Pre-holiday push

It never seems to fail that the week before Christmas is one of the busiest of the year at work. I guess everyone's trying to get things wrapped up before they go on vacation for the holidays. This year sure isn't an exception - this week has been crazy at work. I have back-to-back-to-back meetings and conference calls all day (and sometimes even am double booked in simultaneous meetings and conference calls). Then at about 6:30 or so the meetings all stop and I can finally start doing the work I actually need to accomplish that day. The upside of this is that it's made it easier to wait for decisions from Chicago and Duke, since I don't have much time to think about waiting. Hopefully I'll be one of the lucky ones to get a call from Chicago when they start contacting the admits today. Of course, the odds are pretty good that I'll be in a meeting so I'm actually looking forward to the voicemail. I guess this is good practice for the kind of time management skills I'll need at school.

Motivation

Or more accurately, the lack of motivation. Ever since getting the admit call to Kellogg, I have not been able to focus on work. My productivity has dropped dramatically, and I spend more time than ever checking out the BW and GMATClub forums. Part of it is the fact that I know that I'll be resigning from my job in 6 months so I really have the mindset that I'm just marking time at work, and also unfortunately the work I'm doing at the moment isn't all that exciting.

I can't wait for next week to be over. First, I'll have my decisions from Chicago and Duke, and can start more seriously thinking about where to enroll. Also, it means the beginning of a 2 week vacation for the holidays. It can't come soon enough.

Still waiting

So, you ask, what's it like to be a newly admitted MBA student? Well it's much less stressful, to be sure, than to not have an admit yet. But it still involves quite a bit of waiting. I've already read through the entirety of the Kellogg admitted students portal, but it's still too early to make an enrollment decision. I like Kellogg a lot, but also like Chicago a lot so at a minimum I am going to wait until next week's Chicago decision. If I do get accepted to Chicago, then I probably won't be making a decision until after both schools' admitted students weekend. If I don't get into Chicago, then my decision becomes easier since I haven't gotten an interview invite from HBS.

What about Duke and Columbia? Well, this week I'm going to withdraw my application to Columbia. I just never got as excited about Columbia as I did about the other schools I applied to. I was really impressed by Duke when I visited. It's got a solid healthcare program, the students were incredibly friendly, everything seemed very well run, and the facilities were very impressive. But, I wasn't excited about the possibility of living in Durham, NC, and while the quality of the program is very high, it doesn't match Kellogg. But with the decision date so close, and with the impressive campus visit, I plan to see what the outcome is before making any final decisions on Duke.

I know it's premature to start weighing Kellogg vs. Chicago vs. Duke since I've only actually been admitted to one school. Quite possibly, I won't have a decision to make. But with nothing else to do for admissions, I can only wait, and think about what if's?

I'm Back!

Wow it's been a while, and a lot has happened since the last time I posted. The weather has turned wintery cold (there was even a dusting of snow on the ground when I woke up this morning). After two years of dominating the news, the Presidential Election finally ended. There were holidays and vacations. The New York Giants are off to their best start in franchise history. I applied to 5 schools in round 1 (not exactly the list I wrote about in my last post). Oh, yeah, and I WAS ADMITTED TO KELLOGG!

So why have I decided to restart this blog now? Well, I think I lost the inspiration to blog through my application experience because I had been here before, last year. But now, with the admit call, my excitement is back. The experience is new again. My ambitious plan is to blog right through until I graduate, both to keep a journal of sorts for myself, but also to share the experience with my family and friends. Of course, any other interested people who care to read about my experiences are more than welcome here.

So welcome back, and stay tuned.

It's time...

After much deliberation, I've narrowed down my list of target schools to the 6 that I plan to apply to. MIT and Columbia dropped off my short list - MIT because even though it's very strong in consulting, the technology focus just wasn't aligned with my career goals; and Columbia because I just didn't feel the fit with the culture of the school. I think part of this is because I've lived and worked in NYC or the surrounding suburbs just about my entire life, and while I do love NY, part of me wants my MBA experience to include living somewhere else for a few years. So now that that's settled, it's time to focus on preparing for essays and applications.

Not that I haven't focused at all on essays. In some way, ever since I got the bad news from Chicago last December I've been thinking about where I went wrong and how I could improve my essays. Every new project I've been involved with since last fall has given me more material (and one project in particular that I've led will be great essay fodder). And in the past month or so I've been doing a lot of reflection on my career goals, and "why MBA/why now?" for the career essays I'll soon be writing.

