Hurray...

No - this is not for submitting the Stanford Application. I haven't finished it yet. Still pondering over the third essay which is longer than recommended. Also - i want to do a last round of revision before uploading the essays. I really like these essays - they've come out solid.

But now - to the Hurray :) I received my Official TOEFL score card today. Though i already know the scores, it was cool to see it on official document. Seeing a perfect score was, well, thrilling and satisfying at the same time.

So yeah folks - no goof ups. I really did score a 300 in TOEFL :D

I locked the official reports of GMAT and TOEFL in a safe and accessible place, so that i can ogle at them whenever i want to ;)

TOEFL Scores

I called up the ETS guys to know my TOEFL scores. As expected - it is a perfect 300.
Another $150 (test fee of $140 + the call-to-get-ur-scores fee of $10) spent well.

Formality sakes (okay - I agree I wanna boast), this is how I fared in the dreaded TOEFL

Listening: 30
Structure/Writing: 30
Reading: 30
Total: 300
Essay: 6.0


Yippppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :)

Done with TOEFL

Will I???
Wont I???

What is this about? This is the recurrent question running in my mind! One side keeps saying that the answer will be a "Yes you will". But the other side says "No - it might not happen". So, what really am I worried about. Whether I will get a Perfect 300 in TOEFL :)

Yeah folks! Got done with TOEFL CBT and this is what I got

Listening: 30
Structure/Writing: 14 - 30
Reading: 30
Total: 243 - 300

So here we go again "Will I???" ;)

A very long PS: I need to particularly complain about the total lack of professionalism in the Prometric center I visited today. When I compare this with my GMAT test center, today was way below expectations.

To begin with, the whole setting is like a fish market. The place is so cramped for space. They gave me a locker key with a diff code (they handle 3 tests and hence have three test centre codes) and I actually belonged to a test center with a diff code. I was actually sent to a different ID proof verifier and was sent to the right person later. While Pearson check finger prints each time I come out, here I just need to sign a white paper. Nothing to complain about w.r.t the testing equipment - fast paced HP (Pearson had machines from DELL) machines.

The real pain began when the time to report scores came. I just wasn't able to locate Harvard from the long list the software threw out. I called up the "support" staff and she came back and said "We don't know sir. We will not be able to help you with this. You will have to fill it out somehow!" Within the Harvard University, there were like 15 different schools. The shortened version of Harvard occupied almost the entire allowed limit, allowing for only 2 characters for the school type. Ar, Bu, Ce, Dn are some of the shortened versions I remember. And to add to my problem, there were two "Bu"s :) I hope I reported my scores to the right place.

I also wrote the school names in the Report Request Doc they gave. Hope that helps :)

My experiments with TOEFL - D-Day minus 1

I never knew using the headfones wud be such a huge improvement. What was difficult to decipher in my speakers (why?!?!) was pretty clear on my headfones. And hence the improvement in the score. I took the PowerPrep second test today and this is how the scores came.

Listening: 27 (now that's better)
Structure/Writing: 13 - 29 (dint write the essay)
Reading: 10 (gave random answers as i was curious to see the scores of the Listening Section)
Total: 167 - 220 (who cares anymore...)

Verdict - I am doing good. I am feeling good. I couldn't concentrate on the listening today coz my dad was irritatingly insistent on seeing evening news. I don't understand why the news readers have to shout at the top of their voices in a bid to dramatise the news presentation. I don't understand why they have to even dramatize the news show. Heck - not my day.

But I am satisfied with the 27 in Listening. When I started the test, I wanted to finish it and see the entire score. But I was tired to proceed. I'll see the full score tomorrow :)

Good to see I scored well in the two sections i finished completely. Reading is anyway only about concentration. So - I jus wanna get this done now and start concentrating on my essays again.

My experiments with TOEFL - Day 5

I really dint do anything with regard to TOEFL today. Two reasons:
1. I'm really doing well, apart from the listening part
2. I am sure I'd get somewhere around the same score in Listening if i take the second test without my headfones.

So i plan to bring the headfones from office tomorrow night and take the second test. And then it will be off to the test center. Hoping another good show.

I started working on my essays. Started with Chicago, as they are my most complete essays since they were written last. All the essay writing wisdom i had gained over the last 1 month or so had gone into these last set of essays and i really like the Career Progressions essay i had written for Chicago. So i worked on this essay and boy it was tough. Stuff like word counts and bigger picture and the complete profile and everything else comes around to haunt the essay writer at this point. I had a first hand experience of all this today.

