went under review on 19th. A week long delay was caused due to one of my recommender's inability to submit his review on time. Columbia is my first MBA application and hence I was very cautious with my essays. I am ashamed to divulge that I took a complete month to draft my final essays. My essays got good reviews from my friends and relatives (Including a Harvard alumni). However, I don't think I am very convincing with my "Why MBA now" part. Neways, the learning curve has been steep and the rusty writer in me has all of a sudden galvanized. No wonder I'm back to blogging.
Over to Wharton essays.
Friday, July 18, 2008
My GMAT preparation
Out of 1000 people who take GMAT, 20 score 750 or above. Out of these 20, atleast 5 are bloggers. Out of these 5 atleast 2 feel happy about this and want to share their experience with the world. So this is no rocket science that there are umpteenth blogs out there giving excellent advise on how to go about preparing for the GMAT. First of all you must understand that different people have different study habits and different degree of grasping powers. Kindly DO NOT alter your study habits or try replicating someone else's schedule just because the latter could do good on the G-Day. I have reasons to believe that anyone can score 740+ in GMAT without doing anything creative.
Having said that, I am sharing my study plan.
Modus Operandi
I have a very demanding job and an extremely pesky boss
so I understood that I can not manage more than 3-4 hours a day. My office timings are 11am-8pm but I seldom reach home before 10. I set aside 11pm-1am and 9am-10:30am everyday for GMAT preparation. I would ideally give 6-7 hours on weekends and took a test almost every weekend after 3 weeks of preparation. I stuck to this schedule like a leach. In retrospect, I am amazed at my discipline. I had never been so sincere all my life 
.
Verbal
My first diagnostic test revealed that I need special attention on SC and CR. For SC I started with Manhattan SC Guide (Its indispensable) and finished it in a week. I followed it up with OG11 SC and finished it too. Please note that It's very important to keep referring Manhattan SC guide from time to time. I think this much practice brought my SC level to 70% accuracy and I was ready for the SC1000 document. The best way to gain from SC1000 is to revisit the questions you got wrong or got correct by fluke. Copy the first 5 words of the question and search it on google. Almost all possible questions have been discussed on either testmagic.com or manhattangmat.com forums. These 2 websites contain a wealth of information and you should exploit them.
For CR I started with the OG11 and backed it up by CR1000 series. I tried some LSAT tests too but I do not recommend them.
So by 3 weeks using "brute force"
I more or less overpowered my fears and began to enjoy CR and SC.
In a nutshell The books I relied on were : OG11, Manhattan SC, 1000 series (Helped me a lot) and Spidey's grammar notes. I referred Kaplan800 too but did not finish it. Also try to get your hands on gmat sets 21-30. They have excellent questions.
Quant
Being an engineer my quant skills are pretty decent. However, my DS was a tad problematic and my speed a bit slow. Realizing that this may spell doom I also practiced quant enough. Kindly try to download the document from Beat The GMAT Forum. They have good material and give a good practice. Also the quant questions in Manhattangmat tests are a great practice but please understand that those questions are way above the GMAT standard and prepare you for the worst.
I prepared for quant mostly from mock GMATs. I took some 16 tests in the span of 3 months and I think they gave a good exposure.
So, as you can see my preparation method was far from being methodical. It was more of understanding my weaknesses and clobbering them using brute force (read..practice). It worked for me but that in no way guarantees similar result for another subject.
My advise would be to cut out a strategy at the very outset and stick to it militantly. In the end performance in GMAT is directly proportional to your labor and your mental toughness.
Best of luck to all.
Having said that, I am sharing my study plan.