So now it's just a matter of getting down to the hard work. HBS and Kellogg have already released essay questions for Fall '09 applications, so those will be the first I work on. It's a bit strange getting started on the application process as a re-applicant, knowing full well the emotional ups and downs that will certainly come. On the plus side, as a re-applicant I don't have the GMAT to worry about (I'm pretty certain none of my dings were because of my GMAT score so no desire to re-take that test), so I'm able to focus 100% on essays much earlier in the process than last year when I wasn't finished with the GMAT until July.

The travel gods smile on me.

Well, sort of. I am in Singapore, and what should have been a nonstop flight from Newark to Sinagpore was diverted to Bangkok for fuel because we got rerouted over China. But other than arriving in Singapore 2 hours late, recently the travel gods have been nice to me. Last month my travel schedule resulted in weekends in Malta and the Dominican Republic, and now this weekend I am at the very nice Amara Sanctuary Resort in Sentosa, Singapore. These are certainly some of the perks I will miss when I give up my current role in the next few months. So this weekend, besides enjoying the tropical weather (current temp 86F, although with the humidity it feels much, much hotter than that), I will be giving some serious thought to positioning and themes for my essays, as well as how to best frame my career goals/aspirations/vision.

In the meantime, as promised in my last post, here are my initial pros/cons on schools. I'll start with the two schools I am considering re-applying to this year. Please recognize that these are my own subjective views, and that the characteristics that I've noted as pro or con are based on what I personally am looking for in a school and not any objective criteria.

Chicago GSB
Pros: academic powerhouse and intellectually rigorous program, high degree of flexibility of curriculum, very strong brand (though not quite as strong as Harvard or Stanford), nice location (I like Chicago) and facilities are top-notch and contribute to a strong sense of community.
Cons: despite efforts to build capabilities and reputation in other areas, still very much known for people looking to go into quantitative fields (I am not); student housing spread out between different neighborhoods (Hyde Park, downtown and northern areas).
Overall impression: I really like Chicago. I liked it when I first started school research last year, and liked it even more after I visited. The students I met and talked to were all very friendly and happy with the school (even the students that didn't work for the Admissions Office), the academics are incredibly strong (even though somewhat tilted towards quant) and professors are easily available to students, and job prospects (even non-quant) are very good.

Harvard Business School
Pros: It's Harvard - the brand name is second to none. Very strong academics and professors that seem to enjoy interacting with students. Best general management focus in the world, which fits with my non-quant career goals. Very large, very influential alumni network. Sections help build community within a large class. Great location (after NYC, Boston is my favorite US city) and facilities.
Cons: Very inflexible curriculum. I'm not entirely sold on the benefit of 100% case study as a teaching approach. Culture is more competitive than many business schools.
Overall impression: Last year, Harvard was my top choice (big surprise there). I do have my concerns about the rigid curriculum and teaching approach, and about the culture (I can be just as competitive as the next guy, but find I learn better in a collaborative environment), but these are minor concerns since the students tend to be positive about use of the case method and the curriculum. While they acknowledge that each class does have people that live up to the HBS stereotype (interviewing people for study groups, ultra-competitive, etc.), they stress that these people are a small minority of the overall class. As I said in my last post, I would still love to go to HBS - the only reason I'm on the fence about applying is whether I think I have a realistic chance of being accepted.

So there you have it. As I continue my research on the rest of my list, I will post my thoughts. Also, since I have another 19 hour flight ahead of me this week, I'll try and put up a post about GMAT prep for all you first time applicants out there.

It's application season again

In case you haven't seen this, HBS released their application calendar and essays for fall 2009 entrance. Not many changes, although there's one less essay needed and less options for the optional essays. And so it begins again.

Over the past month, work has kept me pretty busy, which means not a ton of time to focus on getting ready for application season. Although, I have been asked to lead a project at work that will be great essay fodder, and am also leading a solid project in one of my extracurricular activities, so I guess I could say I'm working on essay content...

You may notice that I've now included the current list of schools I'm considering applying/reapplying to. It's still longer than I'd like; the plan is to apply to 5-6 schools so I'll need to cut 4-5 schools off the list. At this point, based on my research, the most likely candidates for cutting are MIT, Wharton, Duke and INSEAD (the school is great, but the 2nd language requirement will be difficult). I'm also on the fence about HBS. I mean it's an absolutely stellar school and it would be a dream to go there, but after the DWI last year I need to consider how realistic my chances are. I'll post with more detailed pros/cons on the schools once I'm a bit further through my research.