Sunday, July 30, 2006

Results from the previous week

The last week has been both painful and productive!!!

Painful because I had to slog thru the entire week. I would have hardly slept for 5 hrs everyday and this includes the weekends also. The Sun feels hotter, the AC feels chiller and everything was in a daze. But if all the pain is gonna produce so much, i might as well bear the pain for the next two months.

So - how productive was I??? I have written 5 out of 6 Harvard essays. This means that i have almost cleared the most important hurdle of the essay marathon - getting the first one out of way. Everyone says that the first ones are the most crucial and the most time consuming. I have almost finished them, that too in a week. I accept that this was possible because i had done much of the work lot before. The self introspection, the goals, why MBA, why this school have all been decided even before i started preparing for my GMAT. All that's pouring out now.

I agree that the essays are far from complete. They don't even satisfy the word count at the moment. They are yet to be reviewed in detail. All these, i hope, will happen during this week.

Once the HBS essay reviews are done, i am planning to start the HBS application. I will send the reco invitations and ask my recommenders to work on them. I guess i will start with Stanford or Kellogg next. Both the school's essays are long and pretty open ended. But in any order, these will be the next two. Then it will be Wharton i think. Then Chicago and Columbia, in that order. Will do LBS in R1 only if i have time. Else it will be R2, along with some other schools i have in mind.

At this rate, i think i can do all 7 (well, effectively 6) over the next two months. Let's see how it goes...

6 comments:

Ramkumar said...

machi, i am not sure about what mba and why the schools and u know i have less time after completing the test.
Shud i start finding answers now itself.
Now,...don't talk abt philosophy. i want practical solutions.

Iday said...

Philosophy??? LOL :)

If you dont have a clear idea about why u wanna do an MBA and which schools you are gonna apply, you are not doing this right machi. You need to be clear about all that.

These were the questions i asked myself and found answers to, even before i started working on GMAT. It was like "This is what i want to do, this is where i want to go and to do that GMAT is the first step".

Do some digging/soul-searching/self-introspection now and get some clear ideas about what u wanna do/be...

FSM said...

How many schools are you applying to? 7 in R1 plus a few more in R2? Dude be careful not to stretch yourself too thin.

Iday said...

Hello FSM. Thanks for your views. I have replied in yor blog.

It is pretty demanding to apply to so many schools i agree.

Ramkumar said...

machi, i know what i want. What i don't know is where i will get.
I don't need soul-searching but i need net-searching - precisely in which i am the weakest. :(
My question is when is the high time i know all the info. u know i am exactly in the middle of my prep.

Iday said...

okay!!!
see, this is like this, atleast for me.

There are hundreds of Bschools all over the world. And you wont enjoy ur education if u end up in the wrong place. So u HAVE to investigate about the kind of schools where u want to be.

The high time is NOW, because u have to report scores to these schools. More importantly, u have to check out various other factors reg these schools. this is not net-searching. all the schools have well informed web sites. This is simply a job going through their admission pages and perhaps checking some MBA forums to get to know abt the schools. The more complex work of tracing down alumni, speaking to alumni or current students etc can be done later.

It is extremely important that u send ur scores to 5 of ur most preferred schools and thereby save urself around $150.