What if

With an admit from Duke, my application season has come to an end. I'm 2 for 2 with an admit from Ross as well. I should be happy at my success rate despite my age, gender, nationality and professional background supposedly working against me. However, I've got this nagging feeling deep down that I could have put in a few more apps to say Kellogg and Sloan. But then, what am I missing out on by not attending Kellogg/Sloan (assuming I could get in) ?

When I researched B-schools in fall, Ross and Fuqua jumped out at me as being best suited for my post-MBA goals with Ross having an edge. Try as I might, I had a tough time tying my goals to what Kellogg and Sloan had to offer. So despite their perception as better schools, they were not better than Ross/Fuqua for me.

So far, I'm holding on to the view that Ross/Fuqua are brand names that will at least get me in front of recruiters in my target industry. The specialized academic offerings that Ross has to offer should actually give me a leg up over applicants to similar jobs from schools with more associated prestige.

But what if I'm wrong and as unlikely as it sounds, overall brand trumps school strength in a specific area ?

Where's the magic ?

So I submitted my application to Chicago GSB on the R1 deadline. I had a few friends review my essays. One of them said I had done a great job of why Chicago and showed good industry knowledge. Another said my opening was very catchy and my goals very specific. I even got a "your goals were too specific !!!". They liked my second essay too. Essay 3 really allowed me to express myself and show a side of me I could not have otherwise. I really had fun with it.

But I didn't get any oohs and aahs over my essays which makes me worry that I might not stand out. As an applicant from an over-represented applicant pool, do I need to sprinkle fairy dust all over my essays ?

Content over style.

I recently finished reading two books that I had been putting off for a long time. Freakonomics and The Witch of Portobello (by that guy who also wrote 'The Alchemist'). Now this blog is not meant to be a critique of the two books but rather an observation of the hold the two books had over me as I read them. The Witch of Portobello is a work of fiction and therefore the author had leeway to introduce whatever he needed to spice up the plot and keep the reader enthralled. On the other hand, Freakonomics was factual in that it relied on actual real life data to draw a connection between causes and effects.

Now one would expect a work of fiction with it's implied suspense, drama and human emotions to trump a book by an economist relying on cold hard numbers. I could identify with Paulo Coelho's message and found myself nodding in agreement through many parts of the book without realizing it so it was definitely a good read. However, while I skipped through some of Coelho's dreamy passages to get to the end faster, Freakonomics kept me interested in each and every word from cover to cover. Steven Levitt achieved this without the use of metaphors and other figures of speech that come naturally to gifted writers.

This gives me hope that I don't need to be able to make the adcom laugh at my anecdotes or move them to tears on reading the story of my life. As long as I can present my ideas in a coherent, compelling manner I should be able to make my essays interesting to the reader and present a good picture of me.

Any older applicants out there ?

It's only been a week since I started blogging about my MBA application process and am glad I did so. In this time, I've been able to offer advice and receive support for some of my views. It's also been interesting going through the blogs of other applicants as some intensify their GMAT preparations while those who already have their target score agonize over their choice of schools. Speaking of which, I've had to eliminate H/S/W from the list of schools I'm thinking of applying to. Why ? Because I'm too old for them. As if being a MIT(male indian techie) wasn't bad enough, I'm also over the age of 28 which is another strike against me since H/S/W favor younger applicants. This is not to say that a 34yr old neurosurgeon who works for doctors without borders in Darfur won't get accepted to the holy trinity but not all of us have that kind of wow factor in our profiles.
So unless I manage to do something earth shattering within the next 3 months :-) I will need to focus my efforts towards schools that are more "older" applicant friendly.

A pleasant surprise

Today, around noon I emailed a friend of a friend who went to a top B-school and works for a bulge bracket bank on wall street. Within 5 minutes I got a reply back from him. I was probably lucky in that my email was on top of his inbox list when he took a break for lunch but it was still nice of him to take the time to respond and offer to help me understand the life of an investment banker. Sadly, he did mention that his post-MBA career does not leave him much time to pursue his hobbies. So those stories about having to work from 8am till 2am 7 days a week are not the exception but the norm. I hope to talk to him some more about his school and maybe get a stock tip or two ;-)

And we're off.....

I'm an MBA applicant to the class of 2010 and I've already taken the GMAT and scored over 700. While a lot of applicants would be elated with this score, I realize it is but one part of the whole picture that is the B-school application. Also, since I belong to the over-subscribed Indian IT applicant pool, I know I have my work cut out for me.

I work for a non-Bschool friendly company and hope to meet fellow applicants through this blog. Rather than badger uninterested co-workers with my the nitty gritty of my application, I prefer sharing my experiences with fellow applicants so that we can mutually benefit from each others experiences.

Today is July 9th, 2007. I hope to celebrate the one year anniversary of my blog with a post about how I'm preparing to pack my worldly possessions and head off to B-school.