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
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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:)
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The MBA fancy
Has been quite some time since I wrote something. If I try to hide behind the lame excuse that I was busy then that will be a plane lie. I was as much dodging blogging as I was shirking responsibilities at my workplace. However, the days of dereliction is over and I am back in productive mode :)
The MBA Dream
In India 9 out of 10 college graduates "aspire" to do an MBA. I use the word aspire because the bloated and inflated media coverage on B Schools has projected MBA more as the end rather than the mean. However, this (mis)conception hasn't completely been a bane. It has created significant employment and spelled fortune for umpteenth number of coaching institutes, unaccredited B-Schools, CAT "analysts" (Yeah...U heard me right) etc. A majority of students want to do an MBA based on the sole incentive of money. The beleif that MBA degree/diploma is a key to some medieval bounty has become deeply entrenched in our nation's psyche.
But why do I have to rant about all this?well...err...ummm...I was no exception (and I have good reasons to replace "am" with "was").
Thanks to the "lean season" (Thats the expression, folks in my office like to use when they have no work to do) I have been browsing through a lot of B School and B School related web sites. While familiarizing myself with the selection procedure used by US B Schools, I was impressed by their attempt to assess every single applicant objectively. Till then I used to revel in the misconception that a great GMAT score would guarantee an Ivy League admit. How, stupid I was. Interestingly they assess every applicant based on a variety of parameters and GMAT is only one of them. So while a good GMAT is important (extremely important for Indian applicants) it is in no way sufficient. However, for top Indian B Schools acing the CAT almost guarantees an admit (ofcourse interviews ensue but the pool of applicants getting interview calls based on their CAT scores is steadily decreasing proving a firm beleif of IIM chieftans in CAT).
Almost all US B Schools cover the question "Why MBA? Why Now?" either in their essays or in their interviews. A fellow blogger who got an admit for Kellogg recommends that to prepare for this question sit down at a tranquil place and reflect. Ask yourself- Why...why now?
So I religiously did the same but the answers I got were pathetic and even put me to shame.
No prizes for guessing the answers ---- first answer was "Paisa" (Money) and second "Jaldi" (quick). Any adcom person no matter how charitable he is, will not blink before politely showing me the door. This answer would go down in the history books as the second 'most stupidest' answer ever, the first being an answer given by one of my friends in an IIM interview. On being asked to explain his low grades in engineering my friends said that only after taking admission in engineering college he realized that it was not his cup of tea but somehow he knows that management is his "calling". I rank my answer 2nd because it is not suicidal.
So, while brooding over this question in a quite orchard (putting monetary aspirations at bay with great difficulty) a lot of reasons surfaced which I could never have realized without some serious introspection. It was fun getting to know myself after so long. In fact some points were so genuine and worthwhile that I can base my entire essay on them.
Anyways....I have no intention of jotting down my ramblings. If i am feeling very drousy someday I may start a blog titled "Ramblings in the orchard". I only wonder how many readers I will get.
The MBA Dream
In India 9 out of 10 college graduates "aspire" to do an MBA. I use the word aspire because the bloated and inflated media coverage on B Schools has projected MBA more as the end rather than the mean. However, this (mis)conception hasn't completely been a bane. It has created significant employment and spelled fortune for umpteenth number of coaching institutes, unaccredited B-Schools, CAT "analysts" (Yeah...U heard me right) etc. A majority of students want to do an MBA based on the sole incentive of money. The beleif that MBA degree/diploma is a key to some medieval bounty has become deeply entrenched in our nation's psyche.
But why do I have to rant about all this?well...err...ummm...I was no exception (and I have good reasons to replace "am" with "was").
Thanks to the "lean season" (Thats the expression, folks in my office like to use when they have no work to do) I have been browsing through a lot of B School and B School related web sites. While familiarizing myself with the selection procedure used by US B Schools, I was impressed by their attempt to assess every single applicant objectively. Till then I used to revel in the misconception that a great GMAT score would guarantee an Ivy League admit. How, stupid I was. Interestingly they assess every applicant based on a variety of parameters and GMAT is only one of them. So while a good GMAT is important (extremely important for Indian applicants) it is in no way sufficient. However, for top Indian B Schools acing the CAT almost guarantees an admit (ofcourse interviews ensue but the pool of applicants getting interview calls based on their CAT scores is steadily decreasing proving a firm beleif of IIM chieftans in CAT).
