A couple of updates first, one good news and one follow up news. First the good news- I had applied at the 1 year PGPM program at SP Jain, Bbay and had interviewed with them. Well, the result came about 16 days ago and this time I did MAKE it. Man, wow good does that feel when you get an “You are welcome” mail from a school of reputation like SPJain.

Now the bad part- I said NO to their offer. This was a rather painful decision as after battling for so long for my MBA(my first attempt was in circa 2002!) everyone around me wanted to hang up the battle shoes and get “settled”. But I stand by the decision and don’t regret it. These were the reasons for my decision:

1. Types of recruiters: Since 85% of my professional experience is in High Tech product industry, I really want to go to a school where product based companies come for recruitment. Sp jain’s list is entirely made up of IT services firm. Though I do think that there are good profiles in IT services firms too, but keeping in my mind my different experience as well as my long term career plan(of starting a venture) I didn’t see a great fit. Also, there were no real chances of trying the consulting industry post SPJ, as there are hardly any names in SP Jain’s recruiter list.

2. PGDM Vs PGPM: Well this is fairly well known. While researching the placements of PGPM, I came to know that the school has a bias in favor of their flagship PGDM program. It seemed that the school is deliberately not pushing PGPM to industry to avoid conflict with PGDM. My take is if the school you are joining is not serious about their own program, then there are limited things you can do to make things any better.

3. The network: Finally, I turned to linked in to compare the real world positions of alumni from a few schools such as ISB and SP Jain(PGPM). A few pages and you know the difference. I agree that PGPM is relatively new(4 year old), but ISB is not very old too(7 years). Also the sheer number of people from ISB would far outnumber the PGPM alumni base as the average batch size of ISB would be about 300, while PGPM’s would be 1/10th of that. But the message which I drew from it was there were simply far more opportunities available for ISB junta as compared to SP Jain’s PGPM alumni.

Anyway, now when I have chucked the offer, I am gearing towards having a serious go at ISB in R2. A few things are already in pipeline and I would share the strategy soon.

Wish me luck!

After a really long hiatus, back to blogging here. But I can assure you this time, you are going to see some activity here.

My last year’s application experience was a good learning experience. The score board was:

Applied Short listed Final result Reasons

IIM-A(PGPEX) No Negative Lower experience, lesser GMAT(710!)

IIM-C(PGPX) Yes Negative Lower experience profile which was enough to arouse them, but failed to inspire them for final admit!

ISB Yes Negative Their own feedback blames my unpolished interviewing skills. I concur. Point noted, action plan to be put in place.

Hass(UCB) No Negative No cues form Adcom. Once they took application money, they stopped being collaborative! I do think that my application couldn’t create much impact.

Tuck No Negative Ditto

LBS No Negative Ditto

Hell, the score board looks like batting record of Venkatpati Raju! But some sense-making exercise tells me this:

International school fiasco:

1. Bad choice: LBS, Tuck were simply not my type. I wish to stay within Tech, albeit in a business strategy role. LBS and Tuck are unlikely choices for someone like me.

2. Bad preparation : Haas is one of the most difficult schools to get into. Most top tech people apply at Haas, Stanford and MIT. For a full time Indian non IITian techie, who has never worked abroad, it will take a lot of specific application strategy to break into this elite school. And I simply prayed. Also, should have visited the school when I was in US for 2 months.

Indian school fiasco:
1. Sub-optimal performance in interviews, communication.
2. Nebulous vision about career.
3. Lack of rigorous school research.

I hope to use this learning in this year’s applications. I am already through the admission process of SP-Jain’s PGPM program. It was a remarkable learning experience, the details of which I would let out in my next post.

As I reported earlier my CAT attempt was a joke as I didn’t study for even 15 mins this year for it. A far cry from my earlier days in 2002-2003 when my life used to revolve around it. Though I was rather pleased with the performance after I checked my marks(a practiced ritual in those days. Can’t help it!) I thought I had CAT by his tail this time.

Alas, the worst scripts are not written by god anymore and the job has been handed over to the IIM honchos who keep changing their preferences each year with no indication at all before the test. The result was declared yesterday and I was excited to see my score:

In fact, I was so excited that the fact that the result page showed no interview calls skipped my mind completely. Yes, I was looking at my best CAT score ever with my best sectional performances but still I was more unlucky than ever too! As it turned out, my quant score of 91.95%ile missed the cutoff set by not one, two by ALL IIMs by a whisker and because of that my other numbers lost their sheen in toto.

