ISB O Week

This is an old post I wrote but never got around to publishing... here goes...:)

Enthu rises in wild waves and crashes against the shores of realities. Aah the moment just before one goes for the 90 degree bent on the path of life. The allure of the yonder, the draw of the unknown !! Somehow I feel something huge is about to happen. And finally the boat falls over. A crash.. a bang... it twists and turns and swerves for a while... and then slowly settles back. And then you realize few things have changed... but quite a few have not. The physical, the external changes.

The location changes - now you are in Delhi, now you are in Hyderabad,

the activity changes - now you are a coding now you are studying,

the focus changes - now you are waiting for the pay-day now you are waiting for the grades-day

and more....

but YOU don't change... others don't change... and the connection between you and the others doesn't change.

You still like the kind of people you liked before...

You still talk the way you talked before...

You still look the way you looked before...

But then, what change is more important ? Answer is obvious.

let me start by saying that I love ISB. What I love most is the lack of structure. YOU are ISB - ISB is YOU. There is no other campus I know

ISB ahoy !!

It has been a key element of my life that I always feel someone is around all the time. Just when I think I'm sinking I have a lifeline thrown at me from nowhere. Will probably ramble more on this in a more personal blog but for this one, suffice it to know that ISB has indeed offered me an offer of admission for its class of 2010. For the uninitiated, the class of X means you will pass out (hopefully) in year X.
So I am going to Hyderabad in April 2009 to get myself an MBA.
But guess what, the weeks approaching the decision and the ones immediately after that was the time when I really, really, thought whether I needed an MBA at this point in my career :0)
Reason being, when the deadline for decision was approaching, the true cost of the ISB MBA dawned upon me in its full glory. 20 lakhs is not a small amount !!
But then, sometimes we don't really understand the choices we make and we do need an Oracle to help us. So I had already made the choice before I began asking myself why I made that choice. And probably (I think) it is these decisions that are often the best, and life changing ones.
All said and done, it is time now to figure out the financial equations and transition mentally from a work life to a campus life.

770

that's my score... 42 in verbal at 95%tile and 50 in Quant with 95%tile... overall 99%tile
a good score by any standards...
so now I can hope to get a decent MBA I suppose ?
not yet...
coz MBA nannies on the internet scream from their guts that an MBA app needs to be well-rounded... and well-rounded forever remains an elusive holy grail... it means many things. It means the applicant must have an excellent academic record (demonstrated by GPA), good professional record (backed by recommendations), good extra-curriculars (demonstrated by reams of certificates and awards), sound leadership qualities (illustrated through real-life events) and so on and so forth. But after all these details comes the punch line - There is no single definition of a good application; of all possible crimes in an MBA app, there is none that is unforgivable if you make a strong case for it in your essays. And then there could be that something interesting about you - like you are a female candidate from sub-saharan Africa who has spent her life designing clothes for Masai herders - that can tip the scales in your favour despite the fact you don't have a GPA or any recommendations. Confused ? Everyone is.
I personally feel none of the people who have been to good B-Schools can clearly define why they were admitted. And there is a reason. What the schools select are not individual students but a batch. I will illustrate this through the list of contestants in the third version of Indian Idol.
One of them is from London, another from Sharjah, yet another from Jharkhand, one from the North-East, another from Rajasthan, another from.... well you get the idea! So it all depends on how unlike others in the pool are you.
Another thing to keep in mind is that an MBA school is not a public service organization. It is a for-profit private business and so its business interests are at the top of its priorities - NOT you or your career. Hence they will take you if THEY get to benefit from your presence in their alumni list not the other way around. Your success and career are incidental to the whole thing.
And now that I have given vent to all of my paranoia, I must thank Babaji/Guruji for their blessings without which I could never have gotten this score. I say this in all sincerity since the total time I spent preparing for GMAT was not more than 25-30 hours and I wasn't expecting anything above 700 even.
Now the schools on my wishlist are Harvard, Chicago, Wharton, London, IIMA and ISB - not in any particular order. Apps begin in July. What I would need is
1. 3 good recos
2. Consolidation of all my academic and professional documents
3. Write around 5 X 6 = 30 essays; no mean task that
and 4. manage all this along with a hectic work schedule and demanding personal life

Look at it this way, your first course in your MBA is the application process itself. It gives you a good idea of people management (for recos), being resourceful and organized (preparation of application), expressive, honest and tactful (in the essays) and motivated and focused for a long period of time. If you succeed in going through this with your self intact, boy you're already on the road to becoming a good manager !!