Almost all US B Schools cover the question "Why MBA? Why Now?" either in their essays or in their interviews. A fellow blogger who got an admit for Kellogg recommends that to prepare for this question sit down at a tranquil place and reflect. Ask yourself- Why...why now?
So I religiously did the same but the answers I got were pathetic and even put me to shame.
No prizes for guessing the answers ---- first answer was "Paisa" (Money) and second "Jaldi" (quick). Any adcom person no matter how charitable he is, will not blink before politely showing me the door. This answer would go down in the history books as the second 'most stupidest' answer ever, the first being an answer given by one of my friends in an IIM interview. On being asked to explain his low grades in engineering my friends said that only after taking admission in engineering college he realized that it was not his cup of tea but somehow he knows that management is his "calling". I rank my answer 2nd because it is not suicidal.
So, while brooding over this question in a quite orchard (putting monetary aspirations at bay with great difficulty) a lot of reasons surfaced which I could never have realized without some serious introspection. It was fun getting to know myself after so long. In fact some points were so genuine and worthwhile that I can base my entire essay on them.
Anyways....I have no intention of jotting down my ramblings. If i am feeling very drousy someday I may start a blog titled "Ramblings in the orchard". I only wonder how many readers I will get.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Running away from the dark
There comes a time in a man's life when he feel humbled and overwhelmed. It's almost unbelievable....the helplessness, the doom that beckons him. He feels he has lost it all- His love, his life, his hope, his sanity. The vicissitudes of luck and time teaches him the real worth and might of him. The hands that were always ready to clench the fist outstretch in a begging gesture. Its so depressing, as if the entire universe has conspired against him.....as if God himself has set out on a task to demolish him.
The basic instinct and the obvious reaction then would be to run...run away until all of this has been left far far behind. Until the smell of this legacy of loss doesn't linger in the air we breath. Isn't that how we have climbed all our way to the top of the food chain. By running away. Is that what I'm doing now? Running.................leaving everything behind. Revelling in the fun of escape...............................................????????
The basic instinct and the obvious reaction then would be to run...run away until all of this has been left far far behind. Until the smell of this legacy of loss doesn't linger in the air we breath. Isn't that how we have climbed all our way to the top of the food chain. By running away. Is that what I'm doing now? Running.................leaving everything behind. Revelling in the fun of escape...............................................????????
Saturday, February 23, 2008
The Bald Reality
Prologue
The barber, whom by now I perceived as a person hardened in sin, with his murderous strokes took less than 10 minutes to annihilate everything that once occurred on the top of my head. My eyes must have moistened when I first met my skinhead image. Yes, I became different, rather abominably different. In the brute school boy’s slang I became a TAKLU and that meant I was out of contention for any pretty girl’s companionship. To cut the long story short- I Was Devastated.
Present Day
But hey, I am not alone. There is an entire battery of young men who do not take much pride in their coiffure either. Consequently, products like vitalizers, Hair loss creams etc. are sell away hits. Batra clinic has made a booty selling empty hopes to balding young men. Weird smelling, purported “magic potions” have made our lives miserable. When the chemicals failed to cultivate any extra hair, people ran to Yoga phenomenon Baba Ramdev, who suggested rubbing fingernails against each other. The result was hapless people performing the prescribed gesture assiduously. However, hair growth still remained elusive.
So, what do we blame our deficiency on comrades? Is it our genes or the bloodline is the culprit? But wouldn’t that be tantamount to demeaning ourselves? There is a constant threat from our hirsute counterparts as we approach the age of marriage. How do we market ourselves then?
I suggest a two pronged approach to tackle the situation.
I once heard a village lady saying that bald head is a sign of wealth and intelligence (Did someone call out Sabeer Bhatia?). We can mask our handicap by these preposterous sayings. Let’s be grateful to the institution of arranged marriage and the male dominance in our social set up-the girl doesn’t have much say anyways.
Let’s vote for bald stars in youth icon competitions. Let Ronaldo be the youth icon for 2007, Vin Diesel the following year and so on. We shall distribute free DVDs of Bruce Willis’ movies in colleges. We will start a signature campaign commending Britney Spears’ head shaving stunt drawing parallel between her bald head and her newfound depression less persona. Let us remind people that David Beckham peaked his popularity when he sported the skinhead look.
