10 Random MBA Tips I gathered over last few years

I have been thinking over the last week, what should I write next? My thoughts wandered from writing about politics to India's growth story to random tips for life. Finally I decided to scribble something which can prove to be meaningful to some and be an interesting read to others. Here I am scribbling down tips / suggestions which I got from various friends during my hunt for fundamentals for an MBA abroad. A few of these tips helped me during my application process and collect my otherwise random thoughts. These tips are my perspective and might vary from case to case. Hence, think about them smartly and see if they apply to you or not. Please provide insights from your MBA application experiences here on the blog and share things which you found useful.

1.    Think hard on why want to pursue MBA abroad?

Any reason works as long as it's not that all my peers seem to be doing it, so I should do it as well. MBA abroad is not the path to "moksha". A few can genuinely boost their career growth with an MBA but a few might not be able to leverage an MBA well. Hence, self evaluation is very important. It is the first step to this whole MBA game.

2.   Make a conscious effort to pursue your hobbies and passions along with your day job

Most of us are passionate about a few things in life. Many of us involve ourselves in a lot of extra-curricular activities during our undergraduate lives. However, this spirit dies down once we get sucked into the corporate world. Ensure that you have a life beyond your work-life. Seek opportunities, places where you can make a difference with your skills and purse your passions along with office work. To some it just comes naturally while some get too bogged down with corporate lifestyle. A passion outside of work always comes in handy when you are sitting down to write your MBA application essays. It often distinguishes you and lets you bring something extra on the table to create the "Aha" effect. This step is a continuous effort in a direction and requires time. Therefore, please be careful and don't be in a situation when you want to apply in few months time and have not done anything other than your work in the last 3-4 years. A late realization can be a serious bottleneck.

3.    Take the first measurable step - GMAT

Even if you are 75% convinced about doing an MBA at some point in time, take this step. Take it as early as possible and whenever you have some spare time.

4.    Start reading about schools

Even if you are not sure of applying, start reading about the schools and MBA abroad. This step is more like getting exposed to what it might be like to be doing an MBA abroad and what it might take to get there. I suggest that you follow atleast Poets & Quants and Clearadmit blogs.  There are many other good websites but I will not make a comprehensive list at this moment in time. I remember that there are quite a few nice books as well, although I did not read any. Do talk to the consultants (Stacy Blackman, Clearadmit, Gurome, etc.) and get free evaluation of your profile done.

5.    Visit few schools if possible

If you are traveling to U.S. for leisure / business, try to visit few schools where you see a fit and realistic chance of success. During your visit, try to meet your college / country students and others in general. This helps but does not have major significance.

6.    Shortlist 4-5 schools and read the essay prompts

Shortlist few schools which interest you and where you think you might fit.  Read their MBA Admission essays and keep them in the back of your head. You don't need to start writing essays at this stage, but just think about the prompts once in a while and which incidents might fit into a particular essay prompt. Read the analysis of the essay questions from multiple websites. These websites gave me a good understanding of what the school is looking for in a particular question and helped me align my thoughts. For example, I did not realize that the Stanford question about "What you want to do - REALLY?" is looking for only very long term vision for life and does not need any short term plans. In this process, you will also identify essays where you know what you will write; essays where thinking is needed. Keep thinking about what incident will be the best fit for those "not-so-easy" essays. For example, I almost thought for 2 months about the HBS essay of 3 set backs of my life and still did not have concrete stuff to write.

7.    Think about your recommenders

Think about your recommenders early on. You should have 3-4 diverse (nationality, the kind of projects you did with them, personalities) people in your mind whom you can bank on during the application season. Try to not fall into the trap of going for titles but rather go for personal relations. I had a fancy for titles and always wanted my recommenders to be the people who were higher up in the organization. God bless the Stanford GSB student (ex-Shell) who gave me words of wisdom and opened my eyes. He told me that title will make a difference only if it's someone like Qatar Shell CEO who has a name for himself in external world else the title does not matter. I followed the advice and went with people who were close to me rather than trying to approach people who were a bit higher in the organization. Coach your recommenders well and guide them through the process. Convince them why it is important to you how amazing it will be if you get in. None of my recommenders had ever submitted a letter of recommendation for school prior to mine and hence I had to do a lot of coaching. Just before submitting his recommendation one of the them asked me - can you please give me a written evidence that it's a personal recommendation and employer (in my case Shell) has nothing to do with it. I thought this will be a simple one. I searched everywhere but could not find this written anywhere on the website / recommendation login. I somehow managed to convince him to submit it anyway (it was the last day) but promised that if I get selected, I will ensure that Stanford puts that on the website somewhere. I will try hard to convince Stanford Admin to put that somewhere on the website and fulfill my promise. 