I finished working on the Chicago first essay right on time when my reviewer sent me the entire Chicago packet - reviewed. I then incorporated all her comments and modified my new essay based on that. I guess i am done with this essay atleast. But still - this is gonna go through two more reviews before i finalize it. Once the Chicago essay was done, i moved on to Kellogg Career progression essay. While Chicago is 1500 words, Kellogg says 2 pages, which is around 1000 words. Spent some time to recollect the Kellogg complete picture and then got finished with this. Then i moved onto the Wharton Career progress essay which is the same 1000 words as Kellogg is. But the entire Wharton essay packet is so compact that it had to have one incident more than my Kellogg career progression essay.

This was pain - i still haven't been able to shrink the Wharton essay to a reasonable number of words. The Chicago and Kellogg essays are kind of okay. But Wharton was very difficult. Jus when i was fighting with the words, another applicant i am working with called me to say that the strategy has to change now. What she said made life a bit easy and more sense. So i have dropped working on Wharton tonight - will get back to it after i finish my test tomorrow.

So - i feel like i am on the last lap of a long long marathon. I still have to get my Recos done, fill my online apps and finish my essays. This TOEFL is eating up some time for sure. I'm waiting to get done with it ASAP and work full time on these stuff. I want to finish all this by end of this month and concentrate on fine tuning and submitting the apps all thru October.

My experiments with TOEFL - Day 3 & 4

I had a crash yesterday - it has been that kind of a week. I had slept by 2 or 3 every night. Actually i am not able to sleep earlier. To add to it, i had a morning appointment everyday which made me wake up by 8 on all days. I had a tough time on Thursday and a tougher time on Friday at work, trying to fight the sleep and a tired body. So i had nothing else in mind when i returned from work yesterday, but to hit the bed. Surprisingly, that was not to happen. I had to give some GMAT gyan to someone who's taking the test in a few days and then discuss the plans for the next 2 week with a friend. Then i had to think about the discussions i had with my mentor. I never got to finish the thought process as i cud not fight sleep anymore.

Speaking about the discussion i had with my mentor, i followed this up with a discussion with my junior most recommender, who happens to be a college Senior. We were never in the college in the same time, as he is exactly 4 yrs older than me. But still, we have a good rapport right from day one at office. He was my first lead and pretty instrumental in what i am today. Almost all of my early training was under him. Back to the discussion, he had some inputs about my career goals too, which i have to think about now.

Basically me and the three recommenders i have chosen are the lunch gang at work. We have lunch together everyday and lunch time discussions cover a wide area of topics from the corporate bull shit we have to put up with at work to the happenings in the Gulf to the origins and personal hobbies of each of us. So it is not surprising when these people come to me and say "I know what you want to do and this is not all. May be you should say more" or something like "This is not the entire thought process you went through before you chose your next career move". Makes more sense coming from them because much of the thought process involved them too :)

So i am back to square 1.1, thinking about whether the goals summary is complete or whether i have to add more. The goals, on a surface level, do not change much. That cannot happen :) but i am trying to see how far i want to go with these goals. I also have to consider the aspect of being realistic, which is what made me settle with my current goals. But when people who know you well come to u and say "I know you can achieve more and I know you want to achieve more", i have to think about that. I have already thought of a few things. I need to work more on them and give them better shape. I am planning to finish this activity by this weekend.

More on the TOEFL front. I took the powerprep test 1 today and the following are the scores:

Listening: 23
Structure/Writing: 13 - 30
Reading: 29
Total: 217 - 273

I really don't understand if the writing portion occupies so much of the second section! It says it is possible that i can score a 30, by which i understand that all my structure answers are correct. But if that is true, all the structure answers put together come up only to 13??? That sounds strange to me, or is this the normal thing?

I need to work more on the Listening part. I am not able to concentrate - I feel sleepy again. To make life difficult for myself, i forgot to bring my headfones from work. So i am having to listen to the listening exercises on my wall mounted speakers. So it is like sitting in a conference hall or a seminar, compared to the headfone experience, which wud be like a one-to-one talk. But still, i just need to concentrate. I totally missed a few questions and i had to guess. That wont happen on the test day for sure.

