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!

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.

School visit - Preface

Hello all, It's been a long time (atleast in my blogging world :P) since I posted. I've been busy , as must be most of you out there targeting Round 1 deadlines.
Last week I visited Kellogg and Ross , 2 schools that I'm targeting for Round 1.
My visit experience was,im simple word, "Extremely useful". All the current students I met with were so so helpful...I have only good words to day about them :)
I'm dead occupied right now with K and R applications. Will post a eloborate school visit experience soon. Keep blogging and keep visiting.

Chow!