Modus Operandi
I have a very demanding job and an extremely pesky boss
so I understood that I can not manage more than 3-4 hours a day. My office timings are 11am-8pm but I seldom reach home before 10. I set aside 11pm-1am and 9am-10:30am everyday for GMAT preparation. I would ideally give 6-7 hours on weekends and took a test almost every weekend after 3 weeks of preparation. I stuck to this schedule like a leach. In retrospect, I am amazed at my discipline. I had never been so sincere all my life .Verbal
My first diagnostic test revealed that I need special attention on SC and CR. For SC I started with Manhattan SC Guide (Its indispensable) and finished it in a week. I followed it up with OG11 SC and finished it too. Please note that It's very important to keep referring Manhattan SC guide from time to time. I think this much practice brought my SC level to 70% accuracy and I was ready for the SC1000 document. The best way to gain from SC1000 is to revisit the questions you got wrong or got correct by fluke. Copy the first 5 words of the question and search it on google. Almost all possible questions have been discussed on either testmagic.com or manhattangmat.com forums. These 2 websites contain a wealth of information and you should exploit them.
For CR I started with the OG11 and backed it up by CR1000 series. I tried some LSAT tests too but I do not recommend them.
So by 3 weeks using "brute force"
I more or less overpowered my fears and began to enjoy CR and SC.In a nutshell The books I relied on were : OG11, Manhattan SC, 1000 series (Helped me a lot) and Spidey's grammar notes. I referred Kaplan800 too but did not finish it. Also try to get your hands on gmat sets 21-30. They have excellent questions.
Quant
Being an engineer my quant skills are pretty decent. However, my DS was a tad problematic and my speed a bit slow. Realizing that this may spell doom I also practiced quant enough. Kindly try to download the document from Beat The GMAT Forum. They have good material and give a good practice. Also the quant questions in Manhattangmat tests are a great practice but please understand that those questions are way above the GMAT standard and prepare you for the worst.
I prepared for quant mostly from mock GMATs. I took some 16 tests in the span of 3 months and I think they gave a good exposure.
So, as you can see my preparation method was far from being methodical. It was more of understanding my weaknesses and clobbering them using brute force (read..practice). It worked for me but that in no way guarantees similar result for another subject.
My advise would be to cut out a strategy at the very outset and stick to it militantly. In the end performance in GMAT is directly proportional to your labor and your mental toughness.
Best of luck to all.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Rajnikanth opposite Angelina
Watched "Wanted" today. It was an action flick with no compelling storyline. However, the action scenes and the stunts were breath taking and at times preposterous.
I watched this movie with one of my friends who does not miss a single opportunity to make fun of Rajnikant's larger than life stunts. He deems watching movies with such scenes an assault on intellectuality. But for some reason he kept bragging about how he loved this movie and how incredible the action scenes were....hahaha.....
Warning.....Following content may contain spoilers
Picture this.....Angelina Jolie fires a bullet and for some reason, bullet follows a circular path and hits her after killing 5 men in it's wake. I guess Rajni was less skilled when he shot a gangster, who was standing on the other side of a wall, by deflecting a bullet using a coin. He had to waist a coin while Angelina could have simply dodged the wall by her circular firing. Beat it...both are equally ludicrous and defy common logic and laws of physics alike. So if a Hollywood fart is an "Aha" for you but at the same time a Mithun somersault puts you off, it just shows your inferiority complex and double standards.
Lol...I guess I am getting unreasonably philosophical now. At least you can watch Angelina Jolie coming out of the shower for a change ;)
I watched this movie with one of my friends who does not miss a single opportunity to make fun of Rajnikant's larger than life stunts. He deems watching movies with such scenes an assault on intellectuality. But for some reason he kept bragging about how he loved this movie and how incredible the action scenes were....hahaha.....
Warning.....Following content may contain spoilers
Picture this.....Angelina Jolie fires a bullet and for some reason, bullet follows a circular path and hits her after killing 5 men in it's wake. I guess Rajni was less skilled when he shot a gangster, who was standing on the other side of a wall, by deflecting a bullet using a coin. He had to waist a coin while Angelina could have simply dodged the wall by her circular firing. Beat it...both are equally ludicrous and defy common logic and laws of physics alike. So if a Hollywood fart is an "Aha" for you but at the same time a Mithun somersault puts you off, it just shows your inferiority complex and double standards.
