Happy Holidays!!

The day of Christ is here and the long-awaited holiday season finally begins!! :) I know I speak for all my fellow applicants when I say that this has been an eventful year and hopefully for all of us applicants, the fun is only beginning!! With a few admits in the bag and one more to look forward too, I cant wait for 2009 to begin!!

Though it seems a little too early for me to be preparing my thank-you speech but in this season of giving, it seems perfect that I give thanks to all the people who have had faith in me and supported me in my decisions...THANK YOU! (you know who you are! ;) Also a big shout-out to all my virtual friends aka blog readers, MBAlmighty, Matt, Mbamission, Ahembeea and others who have been vocal supporters along my MBA journey... Thank you and All the best!

I hope this holiday season and the new year bring a lot of cheer and success to your lives... God bless!

3 down... 1 to go!

Got a wake-up call from the Yale Adcomm today morning.... It was 'good news to share'-time again!! It was completely unexpected... not the results (I was optimistic of an admit after my interview) but the timing... I was not expecting to hear back from Yale or Ross before the holidays and yet here I am... with an Yale admit! If only Ross-Claus decides to come early too :D

But now that the realization that I would indeed be matriculating in 2009 (destination remains undecided) has sunk in, I am beginning to get worried... again! Arranging the finances is the MAJOR task ahead but also questions like -

• when do I quit job? (right now on an H1-B)
  
• how does the H1-B to F-1 transfer work?
• where do I even begin looking for arranging the finances?
• Yale or Johnson? rankings-wise they are nearly in the same bracket... they both have great general management/strategy focus.... Johnson is offering me scholarship... no news yet from Yale

Its a weird sense of deja vu as I begin to feel over-whelmed all over again by the amount of work left to do before I pick up those books and sit in that class-room again! But as I got through the daunting phase of applications, I would get through this too... one baby-step at a time!

2 down... 2 to go!

Current status - sitting pretty with two admits, Johnson and Goizueta with scholarships (every bit helps!)

The acceptance mail from Goizueta came in early last week followed by a call from the Admissions committee a few days later and though I was thrilled to have my first admit, I felt suprisingly composed and in-control!! It was relieving to know that I wasn't the only one betting on me :) Life was good and as the decision deadline for Johnson came closer, I got lured into the 'check-BW-forums-every-five-minutes' passtime and spent one very tense evening and apprehensive morning waiting for that call from 'unknown'...

And finally when I was gobbling down my lunch, my cell rings and I see 'Unknown'... Never have I felt happier :D It was Johnson Adcomm member, the same person with whom I had interviewed calling up to 'share some good news'.... Yipeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

To-be status - enjoy Christmas and New Year's (2008 was just purrrfect!); wait for Ross and Yale to shower their love too... and no! I am not going to begin worrying about loans just yet! I feel I have earned my days of doing nothing... worrying about nothing... Hakuna Matata!!

Just a note

After having put in some thought, I decided not to apply to ISB... I do not know whether it was the right thing to do but the decision was a combination of my lack-of-will, workload at office and the current interview invites...

I might regret this decision in the near future but then again, I might not :) I just did not feel strongly enough about the ISB program and hence the decision...

So with this my application Round 1 is officially over... Lets see how it plays out!

Johnson interview - Analysis

The interview was with a member of the AdComm and once I dialed in, she came on-line almost immediately. After intimating me about not having gone through my application and that the interview would last 40-45 minutes and would be conversational, she jumped straight into it! (No breaking of ice... no casual chit-chat... quite a change from my previous experiences!)

The questions followed a similar pattern and thanks to ClearAdmit, I was prepared -

· short term? long term? why now?
· why Johnson?
· why specific immersion? how will it help in meeting your career goals?
· which other schools? on west coast?
· specific example where you faced a challenge and how did you overcome it?
· specific example where you worked with a team-member who was not performing and helped him?
· specific example of leading a team/your leadership style?
· any weaknesses that you see in your application? strengths?
· any questions you have?
· anything more that you want Johnson to consider as part of your application?

It is so close to the other Johnson interview experiences I have read about that it almost seems that they follow a script and the way she asked the questions, this experience was the closest to an 'official' interview that I had so far... and frankly, I am not delighted with the outcome! (I probably should be more careful what I wish for :( ) I feel, my responses to the specific example questions came of as long-winded and garbled... not as succint and incisive as I would have liked. Also the barrage of questions gave me no time to think and that put me on the back-foot and not being face-to-face with the interviewer made me extra-conscious of my voice. I also could not judge her reactions to my responses (they are normally very inscrutable but it helps!) and over the phone I felt that she was really quite unimpressed :(

Overall, I am glad that I did not opt for telephonic interviews for any other school and as much as I would have liked to travel to Ithaca, this time I really had no option! I just have to keep my fingers crossed till Dec 17th... Wish me luck!