I am still having hard time understanding the meaning of cutoffs set by IIMs. Back in old good days, I remember sectional cut off was the minimum score to ensure that a candidate who is weak in a section doesn’t get in. Hence the sectional cutoffs used to be set to about 84-85%. But today can you say =~92%ile is a low score to an extent that the other good scores in other sections gets overridden? And if it is why dont IIMs declare upfront what is the good score in their view.

For me personally this event doesn’t hold much significance as for me joining a 2 yr course with freshers might have been a decision which would have taken a lot of thought. My heart goes out to people who were sidelined just because they were unlucky to find favor with the whims and fancies of IIMs.

I hate the eccentricity IIM admission staff pride themselves in. They do it in PGP and they do it in PGPEX. And lucky them, they always manage to get extolling tomes written about them by a servile Indian media. They should thank the vast talent India has for this.

So in the end my brain could not persuade my heart to apply for NUS/Judge/CMU Tepper. So that says it all. This is prolly going to be the end of road for my Bschool plan this year.

My Haas application is under review right now. Yesterday the admission staff had informed me that they haven’t received my TOEFL score which came as a surprise to me. I promptly wrote back and forwarded my order summary from TOEFL.org. Thankfully, today I got a mail that they were able to locate my score and my application is now ready for review. Glitches of these kind happen everywhere I am forced to guess now.

Anyway I am not hopeful about Haas after my rather negative results. Though I do think that there is a cultural fit for me at Haas and I hope they see it too.

So in the end, it does look I am standing at the end of the tunnel. I have to start on my plan B. After making one that is.

Okay, so the headline seems like a case of sour grapes. But it feels demoralizing to say “I have been dinged”. And thats happening too often off late.

Though, this one wasn’t a surprise. Interview calls for EA rounds had started trickling out from Hanover in Oct last week. And by Dec, even R1 applicants started finishing their interviews. Though some people have reported waitlist status today, which in my view was the best possible result they could have today.

With this, and almost no hopes from Haas, which is my last “alive” application, I come to the dead end today. I can’t make up my mind for Judge/NUS somehow. Though my brain says I should apply to Judge, as its a free application and I have already submitted my TOEFL to them. But my heart refuses to give me a adrenalin rush to get started with the application.

Damn.

I submitted by application for UC Berkeley for their R2 deadline a few days ago. Didn’t find time to post this bit of info here. Work has been hectic.

I got very less time to go through the essays and the application before I turned them in. Blame it on my system bug – procrastination. Not sure if I could have improved them more.

Haas is the most difficult school to get into after Stanford, according to the acceptance rates- adammarkus
Hence, I am not counting much on this school. Specially after a few of my recent results, my confidence was low. In fact, the thought of passing on Haas this year came to my mind. But in the end, I went ahead as Haas has been my dream school and I absolutely wanted to apply at it.

Fingers crossed a bit. Haas adcom please find some reasons to get interested in me, reasons which ISB/LBS/Tuck didn’t manage to find!

I got my TOEFL score today! I was expecting that they mail people people when the scores are ready, but it seems like they don’t. As today “15 biz days” time limit expired, I went to the official site, logged in and found my score under a gift wrap right there waiting for me.

I got a decent 112! Was relieved when I saw this figure. As I wrote earlier, I won’t have been surprised to see a score around 100. So in the end, it seems I did well in the exam. Here is the break up(out of 30 in each section) I got:

Reading: 30
Listening: 30
Speaking: 23
Writing: 29

So I lost 7 out of 8 total lost marks in the speaking section. Hmm. But as I said in my last post, one needs to practice hard for this task in order to score well. And my preparation was superficial at best, hence not complaining.

I am happy with my writing section performance for sure. On the GMAT I had got 5/6 which is not great(measly 60 percentile). But here 29 looks decent. Seems like writing rubbish on blog sites and frenzied application essay writing are getting counted.

So I wrote TOEFL yesterday. Had booked this slot about 14 days ago, thought had not started preparation until 1-2 days before the exam. And to make things difficult in the exam yesterday, I had NOT taken a single full length mock test before. Blame it on the ISB result date (20 Nov) and LBS shortlist(12th nov) which took most of my mindspace than TOEFL could.

I knew from the outset that speaking section will be the toughest and hence no surprises there! But, I realized only yesterday that listening section poses its own unique challenges. First, there is too much to listen and sometimes too long lectures. Second- you need to make your notes while you are listening, as the questions which follow can ask for details. This is the hardest part as when you write down, you could possibly miss some details and tone changes in the audio. Third, the test simply put is outrageously lengthy and your initial enthusiasm can die down pretty early.