Lol...I guess I am getting unreasonably philosophical now. At least you can watch Angelina Jolie coming out of the shower for a change ;)
Thursday, July 10, 2008
GMAT Tamed
Took my GMAT on Thursday, 3rd of July. Got a 750 (Q50, V40, AWA 5).
There are scores of de-briefs by guys scoring well in their GMATs all over the internet. Some of them are really helpful. I do not deem myself worthy to give right recommendations on GMAT preparation as my approach to GMAT was not very methodical. I relied more on brute force (Read...practice) over systematic preparation. I may right a debrief some day but I suggest people not to follow my study plan ;).
It was a very important day for me as I have been preparing for this day for the past 3 months (well....2 months seriously). I had to put a lot of things at bay and stick to my study schedule like a leach to manage this score.
Let me run you through the events of the day.
I slept at half hour past midnight on 2nd July like I used to do everyday. My friends and well wishers kept telling me to sleep early as I had booked the morning slot for myself. However, I was not very keen on disturbing my usual routine. I kept telling myself that tomorrow is just another day and that an exam can not be more important than me.
I woke up at 7 and started off at 7:45. Bought 4 bananas and a barboun chocolate as breakfast. The autodriver who would drop me to the center was not in the best of his moods and kept trying to piss me off but I was determined to mainatain a calm and cool disposition and kept laughing his impertinence off (This probably pissed him off more ;)). I reached the center well before 8:30. The center was closed then, so I decided to read some of the sample essays as I had barely prepared for AWA (Not recommended). The center opened at precisely 8:30 and we were let in by the lady in charge. She took our finger prints and verified our documents and reminded us of exam rules. I requested them to allow me to wear anti glare glasses as I had taken all my mock GMATs wearing the same and I did not want to do anything different today. However, the test administrators did not budge and said that only powered specs are allowed. Considering this as a bad sign I entered the exam room. It was a sound proof, video monitored room which looked like a posh cyber cafe.
AWA
I immediately pounced on the awa topics and started typing frentically at the moment I saw the topic. This forced my fellow, GMAT taker to make a grumpy face. Showing some consideration for my grumpy colleague, I started typing softly and finished both, arguement and issue sections with 5 minutes to spare. AWA, I must admit, is a great ice breaker. It got me in the roll and I felt ready for the real test.
QUANT
I utilized the 10 minute break fully and ate a dairy milk chocolate in the break. The first quant question was joke of a question but I still gave it a good 2 minutes rechecking it several times. In fact first 15-20 questions were very easy and I began to think that I must be doing something wrong as the difficulty level is not rising. Anyways, I made a promise to myself that I will not panick and consider this exam as just another mock exam. The difficulty level slowly began to escalate and the 27th question took me some 6 minutes :(. I admit that It was very bad time management on my part and I should have proceeded much earlier. I was left with some 6 questions in last 8 minutes and to my dismay I began to panick. I am sure I must have got a couple of questions wrong in this part due to my earnestness. I finished the paper with 30 seconds to spare and left the room for the 10 minutes break with a heavy heart.
VERBAL
Devoured another Dairy Milk Bar and took a leak. Blew water on my face and thumped my fists on the rest room wall. I tried to convince myself that no matter what I can not get less than 50 and proceeded towards the exam room with a renewed hunger to tame the beast.
The bad time management in Quant section reminded me the importance of keep pushing myself and I sweared that I will not get stuck at any question for an obscene amount of time.
1st Questions CR - Very easy. Could eliminate 4 answer choices easily...Hmmm good going dude, Bring em on. Questions were of standard difficulty and I got my first RC as the 11th question. RCs were also of standard difficulty and were not inconscionably difficult like Kaplan's RC. I must say that I was happy with me as I progressed in the verbal section. I had 15 minutes remaining when I reached the 39th question and gave some 5 minutes to it just for a change ;).
