The buzz word seems to be ...Networking!

Hello all,

I did take a 2 week hiatus from my active blogging schedule. Excuse me for that. I thought I already posted the 'Ross Student Coffee chat' but apparently I didn't. I just posted it now and I have lot more to discuss ! I met with another Ross student - Michelle at another Ross Chat session. Michelle seemed very helpful in providing information regarding the coursework, student culture, student clubs and the prospect of doing part-time jobs at Ross. From my conversations with different people, I have almost come to the conclusion that its almost next to impossible to work part-time when business-school in session. I have been dreaming about about doing one if/once I get into a top business school. Part of my angst to work part-time might be because the fun I had doing one in my masters and the other part might be a purely motivated by monetory needs. How will I support myself during business school? Loan for my Tuition and living expenses ..??..I would like to know how people do this. Any thoughts on this people..?.

On a totally different note, Brett from Ivy App Success as posted a great article about networking with current business school students and alumni. Just things like 1) What to do 2) When to do 3) How to do. No BS. Thanks Brett!!

Ross Student Coffee Chat

Had a semi-hectic week at work so couldn't get any significant amount of work done during after-work hours.

I wanted to provide a quick update of my Ross student Coffee Chat that happened last sunday. 

I met with a  Ross '12 student ( Liselle ) who was generous enough to spend a few hours of her weekend time with us ( a few prospective students based around chicagoland ). Liselle is currently interning with ATKearney for the summer and I could tell from my brief conversation with her she was excited about her consulting gig and has been loving it so far. Since, this happened to be my first Coffee chat / meetup with a student/alumni and since I didn't prepare adequately to ask the right questions, I kind of stumbled with words / questions in the beginning. But here is a quick excerpt of my conversation with her and the rest of the chat attendees:

Me: What schools did you apply for and got admitted into?

L:    Harvard, Ross: Both are great schools for general mgmt. but I chose Ross as I went to Yale for undergrad        wanted a change of scenary from the east coast and also for the fact that I liked its emphasis on Strategy and its even-distribution of case-method and Lecture-based coursework.

Here's how my work/study/ play(really??) schedule is going to look like :

Starting from next week, I am planning on putting close to 15-20 hrs / week ( its kind of imperative now if I want to target Round1..isin't it ..??.. :-)  ) on brainstorming / essays. Hopefully, it doesn't get crazy busy at work for the next few months..( fingers crossed ).

Also, summer is round the corner and I recently got an opportunity to play for a Volleyball league at work. So now my monday evenings are busy with volleyball. Also, I intend to getback to playing Racquetball/Tennis on Wednesdays. That pretty leaves me with tue/thurs/fri/sat/sun. for some post-work study.

Here's the rough breakdown:

3 Weekdays - 2 hrs each. 

Weekend - 5-6 hours each day.

I should say I am slightly being influenced by Getting Things Done by David Allen. Though its a bit too methodical, it does provide a different perspective about how organizing and scheduling things can remove a lot of clutter around us and induce lot more productivity into our work/study.

1/3rd of June..gone!!

I have been pondering about getting started with my resume for over a week now. This week has mostly been eventful and busy at work and I just didn't feel like putting in 2 more hours after getting back to home. Also, all the myriad stuff going on at my office place adding to my agony. Just to give you all a brief insight into my office issues: The team I was working with for the past 1.5 years has slowly been dissolving as the work is being outsourced to a middle-eastern country ( can't name it; just trying to be discreet! ). We have been told by senior management that all the engineers will be disbursed to other teams ans they start freeing up from their projects. This has created both excitement and deep anxiety among us and our team members are infested gossips/politics and every other nasty piece of sh** under the sun. None of the engineers at this point is worried about his/her job thanks to the constant assurances by the management ( big brother! ), but the prospect of bagging the best opportunity available is breeding unwanted envy and resentment among us!! My hunch is that I'm going to have funny feeling about all this once this episode is behind me!  :-)

Anyways, I wanted to post a nice powerpoint presentation about 'mastering the MBA application' from Betsy Massar of MasterAdmissions: ( Thanks Betsy! )

Resume!

I guess its time for me to get started on my MBA resume ( not the Technical one!! ). I do have the ideas but I really need to jot them down !!
I have been procrastinating on this for a while and I better do that no further. Most of the top schools have already published their Essays and deadlines for Fall'11 applicants. I am going to meet Ross ambassador in a couple of weeks and the plan as of now is to provide her with a Version 1.0 of my resume. Here are a few links ( additions are intended to be made periodically ) that I am planning to look at over the next few weeks while I am in the process of honing my business school resume!!

1. Accepted.com - Resume - What to Include
2. Accepted.com - Demonstrating growth in a flat organization
3. BW - Admission officer's hate list - ( old article but helpful! )
4. MBAmission - Dust off that resume
5. A.'s compilation of 'how to' resume links ( Thanks A. ! )

Bloomington - Indiana , Kelley school of business

For a shortwhile last month, it felt like I was on a travelling spree. For the weekend after my North Carolina trip, I visited Bloomington, IN and my brother another time for a weekend getaway. This time it was for his convocation. I took the friday off and started off from home early in the morning so that I could reach in time for his convocation ceremony. After going through a few usual chores ( like taking snaps, greeting all the graduates, heading out for lunch ... lunch reminds me of the local pita ( middle-eastern ) place which kind of turned out to be my favourite after my past few visits ), I and a few of the newly minted IUB graduates drove to the nearby monroe lake, had a few beers and chatted about all the good time those people had during their masters and how fast the entire MS ( US ) experience went past them. Having personally gone through similar experiences myself in not soo distant past, I guess it was kind of natural for me to get reminded of all the good time I had during my school days in the US.  Well..well..am I going to go through this experience ( as a full-time masters student ) again in the US...I mean in near future and maybe from a top business school..??.. only time should tell!!

I figured I could touch base with a few of the Kelley students since I was in town anyway. My bro somehow managed to pull-up a few Kelly contacts who I ended up talking to. Some of the questions I asked were regarding my profile evaluation w.r.t Kelley and about the course / placement structure of International students at Kelley.  Regarding the job scene, I have a say I was a bit disappointed with the kind of response I got from the couple of people I spoke with. Given the fact that Kelley consistently shows up as a Top 20-25 school on businessweek/USnews rankings, the fact that it was having trouble placing all of its graduating class kind of intrigued me. Well,  I reasoned later that most of the top schools in the US faced a similar problem ( after looking at the placement reports of a few top schools ) during 2009-10 given the macro-economic conditions around.
Though I personally never had the intention of applying to Kelley, after looking through the Kelley placement report and having realized that none of the big consulting firms ( the BCGs, McKinseys etc.,. ) nor the big tech firms ( MS, Amazon etc)  have actually visited their campus, I figured that Kelley might be a great school but I need to focus more seriously at other options...