8.    Balance between Round1 (R1) and Round2 (R2) apps

Once you have finalized on the schools you want to apply to, try to balance your applications between R1 and R2. My advice here is - don't do all applications in R1 unless you are super prepared and have a very mature application. Follow one high, one low approach for both rounds. Applications submitted later typically are more matured and have more substance. Don't worry too much about how many people get in R1 and how many in R2. You just need one seat and your best shot will position you the best for that.

9.    Write your life stories (can be multiple stories for 1 answer)

Think about all the significant incidents / stories of your life and jot them down. Later on try to match them with the essays. In the beginning you can have multiple stories which might fit into an essay. Write all of them down and then pick the most suitable one. Discuss your life with 1-2 very close friends because they tend to know you better than you yourself. Have diversity in your essays - from office work, outside office work, life incidents. Your essays should not be just an assimilation of facts (boring) and should flow in a story form to excite the reader. My advice here is to first write drab stories and then later on try to refine and make them interesting. I am typically very conversational in my writing style and hence it was a challenge for me to make my stories interesting.

10. Few close friends who can review your application

A couple of close friends who are familiar with the MBA Admissions process can be a huge help. Please don't underestimate the value of inputs from 1-2 good friends and 1-2 seniors who will give you an honest feedback. Keep those 1-2 close friends aligned during the whole process and start discussing your application with them early on. Don't try to be too secretive about things but be frank. Tell these friends that you will need their time. Value their schedule and try to fit your schedule according to theirs. Try to pick friends who will not only provide feedback but will guide you on how to make things right. These friends should be ready to take the extra burden to discuss your stories, suggest changes and review each word of your essay once written. They will do it for you only if they feel that this is a good use of their time and you are really putting in the right effort to make it through. You don't need 100 people to review your essays and just 1-2 close friends are more than enough. If you don't have such friends who can double up as mentors then you might want to explore a consultant and take their help.

I think this is enough of tips for this fortnight. I will try to come up with a step by step process of application and interviews some other time. It's about time I start writing about other interesting things in life than making my personal blog an MBA blog.

Do share your feedback on these tips if you agree / disagree with them. I am happy to hear more diverse views.

GMAT Phobia - Demystifying the GMAT Myth & Unveiling a structured approach

This article is for all who might be phobic to things such as I was for GMAT or want to take GMAT at some point or have taken GMAT at some point in their lives. This is written based on the current pattern of GMAT which is set to be changed in July 2012.

GMAT – the sheer thought of this word used to make me nervous and make me sweat. This was when I did not even know what might be required to take the exam and hence the title – ‘GMAT Phobia’. The notion that GMAT was a test that has a huge focus on English gave me nightmares. I knew that I will have to face this exam someday but did not have enough courage to even register for it. It was mid 2010 when most of my friends were taking this exam and were encouraging me to register for it too and get it out of my way. I always used to come up with some lame excuses that I was too busy to take the exam and would take it sometime later. I kept on procrastinating. They say, “Time flies”, I confirm – it really does.

2010 came and went, but neither did I take the test nor did I apply to schools. Many of my friends applied and made it to U.S. B-schools at that time. I promised myself that I will take this exam early 2011 so that I have ample time to focus on a proper application. Before I realized it was mid 2011. I kept procrastinating till July 2011. It was around then that I got news that I had been selected as a finalist for the Reliance Fellowship Program. I had to apply to Stanford in R1 in order to be considered for this fellowship. Even after making it to the list of finalists, the GMAT phobia did not decrease and I almost made up my mind that I will not apply to Stanford in R1 and let this fellowship pass. After lot of debating and pressure from well wishing friends, I decided in the beginning of August that I will at least take a shot at GMAT before R1 deadline of Stanford. If it does not go well, then I will do it again in November and apply in R2 without the fellowship program. I started my preparation in August not knowing how I will be able to get a good score in GMAT. I started based on the 60 days beatthegmat.com study plan and took it off from there. I prepared for the month of August and September and took a 2-week break from work to prepare. I steadily prepared for the exam and improved a lot in those 2 months. The deadline for Stanford R1 was approaching (12^th Oct) and my worries escalating. After much ado, I took my first official guide test on 25^th September and scored 740. I had been taking other tests earlier, but had saved the official tests for the end. That was quite reassuring and I took the leap and registered for the exam in the last minute (on 28^th September). I had my GMAT on 30^th September afternoon session. During the exam I was so nervous and in fact I thought of canceling the score in the end. Luckily I did not do that and ended up pressing “calculate score” button of the screen. I scored 730 in GMAT and just could not believe it. It was one of the most thrilling moments of my life. Before I get into the details of my preparation strategies, I would like to share that I did apply to Stanford by completing my application in those 12 days and did make it to Stanford GSB with Reliance Fellowship. I am writing this blog to clarify to my friends that GMAT is not a test of Verbal but a test of right strategy and fair preparation.

