GMAT - pre-MBA , during-MBA and post-MBA

As an applicant, when I started preparing for the GMAT this is what I told myself, "It's the one thing thatz in my hand and I better do the best I can". Unfortunately I didn't do well in my first GMAT. I barely crossed the 80th percentile on quant and was devastated coz I always thought I was good at math. I knew it was not reflective of my actual abilities and hence re-took the test and was satisfied with my new score. I was relieved that the whole GMAT thing was over once for all. But it was surprising to see that GMAT and MBA degree go hand in it for a long long time.
I toured 4 b-schools in the US and what I've observed is that the GMAT ghost haunts you forever. Most of these schools had notice boards roaring with ads of GMAT-tutors, special GMAT coaching discounts for students at that university, Math-tutoring etc etc. I was surprised to see that. I wondered why on earth someone would put thoses notices there? Was it for visitors like me? I was confused. But soon things became clearer. As adcom reps at the information sessions spoke about the job search, job prospects and career profile building they told how GMAT was a 'very important parameter' in job interviews. You see, it doesn't matter if you have a great GPA in your liberal arts class or great verbal scores on your GMAT that boosted your total GMAT score. Companies, especially financial companies and consulting companies, specifically look at your quant score for estimating your analytical ability. Inevitably, the career magmt. centers in most schools have to suggest their low-GMAT students to try and re-take the exam and improve their quant scores.
Much has been discussed about this topic, remember the GMATClub blog post by Linda Abraham of accepted.com. I do wish to add something to what was said in that article. In another instance, I've seen one of my fellow bloggers postpone her application process by one round just because she met with an adcom at a top-3 school who suggested her to retake the GMAT to improve her post-MBA job prospects.
Does all this mean that there is no hope for low-GMAT scorers? I say no.Your GMAT score matters depending on the kind of job you wanna do post-MBA. If you want to work in creative fields like media or entertainmentt and non-traditional fields like non-profit management then a low-GMAT score doesn't necessarily put you at a disadvantage. Also, one can highlight other academic successes on resume such as a scholarhsip or tution waiver from your UG or MBA school. Getting a 100% tution waiver from your b-school tells a lot of positive things about you to your employer.I've seen this atleast with one of my friends who graduated this May.
All said, applicants done with GMAT can't yet forget its implications on their career. Am I out of scope for this?

Emory visit and interview experience

November, I thought, was the most eventful month of my applications season - with an interview, 1 school visit and 2 application submissions. But I think december is gonna beat it. The very first week of December, I attended a super saturday(at Emory Goizueta) and gave interviews for 2 schools. And now I'm waiting to hear from NYU & am keeping my fingers crossed on Emory's decision.

The super saturday event at Emory was informative in terms of providing details about the schools and giving an overall feeling about the school, which is very important for me. And I also scheduled my interview the same day. So lots of info. to get into my head and lot more things to deliver too :)

The day started with a women's breakfast at 8am(I know, I know - very early for a saturday morning - but hey, afterall they had so much to do in one day).It was a casual chat with current students, alumni and adcom folks. It was suprprising to see that 2 amongst the 7 speakers had their spouses enrolled in the 2Y MBA pgm along with them! Good for them!

I met a couple of applicants like me. After the women's chat I went to the room where Q&A with adcom was scheduled. The adcom asst-director,Kate Piasecki, was very friendly. I had already met her in September an MBA Tour event. There were almost 50-60 prospective students in the session. And there were around 25-30 students attending a school tour at the same time. A total of 80-90 I'd say. A lot of them were from the Atlanta area.

I then skipped the Q&A with students coz I had already scheduled to meet a couple of students later,more on this following. Next, I took the school tour. A first year student showed us around. The Goizueta building is kinda shaped like a 3/4 circle with a nice lawn in the centre. Apparently this lawn is where free drinks are served on Thursday :). Each of the 2Y and BBA folks have seperate floors for them. A unique artifact was the coca-cola trading floor from the older days NYSE. The coca-cola name appeared conspicuously in the entire Goizueta building.

Next I had a casual meeting scheduled with a couple of last season MBA-applicant-bloggers missionmba and ahembeea. After months of reading their every single blog post it was nice to meet these souls in person. There were a couple of us prospective students meeting with them. After 20 mins of talking I suddenly realized that I had a simulation class to attend. I quickly bid byes to all and ran.

