IOMBA Class of 2008/2009
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Friday, December 21, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
MBA - start to finish in 2 months flat!
A brief story about my shot at the GMAT and how I got an admit in the college of my choice!
Was busy with work, suddenly got more responsibilities and added pressure just when I was about to start preparing for my GMAT. But November 15th was the deadline for some colleges, so I had to take my gmat before that.
September 07:
Started my prep in September, and began short listing schools in parallel. But I had a very clear view of what I wanted from my MBA and I had to see where I could get the best one with the minimal fuss.
Having worked in Switzerland for almost a year.. my focus was on an European MBA. I never had that much interest in the US anyway, mba or otherwise. And to go about selecting a school for myself, I thought of what all I want from an mba.
1. We can’t ignore this, how much ever we try to gloss it over; it still is one of the most important factors – the PAY you get after the course and Placement opportunities.
2. Cost of the course
3. Course specialization
4. Avg gmat and toefl and gpa etc – academics and work ex
5. diversity, strength, duration of the course
Taking these into consideration, after some help of 2 IIM profs (my mom n dad ;) ) in short listing the schools, India was never a consideration for me. Even in those colleges here that take GMAT – the avg salary is around USD20k. The World’s Least, not to mention the very famous education system which we have been exposed to for more than 20 years of our life. I decided upon a few colleges in Europe – more specifically Germany and Switzerland. And many interesting colleges had ‘interesting deadlines’ for Round1 and Scholarships. The deadline in question being Nov 15th!!!!!!!!! Holy Cow! So I went ahead and booked my gmat for nov 14th – the children’s day
My Gmat Prep:
In the meantime, I went and got a Princeton 2008 with dvd – finished the book quickly a week or so and then was going through some softcopies of og stuff when I realized PR is just a waste… I regretted buying the book… the dvd was a total sham! (even found a way to hack the online tests ;) ). This book like many ppl already know is just a book for those who want to get out of the 550 rut (if at all there is one), not the one for the 650 and above, fgt 750 with PR!
Was doing some little bits and pieces from here and there.. a couple of practice tests, a cpl of forums. Mukul’s 770 post really helped me a lot and motivated me! Thanks Dude! And shoutouts to nairpraveenk for his wonderful thread.
Now the next thing on the list was toefl, so I booked a date on Oct 21st. I was sure that I would not need more than 2 days for the toefl and took it out of my mind for the time being.
Got an OG 11 and solved it thrice (almost) not continuously.
Did some practice tests in between – the online PR CATs, gprep, power prep, paper tests etc. Hit a sudden low on one of those and panicked and freaked out for a cpl of days then chilled out and got back my groove.
Lesson learnt: take the ups with the lows.. DONOT panic!
October:
Change of roles at work + more pressure + less prep time = lot more pressure!!
Toefl:
Got a toefl ibt book – Delta series with 10 cds – seemed the only book with so much bang for the buck and put it in a shelf and fgt abt it till the 19th.
Got a week off before my toefl and was sitting at home preparing hard for my GMAT.. tat was more imp to me than Toefl.
On the 19th started the ibt book and finished about 70% before I got bored and almost chucked it. Don’t mistake me, the book is very very good – I would recommend it to anybody. It was just that ibt seemed too easy after the gmat prep. Gave my toefl – ripped it! Had fun for a day or two. It was important for me to take these breaks in between. They really helped me reduce the stress.
Back to the schools:
To elaborate a lil bit more on the 5 points I earlier mentioned.
The mba pay in Europe is good – too good – the avg being EURO 70k !!! do the math!
The placement offers you get are in
UBS, DB, CS,BCG, McKinsey, Moody’s, Ferrari-Maserati, BMW, Porsche, Gucci, Lo’real - to name a few. Wide variety, lots of opportunities.
There are a lot of courses which donot have any particular specialization – General Mgmt, Strategy – which was wat I was looking for.
And almost all of the European mbas are a little over a year 14-16 months. You get out fast and have one year more workex and save on your living exp and course fee.
Almost all courses have a very limited class strength 40 – 50 at the max. This results in better bonding and better networking than say around 200-300 ppl in a batch! IMHO
November:
The first school on my list was the IOMBA from Uni of Geneva. I had my eye on this for quite a while now and was very much keen to get into it! But this was the one with the Nov 15th deadline.