Apart from that minor issue, i think i am fine. I will take the next power prep test tomorrow and that will be it. I'll go to work on Monday and Tuesday is test day. Hope it all goes well. I also have plans to finalize a few essays by the next weekend. I must also follow up my recommenders and get their recos done. I wish i can finish them by this week too - i am trying to do that and have given myself the buffer of next week for it. Looks like the last lap is gonna be quite busy :)

My experiments with TOEFL - Day 2

I haven't done any preps reg TOEFL till date. All i did was some self-testing. I am considering myself to be well prepared (after my GMAT preps and performance ofcourse) and i was reassured of this after yesterday's test. So all that i am gonna do is to take the full length prep tests over the weekend and then take it from there. Kellogg's average TOEFL score is 280 and that's my first (or rather only) target. But as ever, i wanna score as much as possible. Unlike GMAT, it is possible to score the complete 300 here. Let's see...

Today, I realized the importance of having a really senior mentor, with whom i have discussed everything in my life. I had sent my Stanford Career goals essay to him - as a reference material for his recos. He then sent a mail to me stating "Your essays need lot of sprucing up man". "This is serious trouble" i thought. Not because he sent that mail, but because there really is something wrong when he sends such a mail.

Now this was an essay not even reviewed by me. I had not reviewed the Stan essays once even by myself. I glanced thru the essays before sending it to him and found many areas where i had to work on. I sent them anyway coz the essay had the stuff i wanted him to see. I expected his comments to be coz of the flaws i had already noticed. So i sent a reply to his mail "What's wrong? Grammar/Structure or Content?" He jus said "Drop in at my place when u r free"

I went in and had one helluva discussion with him. He gave this one line "Your essay doesn't appear to be all of you!" I was thinking "Okay - this man knows everything about me" And then we discussed about all the discussions we've ever had, what he thinks about my career plans and why he thinks it has not been portrayed well over here. He even gave me suggestions as to where i can improve the content etc. You know what, all that made so much sense to me. I was thinking to myself "Perhaps this is what 10 more years of experience and life can do to you".

I cudnt buy everything he said though - he obviously had no Bschool applicant experience :) He told me "Your essay sounds like a sales brochure". We discussed on this part for quite some time, in trying to decide on what's the right mix between BSchool apps being a marketing exercise and BSchool apps being a bizz doc read by ppl who can see thru the crap. He still said "Write like a 24 yr old will write"! Whatever that meant :) But what he did was really good. I am now really sure that i will get some great Recos.

I feel lucky to have senior people around me who know about me on a personal level too. Not only in relation to the BSchool application thing. I have learnt a lot of stuff thru discussing many things about my profession and the rest of the world to these people. Good to see that all those discussions now come handy :)

I had a sneak peak of the BSchool classroom experience in an Intrapreneurship training i attended today. Compared to our company standards, today's class was AWESOME. A well prepared, experienced and energetic faculty, who had a great mix of slides and videos and activities. Add to it a class filled with a diverse mix of people. There was a project lead from the BPO segment, a senior manager from a different segment, a quality person, few Managers-to-be, few team leads like me - it was a good mix. I really enjoyed the session, the perfect proof of which would be the fact that i sat through a 4 hr long class without even thinking about sleeping. This at the end of a sleep deprived week, and i was Impressed. I was giving great reviews to my manager about the sessions. If this can be so much fun, i am sure i am cut out for the 2 yrs at a BSchool!!!

My experiments with TOEFL - Day 1

This is the first in a series of posts i intend to make as i prepare for my TOEFL test on Tuesday. The title has experiments in it coz i have never know someone who'd take a test worth 140 USD in a week. I am being told left, right and center that the test is really easy and with all the GMAT preps, i shud be in a position to do well. But still, this is like taking a joy ride over a week. Literally speaking, i am throwing in 140 USD over 7 days in a bid to make me completely eligible to apply to the school(s) i want to. That's like spending 1000 INR everyday for a week and i have never done that. The only time i remember spending so much money so soon was when i get caught in a shopping spree. And yeah, i havent given myself the freedom of indulging in shopping for quite some time now. In fact, almost 6 months. I last shopped heavily in Feb coz that's when i decided on my heavy priced plans and i needed to save money :) Well, it's been worth it really!!!

All i cud do for TOEFL today was to muse over "buying a prep book - should i??? should i not???" Okay - i am one of those people who want to know everything there is to know about something i am doing/gonna do. This includes simple stuff like going to the tailor to get my dresses stitched. I carefully noticed all the places he made measurements, came back home, thought about what kind of fitting i wud like to have in such and such places and gave him exact details when i go to him. My younger brother standing next to me wud give me this "Do u do this to show the world u r intelligent" kinda look. But that's me. I just want to know stuff.