The class/session had already begun. Not just applicants but Assoc. Dean J.B.Kurish, some profs and alumni and current students for both 1Y and 2Y MBA pgms were present there. It was a nice session and the professor, Mr.Robert Kazanjian, simulated a class session with a case study of Dell's strategy in the late 90's and early millenium. It was very interesting and all visitors were encouraged to participate. BTW there were a couple of visitors from India attending the event through webconference, how kewl is that for an information session!

Next there was a scheduled lunch with current students, but I skipped it coz my interview was coming up next. I went to a lonely place, and read through my notes and then went to the interview. Pretty standard questions. In the order of asking, the questions were : Walk me through your resume, why MBA, why now, why Goizueta, what core value of Goizueta would you identify yourself with, any questions for the interviewer and anything else I would like to add about me and that wasn't already covered in the interview. The whole interview went very very unbelieveably fast. It completed in just 20-25 mins!!! It was nice to know that quite a few Goizueta interviews last 25 mins or so such as Hakuna Matata's last year. I don't think I did my best in the interview. The only thing +ve about it was the alum who took my interview said,"Sounds like you are very passionate about what you wanna do". Is that a good sign? Only time will tell.

After that I wrapped up and left the campus.If you are interested in visiting Goizueta and can wait till Jan I suggest you to attend the next Super Saturday event scheduled on Jan 23,2010.

That's it for now, coming up next is my Ross interview experience. Keep blogging!

How to prep. for admissions Interview?

I'm done with 3 interviews now and feel that I'm eligible to pass on some dough to you ;P. Seriously speaking, it's to express my gratitude to all those resources that helped me in my prep that I'm writing my post.
If you have been active on the blogosphere you wud've read a lot of posts like Xlick's NYU interview prep. report or Hari's tips for interview preparations etc. I don't want to repeat their good advice but just to add my 2 cents to this here I go:
I start my preperations going through the school's website for the (n+1)th time and taking notes of the school's specific activities in my field of interest - let's say entrepreneurship. I try to see if the school has any specific research centers or student-managed funds for use in the specific field, ex.the Wolverine fund of the Ross School. I also try to find info about what intership oppurtunities specific to my field of interest are available at the school. Also, I make a note of the companies that might have tie-ups or for-free projects planned with the schools, the geographical proximity of my dream-companies to the school etc. For ex. someone planning a career in entertainment can choose a college near LA or near NYC. Be sure to mention these points in the answer to 'why MBA' question which is 99.9% probable to come-up in any b-school interview.
Next step is to write down a list of the possible questions that you can expect to be asked. There are hundreds of resources that can help you with this preparations. A few are
1) Clearadmit interview wiki
2) GMATclub's resources like this and this
3) Blogs of current applicants who are going through the same process as you
Now that you have a list of questions, frame your answer to each questions. This part is something that no one can help you with. But you take help from your essays. Also write down a list of your life-enriching experiences - work, personal, academic or community related - and try to see if you can fit in these stories in your answers to the interview questions. Remember - It is on you, and only you, to highlight the different aspects that make you the special person that you are. The interviewer will not ask you specifically if you have you lead your high school team to the state championships, you tell him that to highlight your leadership and sportsmanship.
Last but not the least do a mock interview with a friend or your partner and ask them to be honest in their feedback. They might not tell you specifics about the MBA related topics and answers but they can surely help you with body language and eye contact which , don't forget, are equally important.

A lightweight MBA-applicant netwroking site created by a co-applicant

Hey folks!
Check out this site.
This was put together by a co-applicant 'go2bizSkool' who I've come to know thru gmatclub.

The site is very simple to navigate.
Do put in your profile there and help us track the 2009-2010 mba-application season.