41st question was a sentence correction question which I was confident of. Finished the section with 7 minutes to go. Great...All's well that ends well :).
"Do you want to cancel your scores or proceed for score calculation"...Hmmm....PROCEED.
Then came the stupid personal details form which I am sure no one wants to fill. Kept klicking next until I reached the final screen. PROCESSING......dhak dhak....dhak dhak.
Looked here and there. looked at my grumpy neighbour and smiled. He made a bad face again and turned to his monitor......"Why is it taking so much time...Am I screwed already"....The wait was unbearable.
And then it came
Quant - 50 (94 percentile)
Verbal - 40 (89 percentile)
Total - 750 (98 percentile)
I punched my fists in the air and almost yelled. The administrator came running inside and threatened me of cancelling my scores....Lol...I was too ecstatic to listen to her and got out of the room saying sorry. Before leaving I turned to my sad ass neighbour. perhaps he was filling the details form then. I guess he got the message and smiled back.
It was a great feeling. Though I got a couple of 780s and 770s in my mock GMATs and could have surely done better, I was extremely content with my score.
The beast had been tamed :)
There are scores of de-briefs by guys scoring well in their GMATs all over the internet. Some of them are really helpful. I do not deem myself worthy to give right recommendations on GMAT preparation as my approach to GMAT was not very methodical. I relied more on brute force (Read...practice) over systematic preparation. I may right a debrief some day but I suggest people not to follow my study plan ;).
It was a very important day for me as I have been preparing for this day for the past 3 months (well....2 months seriously). I had to put a lot of things at bay and stick to my study schedule like a leach to manage this score.
Let me run you through the events of the day.
I slept at half hour past midnight on 2nd July like I used to do everyday. My friends and well wishers kept telling me to sleep early as I had booked the morning slot for myself. However, I was not very keen on disturbing my usual routine. I kept telling myself that tomorrow is just another day and that an exam can not be more important than me.
I woke up at 7 and started off at 7:45. Bought 4 bananas and a barboun chocolate as breakfast. The autodriver who would drop me to the center was not in the best of his moods and kept trying to piss me off but I was determined to mainatain a calm and cool disposition and kept laughing his impertinence off (This probably pissed him off more ;)). I reached the center well before 8:30. The center was closed then, so I decided to read some of the sample essays as I had barely prepared for AWA (Not recommended). The center opened at precisely 8:30 and we were let in by the lady in charge. She took our finger prints and verified our documents and reminded us of exam rules. I requested them to allow me to wear anti glare glasses as I had taken all my mock GMATs wearing the same and I did not want to do anything different today. However, the test administrators did not budge and said that only powered specs are allowed. Considering this as a bad sign I entered the exam room. It was a sound proof, video monitored room which looked like a posh cyber cafe.
AWA
I immediately pounced on the awa topics and started typing frentically at the moment I saw the topic. This forced my fellow, GMAT taker to make a grumpy face. Showing some consideration for my grumpy colleague, I started typing softly and finished both, arguement and issue sections with 5 minutes to spare. AWA, I must admit, is a great ice breaker. It got me in the roll and I felt ready for the real test.
QUANT
I utilized the 10 minute break fully and ate a dairy milk chocolate in the break. The first quant question was joke of a question but I still gave it a good 2 minutes rechecking it several times. In fact first 15-20 questions were very easy and I began to think that I must be doing something wrong as the difficulty level is not rising. Anyways, I made a promise to myself that I will not panick and consider this exam as just another mock exam. The difficulty level slowly began to escalate and the 27th question took me some 6 minutes :(. I admit that It was very bad time management on my part and I should have proceeded much earlier. I was left with some 6 questions in last 8 minutes and to my dismay I began to panick. I am sure I must have got a couple of questions wrong in this part due to my earnestness. I finished the paper with 30 seconds to spare and left the room for the 10 minutes break with a heavy heart.