Now let’s deep dive into my preparation strategies and what I think can be helpful to people who are starting to prepare for GMAT. Key to scoring well in GMAT is to get your basics right and work in a structured approach towards it. The details of the approach are:

1. Qunatitative: This section consists of 2 types of questions - Problem Solving and Data Sufficiency. A total of 37 questions are tested in 75 minutes. This section is to test your basic IQ level and does not require anything more than high school mathematics. The best way to start this prep is by reading the quantitative section theory from The Official Guide for GMAT. On top of this, some specific help might be required for areas such as Probability or PnC etc. This help can be sought through regular Google search and internet sources. Professionals from engineering background will not need to do anything more than the questions given in the Official Guide. Non-engineering background professionals should practice from Princeton Review and the Official Quantitative review book. Overall time required is 10 hours to review the concepts and 15 hours to practice all the questions in Official Guide. My suggestion here is that do mark all the questions you get wrong and practice them again after 10 days. J

2. Verbal: This section consists of 3 types of questions - Sentence Correction, Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension. A total of 41 questions are tested in 75 minutes. For me, the difficulty level of these 3 types was SC > RC > CR. Therefore, I needed to spend the most amount of time on Sentence Correction.

• Sentence correction is the area which is tricky and requires a lot of practice. The main caution to exercise is not to just go with ‘feel’ but to know why one option is correct whereas other one is wrong. Therefore, the first task to start the verbal preparation is to familiarize yourself with the grammar rules. The good thing is that all the relevant rules are summarized very well by Manhattan guys in the ‘Manhattan Sentence Correction’. Thank God and them for doing itJ. This book as ~15 chapters and it will take approximately 30 hours to read it and solve all the questions. Please try to understand logic behind each question, rather than just solving them mechanically. The intention is to not to get all the questions in this book right in the first time, but to understand all the concepts well. Take a separate print of the idioms chapter and try to at least go through them every day of your preparation. Those idioms are so important for the final exam and I cannot emphasize more.

• Reading Comprehension is indeed a test of your ability to comprehend and comprehend quickly. The RC part of GMAT is very different from CAT (a test in India for IIM’s). In CAT, RC is more about ability of comprehending quickly, whereas in GMAT it’s mainly about comprehending. The length of the passage is much shorter and the language is more challenging. Whenever you read an RC, the objective is not to read it very quickly but the objective is to get an essence about what is being talked in the minimum possible time. People with non-native English background, it could be very challenging and I recommend that you start reading some of the good English magazines (Economist, TIME) from early on (say 6 months before you think of taking GMAT). It’s a good habit to continue with the habit of reading those even after GMAT. One should read concepts of how to approach an RC from the Manhattan Guide for Reading Comprehension. It will take <10 hours to gain all the concepts to approach RC’s. After that, start with Official Guide 11/12 and get going.

• Critical reasoning is all about your ability to think rationally. Understand the difference among Statement, Assumption and Conclusion! You can master the art of critical reasoning by practicing questions and by thinking rationally. In order to hone your CR skills, you should always first read the question carefully and understand what is being asked before you move on to the answer choices.

One should practice all the official guides OG10, OG11, OG12 and OG13 (recently launched). There is a fair bit of overlap in these books and that helps you revise some of the concepts and questions. You might not need all of them, but it will help if you do at least 3 of 4. My approach was to do OG12 in the end as that was the most relevant and I wanted to build some concepts before I tried the most relevant questions. One should try to get hold of the Official Verbal Review also and practice that once done with all the OG’s.