Epilogue
This seemingly funny work is an effort on the part of the author to depict the dangerous monkey business that we have been trapped into. Sometimes humor enshrouds in it the reality. The Bald reality.
Friday, February 22, 2008
The Devolution
She would hold my hand and take me out everyday. We would go around the dusty city streets reveling in our companionship. If I behaved nicely, I would most certainly be rewarded with knick knacks like plastic balls or a set of crayons.....Aah I would so yearn for that 1 hour with my mom after school. Those were the carefree kindergarten days when I was living the illusion that all humans are luckiest to be born as humans......
It was the pre liberalisation era in India when poverty was ubiquitous (well it still is but veneered by false optimism) and people's purchasing power scornable. Our family, living in a one room flat was no exception. However, the modest upbringing that my parents could offer never shaped our relationship. To be honest that was the closest I was ever to my parents...........
Seasons changed and governmnets toppled. Weathering umpteenth scams, scandals riots and goofs India still somehow managed to become an economic superpower (yeah...thats the word we Indians love to use...superpower ;)) and living standards rose miraculously. Unlike yesteryears you did not have to be hardened in sin to own a car or know a politician to watch colour TV. India is doing well economically and so did my folks. Mom draws a respectable salary which when pooled with dad's take home can buy most of the latest electronic gadgets. I have a job of my own which is making me age faster than I should. However, something must have gone terribly wrong......WE HARDLY TALK NOW.
Was it the constant nagging and prodding to compete with the neigbour's son or was it the incessant advises of my parent's guests regarding my career? Was it the mom's colleague who teaches History in her college and who so feverishly advised me to pursue engineering or was it my dad's refusal to take me out anywhere with him when I could not top in my class?
Somthing did go wrong. And it was not just in my family, every home has the same story. Parents so conveniently compare their kids with the neighbour's but alas the vice versa never happens. There seems to be a madness spread everywhere like a wild fire. Everyone wants to be rich and successful. Every kid has to be a viz kid....atleast better than the neighbour's kid. The only topic moms are left with to discuss is the grade sheet of their sons/daughters. The number of zeros in the paycheck of a graduating daughter makes a dad ecsatatic. Thats what globalization and liberalization has done to India. It has transformed our kids into racing horses. they have to be profitable.
Among all this brauhaha and chaos I sometimes see a small kid holding his mom's hand walking on the dusty streets frolicking and revelling in her company..............
It was the pre liberalisation era in India when poverty was ubiquitous (well it still is but veneered by false optimism) and people's purchasing power scornable. Our family, living in a one room flat was no exception. However, the modest upbringing that my parents could offer never shaped our relationship. To be honest that was the closest I was ever to my parents...........
Seasons changed and governmnets toppled. Weathering umpteenth scams, scandals riots and goofs India still somehow managed to become an economic superpower (yeah...thats the word we Indians love to use...superpower ;)) and living standards rose miraculously. Unlike yesteryears you did not have to be hardened in sin to own a car or know a politician to watch colour TV. India is doing well economically and so did my folks. Mom draws a respectable salary which when pooled with dad's take home can buy most of the latest electronic gadgets. I have a job of my own which is making me age faster than I should. However, something must have gone terribly wrong......WE HARDLY TALK NOW.
Was it the constant nagging and prodding to compete with the neigbour's son or was it the incessant advises of my parent's guests regarding my career? Was it the mom's colleague who teaches History in her college and who so feverishly advised me to pursue engineering or was it my dad's refusal to take me out anywhere with him when I could not top in my class?
Somthing did go wrong. And it was not just in my family, every home has the same story. Parents so conveniently compare their kids with the neighbour's but alas the vice versa never happens. There seems to be a madness spread everywhere like a wild fire. Everyone wants to be rich and successful. Every kid has to be a viz kid....atleast better than the neighbour's kid. The only topic moms are left with to discuss is the grade sheet of their sons/daughters. The number of zeros in the paycheck of a graduating daughter makes a dad ecsatatic. Thats what globalization and liberalization has done to India. It has transformed our kids into racing horses. they have to be profitable.
Among all this brauhaha and chaos I sometimes see a small kid holding his mom's hand walking on the dusty streets frolicking and revelling in her company..............
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