VERBAL
Devoured another Dairy Milk Bar and took a leak. Blew water on my face and thumped my fists on the rest room wall. I tried to convince myself that no matter what I can not get less than 50 and proceeded towards the exam room with a renewed hunger to tame the beast.
The bad time management in Quant section reminded me the importance of keep pushing myself and I sweared that I will not get stuck at any question for an obscene amount of time.
1st Questions CR - Very easy. Could eliminate 4 answer choices easily...Hmmm good going dude, Bring em on. Questions were of standard difficulty and I got my first RC as the 11th question. RCs were also of standard difficulty and were not inconscionably difficult like Kaplan's RC. I must say that I was happy with me as I progressed in the verbal section. I had 15 minutes remaining when I reached the 39th question and gave some 5 minutes to it just for a change ;).
41st question was a sentence correction question which I was confident of. Finished the section with 7 minutes to go. Great...All's well that ends well :).
"Do you want to cancel your scores or proceed for score calculation"...Hmmm....PROCEED.
Then came the stupid personal details form which I am sure no one wants to fill. Kept klicking next until I reached the final screen. PROCESSING......dhak dhak....dhak dhak.
Looked here and there. looked at my grumpy neighbour and smiled. He made a bad face again and turned to his monitor......"Why is it taking so much time...Am I screwed already"....The wait was unbearable.
And then it came
Quant - 50 (94 percentile)
Verbal - 40 (89 percentile)
Total - 750 (98 percentile)
I punched my fists in the air and almost yelled. The administrator came running inside and threatened me of cancelling my scores....Lol...I was too ecstatic to listen to her and got out of the room saying sorry. Before leaving I turned to my sad ass neighbour. perhaps he was filling the details form then. I guess he got the message and smiled back.
It was a great feeling. Though I got a couple of 780s and 770s in my mock GMATs and could have surely done better, I was extremely content with my score.
The beast had been tamed :)
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Impact Day 2008
On 14th June, my company Deloitte (India) celebrated The Impact Day. On this day all employees of this huge firm dedicate one full working day to community service. The day is meant to be celebrated on the first Friday of June in all the branches of Deloitte. However, Hyderabad celebrated it on 14th June due to the "India Band" called by the political parties in response to the government's decision to hike fuel price.
Finally we did manage to pull it off and the dedicated volunteers, undermining the hard work gardening entails, exceeded the expectations and lead by example. We managed to make a vegetable garden out of a 15000 sq feet of barren land. Its produce will feed the 500 inmates of an old age home. In addition to this we also created a park and planted 200 odd trees which will make our environment healthier. So at the end of the day I can safely aver that I along with my group did make an Impact:)
For me Impact day was going to be special as I was leading a thread "Greener Hyderabad" which aimed at making the city greener. This time however, we butressed our regular activity of planting trees with the plan of establishing a vegetable gardening for the underprevileged segments of our society. By this we also intended to cut the food miles and this is quite relevent to containing global warming.
It was an important day of my life as it put my planning, leading and execution skills to test. I had to manage a group of 120 people who had limited, to say the least, gardening skills. A major setback was the sudden postponement of the event due to the turbulant political situation. The central planning team, after a thorough discussion with thread leads took a call and postponed the event. It was difficult for me as most of my materials had already been trucked to the intended locations and could have perished without proper care but thanks to the management of the old age home and the Women Rehabilitaion home, where we carried out our activities, our stuff was well taken care of.
Finally we did manage to pull it off and the dedicated volunteers, undermining the hard work gardening entails, exceeded the expectations and lead by example. We managed to make a vegetable garden out of a 15000 sq feet of barren land. Its produce will feed the 500 inmates of an old age home. In addition to this we also created a park and planted 200 odd trees which will make our environment healthier. So at the end of the day I can safely aver that I along with my group did make an Impact:)
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