So I got busy with the application and my oh my! I had to complete a whopping 7 essays!!!!!!
This was the toughest part in the 2 months – time running, mounting pressure, frustration abt doing your Applcn when you need be busy with GMAT. Dammmmmm!
I went and bought the Kaplan 800… supposedly the book with the toughest Qs…
Finished the book in 3 days and gained immense confidence… I can never overstress the boost this book gave me! Same with the powerprep tests :P
Seven b-school essays in something like 7-10 days is cruel… drain your energy and leave you in a jagged state of nerves.
But I backed myself up and finally it was done… finally the whole application was ready by 10th and I was almost dead!
Gave my GMAT on the 14th, nothing great to write about – missed 2 sitters in Quant – both data sufficiency. Got 650!
Sitting with crossed fingers after that till I got news about my application being selected for the IOMBA class of 08 a few days back!
Dumped the remaining 2 applications I was doing and relaxing now.
I think the things that got me the admit was my killer reco letters and my essays! i am sure about that.
If i can do it, so can YOU!!! what are you waiting for?
If this post has helped you please give your comments.
Was busy with work, suddenly got more responsibilities and added pressure just when I was about to start preparing for my GMAT. But November 15th was the deadline for some colleges, so I had to take my gmat before that.
September 07:
Started my prep in September, and began short listing schools in parallel. But I had a very clear view of what I wanted from my MBA and I had to see where I could get the best one with the minimal fuss.
Having worked in Switzerland for almost a year.. my focus was on an European MBA. I never had that much interest in the US anyway, mba or otherwise. And to go about selecting a school for myself, I thought of what all I want from an mba.
1. We can’t ignore this, how much ever we try to gloss it over; it still is one of the most important factors – the PAY you get after the course and Placement opportunities.
2. Cost of the course
3. Course specialization
4. Avg gmat and toefl and gpa etc – academics and work ex
5. diversity, strength, duration of the course
Taking these into consideration, after some help of 2 IIM profs (my mom n dad ;) ) in short listing the schools, India was never a consideration for me. Even in those colleges here that take GMAT – the avg salary is around USD20k. The World’s Least, not to mention the very famous education system which we have been exposed to for more than 20 years of our life. I decided upon a few colleges in Europe – more specifically Germany and Switzerland. And many interesting colleges had ‘interesting deadlines’ for Round1 and Scholarships. The deadline in question being Nov 15th!!!!!!!!! Holy Cow! So I went ahead and booked my gmat for nov 14th – the children’s day
My Gmat Prep:
In the meantime, I went and got a Princeton 2008 with dvd – finished the book quickly a week or so and then was going through some softcopies of og stuff when I realized PR is just a waste… I regretted buying the book… the dvd was a total sham! (even found a way to hack the online tests ;) ). This book like many ppl already know is just a book for those who want to get out of the 550 rut (if at all there is one), not the one for the 650 and above, fgt 750 with PR!
Was doing some little bits and pieces from here and there.. a couple of practice tests, a cpl of forums. Mukul’s 770 post really helped me a lot and motivated me! Thanks Dude! And shoutouts to nairpraveenk for his wonderful thread.
Now the next thing on the list was toefl, so I booked a date on Oct 21st. I was sure that I would not need more than 2 days for the toefl and took it out of my mind for the time being.
Got an OG 11 and solved it thrice (almost) not continuously.
Did some practice tests in between – the online PR CATs, gprep, power prep, paper tests etc. Hit a sudden low on one of those and panicked and freaked out for a cpl of days then chilled out and got back my groove.
Lesson learnt: take the ups with the lows.. DONOT panic!
October:
Change of roles at work + more pressure + less prep time = lot more pressure!!
Toefl:
Got a toefl ibt book – Delta series with 10 cds – seemed the only book with so much bang for the buck and put it in a shelf and fgt abt it till the 19th.
Got a week off before my toefl and was sitting at home preparing hard for my GMAT.. tat was more imp to me than Toefl.
On the 19th started the ibt book and finished about 70% before I got bored and almost chucked it. Don’t mistake me, the book is very very good – I would recommend it to anybody. It was just that ibt seemed too easy after the gmat prep. Gave my toefl – ripped it! Had fun for a day or two. It was important for me to take these breaks in between. They really helped me reduce the stress.
Back to the schools:
To elaborate a lil bit more on the 5 points I earlier mentioned.