3. Analytic Writing Assessment (AWA): This is the section which I ignored completely and read about it only 1 day prior to my exam. Don’t neglect it like I did. It is not difficult, but awareness to the type of questions is very important before you face the exam. AWA consists of 2 separate writing tasks - Analysis of an argument and Analysis of an Issue. Time limit is 30 minutes for each essay. This section assesses your ability to write analytically. Read instructions from The Official Guide for GMAT to get a feel of this section. This section is the easiest and does not require much effort. But, do not ignore this! AWA does impact your overall MBA application. The best approach to tackle this part of the exam is to have a clear standard template for both the essays in your head (topic agnostic) and just fit in logical stuff in that based on the topic of the essay. I think I had pretty easy topics and just used the set template which I had thought of for both the essays and scored 6/6 in the final exam.

Practice is the key to the whole game. One should practice most of the Official Guides available to him. But be careful, it’s not about solving 1000 questions, but is about learning those 100 concepts and be able to apply them in the exams. Therefore, reading explanations to the answers is very important and adequate time should be spent analyzing problems and their solutions. Always mark the questions which you get wrong and come back to them and revise the concepts. Overall, I think if someone studies for 2 hours a day for 2 months, its more than enough to have a fair attempt at GMAT. Caution would be, when I say 2 hours, I really mean 2 hours of real study (solving questions and reading explanations). Take help from all the resources available around, but don’t get bogged down with too many books. The official guides are the most relevant and should be done with utmost care. I took help from beatthegmat.com free 60days GMAT planning tool to keep track of my progress. Their study plan is not ideal, but helps keep track of things.

Last but not the least, practice tests are very important to give a finishing touch to your preparation. I used 800 score tests (5 Quant and 5 Verbal) to continuously evaluate my preparation. I would strongly recommend buying them / taking them from a friend and use them during your preparation. These tests are flash files and are easy to transfer to one another. Take the first test when you are done with doing one of the OG’s once and then keep on taking continuously once in a while. On the top of them, as you must be aware of, there are 2 official GMAT tests which are designed by GMAC. These tests are very precious and should be taken once you are fairly confident about your level of preparation. Everyone around me (sample size >15) has scored within ± 20 in the final exam of what they scored in Official Tests at home. Therefore, my strong recommendation is to attempt the official tests only you have good confidence in your preparation.

Web resources:

www.beatthegmat.com

http://www.platinumgmat.com/

http://www.gmatclub.com/

http://www.gurome.com/Blog

It is worthwhile to spend some time at the forums to read motivating stories and thing which work on the final day of the exam. In summary, I would like to say that don’t be afraid of the exam as I was and give it a fair try. Please don’t procrastinate it for months / years like I did and take it by July of the year you want to apply properly. If you prepare structurally and put in the right effort, it’s a simple exam to crack.

Good luck with your efforts. I will write more on this topic (MBA / GMAT) later. Next blog in line should be on “First Impressions – Stanford” weekend or “India has got no 2^nd choice”. I am know a pro-writer and would appreciate your feedback to motivate and refine my writing skills.

Cheers,

Puneet

Capital Punishment in India – An unsolved mystery

Capital Punishment – YES or NO, is a big question. I might sound very pro to capital punishments in this article, but this is not an article pro or anti capital punishments. It is the process which concerns me more.

I am not sure why there are so many dilemmas around capital punishments in INDIA. It is a killer of a former Prime-minister or a terrorist who killed many innocents Indians, INDIA has found it hard to execute capital punishments in time. Today’s article in TOI provoked me to write this post and get me back to blogging. The way in which the capital punishment charges against terrorists are being executed is probably more complicated than “Himesh’s” relationship status. Let me share the process in brief (might not be 100% exact, but good enough to convey the message)

Some examples for this process are: Masterminds behind assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi (Event occurred – 1991, Supreme court hailed Capital Punishment in 1999, President confirmed hailed the same in 2011 and now they again moved to High court?); Master mind behind the attack on Indian parliament, an attack which almost broke war between India - Pakistan – Afzal Guru (Event occurred in 2001, HC paved the way for capital punishment in 2004, and now the plea is with president for all these years, a decision is yet to come and we experience a threatening attack today); Mr. Kasab who is one of the celebrity or recent times (Event occurred – 2008, Currently step 1 is cleared, but final verdict is still fr from reach)

In this whole process the precious time of judicial system, public money is wasted in the security of the terrorist, and such bomb blasts and warnings from their team members are evoked http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/HuJI-claims-responsibility-for-Delhi-high-court-blast/articleshow/9896388.cms.

Can this process not be simplified at least for the high profile terrorists? Rather than sending a strong message to terrorists, are we not calling for another ‘Kandhar (some of you might recall this incident)” or more bomb blast similar to what was experienced today? Can we do something?