Anyway, my final impression about my performance on the test goes like this:

1. Reading: A walk in the park if you are used to handling the passages of GMAT and CAT exams. There were about 42 questions and I would be disappointed if I got less than 39 right in this section.
Overall performance rating: 10/10

2. Listening: As I mentioned above, presents its own challenges. Once will do well to practice this section before exam a couple of times. Not too tough otherwise.
Overall performance rating: 8/10

3. Speaking: The trickiest section on the test without a doubt. Practice will go a long way in improving score in this section. The qualities required to do well in this section, as I learnt are:
1. Know each question type and know what all things you need to cover in your speech.
2. While the question is being presented to you, they read the question text which is presented to you rather slowly, so you can quickly go through the text and add the saved time to your speech preparation time.
3. Keep an eye on the recording time count down timer. I didnt when I was answering the second questions and was at my last point when the time was up and my response got truncated. Hope they don’t penalize heavily for this folly.
Overall performance rating: 6/10

4. Writing: Easier than the ones you find at GMAT. Though I got a topic in the opinion essay where I couldn’t of many points to write. You need a bit of luck, but can do a decent job even when you run out of it..
Overall performance rating: 7/10

So, the summary of all this, in short, is that I messed up a few times on the test due to lack of my experience with the test. I made some errors(truncated response in one question, 45 secs response when 60 sec response was asked for, etc) on the speaking section and I just hope that I manage a score of 20+ in this section. Overall, I think I am looking at a score of 100-105 which I am not sure is good enough for all the schools. Hell me!

My fingers crossed…

P.S. Forgot to add, those who are planning to take TOEFL must look at this excellent site(which I came to know of only a day before my test, but still owe 70% of my speaking section marks to them):
TOEFL tips by Jason

Final decision for ISB out and as I feared yesterday- I am finding myself writing this ding post. How I hate this….

I followed some posts by some other applicants and here are my initial impressions about the offers:

1. IIT brand is perhaps the number one differentiating factor for applicants, especially in IT domain.

2. If you are in IT and not from IIT, well its tough but not impossible to get in. As everyone says, you need to differentiate yourself from other IT and IITians. NGO work, extra currics like sports, etc help. But don’t count on these to distance yourself away from other similar applicants. You need some extra punch to barge your way in.

3. Diversity is hot. If you are from an unconventional industry, great. Just make sure you dont goof up anywhere and you should be in(unless ofcourse you run out of luck big time).

For me, here is the thinking process right now:

1. Look ahead and submit the best applications for other business schools. Haas and Judge are in my mind right now.

2. Then introspect and devise a game plan for this year. I wrote CAT 4 days ago. Should I try to use it for SPJAIN regular MBA? Need to make up my mind.

3. After this year’s apps are done, depending on the results, plan for next year’s strategy. I seriously am thinking of following my long cherished dream of starting my own venture. I initially planned to get an MBA before this, but at this moment don’t wish to make it a mandatory requirement. I know its a big step, but I must act now.

More musings later. For now, I feel down. But not out.

I never knew I would be writing this. My “better half in waiting”, who had bought a CAT form for me in a bid to get me tied up in India for next year too. She had sensed from my thoughts that I would fall for a better school and would not think much before taking up some Bschool in US. And hence the CAT form so that I get some more Indian Bschool options.

I had decided against sitting for the test after I got into this world of GMAT and top Bschools such as Tuck, Haas, LBS and ISB. I knew I won’t be able to study for the exam and CAT is the last exam on earth to treat you with respect if you are without a good preparation. I had, and still have, doubts about my “fit” to IIMs now as I would have close to 6 years experience by july 2009. Yes, I have grown old…

Anyway, I didn’t get any chance to study for CAT at all during this year and was in two minds till the night of 15th Nov whether to go to the exam center to flex some muscles of my brain or sit at home and focus on my Haas application and upcoming TOEFL exam. In the end, I chose the former option and went to the center, and spent 2.5 hours attempting paper in a totally relaxed manner(just the way I am writing this post right now!).

In the end, I think I did not do a bad job in the test. I was not sharp and fast as I used to be long ago but still managed okay. The result will be declared in first week of Jan. I hope I don’t find myself waiting for it as anxiously as I used to at one time- something which will happen only if I get at least one admit by then. ISB you listening?