The mba pay in Europe is good – too good – the avg being EURO 70k !!! do the math!
The placement offers you get are in
UBS, DB, CS,BCG, McKinsey, Moody’s, Ferrari-Maserati, BMW, Porsche, Gucci, Lo’real - to name a few. Wide variety, lots of opportunities.
There are a lot of courses which donot have any particular specialization – General Mgmt, Strategy – which was wat I was looking for.
And almost all of the European mbas are a little over a year 14-16 months. You get out fast and have one year more workex and save on your living exp and course fee.
Almost all courses have a very limited class strength 40 – 50 at the max. This results in better bonding and better networking than say around 200-300 ppl in a batch! IMHO
November:
The first school on my list was the IOMBA from Uni of Geneva. I had my eye on this for quite a while now and was very much keen to get into it! But this was the one with the Nov 15th deadline.
So I got busy with the application and my oh my! I had to complete a whopping 7 essays!!!!!!
This was the toughest part in the 2 months – time running, mounting pressure, frustration abt doing your Applcn when you need be busy with GMAT. Dammmmmm!
I went and bought the Kaplan 800… supposedly the book with the toughest Qs…
Finished the book in 3 days and gained immense confidence… I can never overstress the boost this book gave me! Same with the powerprep tests :P
Seven b-school essays in something like 7-10 days is cruel… drain your energy and leave you in a jagged state of nerves.
But I backed myself up and finally it was done… finally the whole application was ready by 10th and I was almost dead!
Gave my GMAT on the 14th, nothing great to write about – missed 2 sitters in Quant – both data sufficiency. Got 650!
Sitting with crossed fingers after that till I got news about my application being selected for the IOMBA class of 08 a few days back!
Dumped the remaining 2 applications I was doing and relaxing now.
I think the things that got me the admit was my killer reco letters and my essays! i am sure about that.
If i can do it, so can YOU!!! what are you waiting for?
If this post has helped you please give your comments.
| Comments |
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Monday, July 09, 2007
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Monday, July 02, 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Got It!
I decided to get a new cell phone (Handy in German) and guess what? I got it! The fully loaded M600i from Sony Ericsson. Well, my fourth one in as many years.
My cell phone sojourn started when I was in the penultimate year of my engg. circa 2003 with the infamous Reliance LG RD2030. It was good given the circumstances and the billing (ahem!). I used it for logging onto the internet in my hostel room where any contact with the outside world was dealt with a heavy hand and the enforcers were too dumb about the potentialities of a mediocre phone (duh!).
Next year when the huge Reliance phone fracas ensued, I was by then only too willing to be rid of that. After a few phone less months, which I spent in hunting (read researching, finding the best possible one to suit my requirements) for a new phone, I finally decided upon the Nokia 3650, one of the earliest models running the Symbian S60. The best phone I have used till date including my new one. The amount of detail that went into the phone made it a real pleasure to use (but a brick to carry).
Well, finally the 3650 gave up on me and refused to start up ever since. I suddenly got a fascination for flip opens and so the Sony Ericsson Z520i landed in my pocket. Nothing much to write home about but it served me well, actually the longest serving one till date.
Its time i changed my phone and change I did! After working on a software project for developing mobile phones, I am now totally disillusioned with high end phones and tonnes of features. But I wanted a phone which was not a routine run of the mill one seen in every John, Jacob and George's hands. The result: SE M600i.The boon to mankind! I'm just kidding. A lot of work still needs to be done on this one here.
This is one of the earliest phones to come out with Symbian UIQ3 OS. DejaVu anyone?. Whats with me and these untried and unseasoned and half cooked Symbian recipes?
Bottom line - I like the phone a lot... It has a steep learning curve, but once that is behind you, its a joy to have with the huge 262k TFT and touch screen and Office suite for editing Word, Excel and Ppts to view PDFs. To have the functionality of a PDA in just 2 mm more than the Moto Razr - I would kill for it. And I got a 2 GB M2 stick to boot. HeeeHAW!
Labels: m600i, sony ericsson
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Saturday, May 19, 2007
Followers in the Far East!
Hits from China???? Do I know anybody in China or even from some place which I believe is Japan? No. Not that I know of. Well... I do know a few dudes - Jet Li, Fatty Chow, Mrs. Todt aka Michelle Yeoh... but apart from these nobody else. Who ever ELSE it is, Thanks.. Keep clicking!
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