Been There Done That

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.