More later. Good bye!

Regards,

Puneet

Indian Growth Story - Part 1

Indian Growth Story!

I am narrating a small conversation (2.5 hrs) I had with couple of my friends at McDonalds 2 days ago. The discussion started around the topic of Indian growth and development and went on to all the issues pertaining to India economy, economic crisis and so on. This being one of favourite topics of discussion, I wanted to share some of my thoughts with the larger community.

Here it starts -------

Is India really growing? Are we really developing? Is the growth sustainable? What’s the right way to grow? Is the growth only for the upper class? Is it anyway benefiting the lower class of the society? There are hundreds of unanswered questions that come to our minds when we think about this topic – Indian growth story. There is no single correct answer to these questions, but there are different views and opinions about these issues.

In my opinion, India is growing and it has had a spectacular growth in the last 5-10 years. Infrastructure, IT, BPO, and other service and tech industries have been the main drivers of this growth. India has changed completely in the last 10 years. In my opinion, most of the cities have grown so much in the last 10 years that if a person returns from US after 10 years, he will not be able to recognize the city in which he would have spent most of his life.

Buildings, IT parks, Malls, Supermarkets, Hypermarkets, Metro rails, Specialized degree colleges, and CCD’s / Pizza Huts are some of the things, which have become integral part of all the cities including tier 2 cities.

A question of India becoming a hub for cheap labour for the MNC’s in short run leading to unsustainable growth in long term is always raised. Every change takes time and it happens at its own pace. Earlier, there were not many opportunities in India for the talent and talented guys were going to foreign countries in search of opportunities. It’s an opportunistic world and everyone wants to extract as much as he can from any opportunity. The opportunity lied in US, UK, Canada and they went there to harness the opportunity. In the last 5 years, we have had a radical shift from that never-ending phenomenon of brain drain, and now opportunities have started landing in India. India has now become a technology hub for the whole world. All the MNC’s have realized the value of Indian talent, and have started tapping this potential directly from here. In the current era the graduates from the best Indian institutes have started declining offers of higher education abroad and have directly started working here in India after their graduation. On the other hand, many Indian organizations like Reliance, Infosys, TCS, and Wipro have gained enough attention from all parts of the world and have generated a threat of Indian firms taking over the list of Fortune 500 companies as it took over the Frobe’s richest people list sometime ago. Someone arguing about not many Indian companies being listed as Fortune 500 companies, my suggestion would be that every radical shift takes time and we are stepping into the era where the fresh talent is thinking of declining the comfortable job offers and take the hard route of entrepreneurship and building businesses. It’s just a matter of time when there will be more and more organizations like Reliance and Infosys coming from India.

On the issue of only the rich getting richer and poor not moving from their levels, I believe, during this whole revolution of Indian service industry, the most benefited band of society is the so called ‘Aam Aadmi’ (lower middle class). Rich were always rich and might have become billionaire from millionaire, but yet their lives have not changed spectacularly. The Indian middle and lower middle class has leveraged the education and has benefited from it a spectacular way. This was the class who wanted to educate their children, and wanted to give them a stable career, a career where they will have enough earnings to sustain their lives and educate their children. This is the class from which many of us belonged to traditionally. This class had never expected branded goods or high-class living standards in life. This class drives increased demand from branded goods, luxury goods and other higher end products. Air travel, foreign holidays, resort stay were only in dreams for them and now it has become a daily routine for many. The living standard of this class of society has improved significantly in the last 5 years and has propelled the Indian growth story. Coming to the poor, I believe in the consumption model of economics and agree to the fact that overall of standard of the poorest is also increasing because of the demand for the low-end services. It might be the case that the this band has not moved in a big way, but overall trend for the poorest has also been upward because of the tremendous increase in opportunities. An analogy to this situation could be that, the whole development is a cake and everyone trying to maximize their share in the cake. Ultimately, everybody has got some part of cake, but some of them have managed to get a bigger share. Share of each party will keep on changing but the focus should be to bring bigger and bigger cake on table in long run.

Nevertheless, all the parts of Indian society have gained from this upswing of the economy.


Many more key issues related to this topic will be discussed in the coming posts:
1.Growth in Rural India
2. Role of government in shaping India
3. A greener desert!
4. Role of youth in shaping India
5. India v/s Singapore v/s Japan
6. Brain drain – Good v/s Bad

And many more!! Therefore, keep watching the space… :P