So for someone like this, having booked a test before even knowing much about it is itself a HUGE deviation. So when the Kellogg folks told me i have no choice and since this is busy season, I had to jump on to the ETS site and book a comfortable date when it was available. I had to take this test, whether i knew about it or not! But i did one thing before i booked the test. I asked a person who had taken the test "How long do u think is required to prepare for TOEFL?" Prompt came the reply "One day". Now i made comparisons and this person was definitely a lot better than me in English. So i said to myself "Two days at most!"

Having booked the test, i had spent the whole of yesterday investigating about the test and trying to figure out if i can get some material to start off with. This test appears to be given less importance compared to GMAT, and this amuses me really coz ppl who appear for both GMAT and GRE have to appear for TOEFL and hence there shud be as much, if not more, info about TOEFL on the net as there is on GMAT. Unfortunately, i dint find a lot of new information about the test from anywhere outside the ETS site. The ETS brochures were of some help as well. Probably i am not looking in the right places, but i tried some 25 to 30 pages listed by numerous string combinations on Google.

Having said all that, now i know enough about TOEFL. I am less fidgety now, atleast on that front, and have actually started worrying about preparations. This is where my musing (the one mentioned in line 1) takes over. Finally, i decided that i would take a practice test and based on my performance decide whether I'd need more material. So i came back home and started taking these questions from the TOEFL sampler, available for free from ETS. This is how i performed:

Listening : 24 correct 3 wrong
Structure: 20 correct 0 wrong
Reading: 17 correct 3 wrong

Not bad for the first day i would say, a day where i woke up by 8 in the morning and had to fight sleep for the latter part of the test. Now i am a lot more confident and if i work thru the weekend, i must be in good shape on Tuesday. Now i am glad that i dint book a date on the week after next coz (1) i wouldn't have been able to sustain this intensity for so long and (2) it would have become boring.

I have 5 more days to go for the test. When i look back at GMAT, i spent the last 5 days with loads of tests and less preps. I guess i am into that mode straight away here. I am trying to gather material. No luck as yet. I am planning to take the two full length PowerPrep tests during the weekend and then do some preps if i get material. Else i will do the famous re-install PowerPrep stuff and take one more test on Monday. On Tuesday, the guys at ETS will have a test ready for me :)

Back to test taking mode

Booked my TOEFL date. The test will be taken on the 19th of this month. Yeah - u read that right. In just about 6 days from now. I spent some real good time investigating about the test, the level of questions etc etc and i found myself comfortable with the whole stuff. I was also in a fix coz i must give time for the ETS guys to report the official scores to the schools before the deadline. Now i have to chose atleast three other schools to which i am planning to apply in R2. This gets tricky now as i haven't given my R2 list any thought. I must also check to see if ANY of the schools i am considering to apply have clauses like Kellogg. I don't want to end up in a situation where i find in the zero hour that i sent the scores to a school that waives it off and have not sent to one that doesn't waive TOEFL.

Preparation wise, i am void. Planning to take Monday off and give this three solid days. There are already signs of one of them going wasted as i jus received an intimation of a school-friends-gathering. Hope i don't spend a lot of time over there. Will i say no to this gathering, i might not coz i expect it to be interesting. And deep inside, i have this feeling that TOEFL isn't really difficult for me to crack. Signs of over confidence??? I hope not!

I have started the process of material collection and the only decent material i cud gather were the two software given by ETS - Sampler and PowerPrep. Still haven't used any of them. Planning to install PP after i make this post and check out if it has as much instructions and section wise stuff as the GMAT PowerPrep Software had. [Update: TOEFL PP has almost zero practice content. It has 2 full legth tests like the GMAT PP.]

Heck i hate this detour, but i guess i am still safe enough coz of the progress i made. No big problem. I might not be able to work on my essays over the next one week, but that i guess is okay. Had some extended discussions with my recommenders today. My mentor said he'll finish all five in the two weeks. We had a intro-discussion today and we have decided to have frequent discussions as and when he requires some info from me. My senior has jus one to work on and he has promised that he will be work on it tonight and get back to me tomorrow. My manager is the slow one and i have to handle him pretty carefully. I have a backup option - my HR manager. But she's on maternity leave and i don't wanna disturb her. I want to finish these recos by the 25th at most. Hope i can push these ppl faster and get work done.

So yeah - over the next one week, watch this space for more info on the TOEFL detour :)