NYU visited and submitted

Last weekend this time I was driving back home from NYC.Earlier that week I visited Stern. And right now am sitting peacefully with a submitted application to the school.
Stern essays are really unique. I think Stern makes sure that you write its essays from the scratch and don't ctrl+c, ctrl+v from some other school essays. Stern directly asks you the three important questitons - Why MBA , Why Stern and Why YOU? That's it, those are the three essays. And as for the legendary essay #3, there have been so many rumored stories about the creativity applicants have shown-right from someone sending a cooked sushi to sending a door with 'Let me in' written on it. As for me I have creatively decided to be uncreative. But have tried not to be bland in my 500 word essay.
My visit to Stern turned out better than I expected. Thr building reminded me of the Kellogg building. The location is totally different from all the schools I've visited so far. It just so happens that you are walking across the streets of NYC and suddenly you are in front of Stern. There are tons of folks walking all over the place. The place itslef is so lively. I liked the location, which is one of the reasons I'm applying to Stern.
Surprisingly for a weekday, there were around 70 vistors(yeah 70) that day. After an interesting class visit, I joined a coffee chat with current students. BTW the coffee was for free (again something that was unique to Stern). We were later led on tours by the graduate ambassadors. Our tour guide was a very friendly 2nd year. She showed us around and even let us through the 'silent study room' where the current students were all smiles looking at the huge prospective students crowd.
A very impressive thing happened during the school visit. The famous Prof.Okun paid us a surprise visit and shared with us his reasons for liking Stern and working there. Now did that ever happen to you at any other school?
Overall my Stern visit contributed a lot in understanding the culture of the school,which was the main purpose of my visit. As an international applicant, I'm glad I had the oppurtunity to visit all the schools I did so far. My next stop is down South...Emory here I come.

Ross on my mind

The title of the post is as it appears coz of various reasons. If you have been a Ross fan,am sure you would've heard about its latest rankins ranging from #2 ranking in Aspen Institute's beyond-grey-pinstripes to the #1 ranking for Leadership development in the past 2 weeks. To add to this the b-school forums are roaring with yeah's of Ross applicants who received invites for interviews and aargh's from ppl who haven't yet.
Also lastnight, I attended the Ross worldwide club day event. There was this interesting session on Business Sustainability in the wake of climate changes by Prof.Andrew Hoffman. Although the majority of the ppl there were alumni, I did meet some prospective applicants.Although the event was for alumni,I did get a good feel (as if I hadn't had enough already :D) about the school. Most importantly I could see how involved the Ross alums are with the school even years after graduating.
P.S.Ross if you are hearing, am still waiting :)
P.P.S : 11/20/09 I did hear back from Ross :)

My very first interview

I am done with my Kellogg interview...and I can't believe it is over.o.k.,it's not totally over yet....I'm a R2 applicant and hence have a lot more in my plate to work on.
The interviewer,called X,was an alumni of the school. X and I scheduled to meet on a weekday evening. As always my sweet husband,my b-school journey supporter, accompanied me. I reached around 20 mins early and waited outside the rendezvous point. X came in 5 mins early from the meeting time and we quickly grabbed some coffee and sat down on a table.
I noticed that X had already highlighted certain portions in my resume.I'm was thinking, is he going to ask all these questions from my resume?
Anyways, X started off the interview by giving me some guidlines about the whole importance of interview and also warned me not to get worried if he starts scribbling on the paper while I'm talking. I noticed that he had already written down some statements (i think those were questions) on a sheet of paper.
First X introduced himself in a very detailed casual way and started off by asking me to 'run through my professional resume'. I did it - in a fine way, I guess.I spoke in a way as to highlight my varied experience on different client projects and also some achievements.
Next question , Why Kellogg, Why now? I mentioned about the various aspects of Kellogg that attracted me and also quoted the programs and clubs that were relevant to my career goals.X built on it and asked me what other clubs at Kellog I would be part of. I answer promptly and also drop an idea for a new club that I had in mind....I could see some eyebrow raising (in a +ve way i'd say).
X then asked me about difficult situation in a team,what kind of a leader I am.
A somewhat different question , or may be a regular questions put in a different way was-what are you proud of.I am satisfied with the way I answered.
Then X asked me, "I don't get to see your application. All I have is your resume. So tell me,what do you think your application's weaknesses are'. I answered it too.
Later X asked me about a failure experience and then opened up the table for me to ask him questions. I asked about a club I'm interested in and something that he was part of too. I ask a couple of other questions.
X had already given me biz card card at the beginning of the interview and told me that I can get in touch anytime between now and the application submissions for adding any more info to what we discussed in the interview.
Finally we said best wishes to each other and departed. As I sat at the coffee table I couldn't help but feel good about the amicably persona somehow all Kellogg alumni seem to have...hmm...The one thing I regret is inspite of having excellent extra -curricular expereince I failed to highlght it in my answers... :(.
But overall not too bad for a first interiew :). I walked in feeling absolutely no pressure and that helped. I don't know what the result would be, but I'll just hope for the best.
P.S. Thanks to the resources on gmatclub and clearadmit for all the help :)