mbafome

Waitlisted at Yale SOM

mbafome — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 23:52:34 +0000

I thought for sure this would be a ding since my application said incomplete up until yesterday.One thing I know may have raised red flags is my quant score on my GMAT. I really don’t want to re-take my GMAT so I am just going to do my best in my math class and hope that is enough to get in.

I am still holding out hope for the other schools who I have not heard back from yet… The waiting continues.

Calculus and Carebears

mbafome — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 01:19:35 +0000

For the most part I loved my high school experience, I had amazing teachers many of whom I’m still friends with. However, the one thing that went wrong was my math classes. My high school believed in the Care Bear approach to teaching…teaching wasn’t just the job of the teachers, but also your fellowt students. So when I didn’t understand why ax=2 in Algebra I, I had to ask each and everyone of my group members before I was allowed to ask my teacher. Finally when I could ask the teacher the answer they would give me left me more confused than ever. This method of teaching made me Hate Math! So much so that I took a test to pass out of math in college so I would never have to take it again.

The bad news: most b schools require that I complete a college level calculus course before being admitted. Which means back to math class for me. Finding a math class that fit into my math class was a big challenge, finding one with space was a bigger challenge and finally a professor who I could understand was impossible so I didn’t even try. All this to say that I am stuck in a Calculus class with a Professor who is hilarious, but unclear. All because my high school wanted to teach math the new age way.

Invited to interview at Tepper and Fuqua

mbafome — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:33:49 +0000

YES I am alive! And I was invited to interview and CMU Tepper and Duke Fuqua! I was so excited to receive the Duke Interview invite because I put the most of myself into those essays. So if Duke hadn’t invited me I would’ve felt direct rejection, but thankfully that didn’t happen.
So I will be making the trip up to Pittsburgh to interview with Tepper oncampus during their Women’s weekend.
I will be interviewing with Duke out here in San Francisco since I have visited campus once and at this point in the process am really low on funds.
So very excited. I promise promise to write an overview of both interviews.

They Should Have a Support Group for this….

mbafome — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 23:17:16 +0000

I admit it I have a problem. An obsession an addiction even and it is not healthy.

When I started this MBA process 10 years ago (Not 10 years, but at this point that is what it seems like), I thought the hardest part would be studying for the GMAT. I was wrong. The hardest part is waiting to receive an interview invite. Every morning I wake up and scour my inbox for any sign of an invitation, any glimpse of hope an email from the school might give me and every morning I am greatly disappointed. Then I proceed to look at the message boards to see if anyone from the schools I applied to received an interview invite, if they did I repeat step one of the process and re-check my email for any sign of an invite. If people who are applying for schools that I didn’t apply to, like Cornell recieve an interview invite I secretly wish that I had applied to that school because THEN I would have heard back by now.

It is a serious problem it is affecting my relationship with others and my productivity at work. I admit I am powerless over interview decisions! The funny thing is according to the schools websites none of them are suppose to release interview invites until next week, so I am being super obsessive about it for no reason.

I had my interview for Tuck over a month ago so that is one school I won’t have to worry about, but waiting for the other schools to contact is causing me to age like 20 years overnight!

Just a recap I am waiting to hear from

Wharton

Yale

Fuqua

Tepper

Olin

Someone, please anyone email me.

Recommendation Update 2

mbafome — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:22:43 +0000

My supervisors have scheduled a meeting to make sure they aren’t duplicating comments on my recommendation. Have I mentioned I have the best bosses ever and the best job ever!

Recommendation Information

mbafome — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 09:35:54 +0000

As I mentioned in previous post I was very fortunate that my recommendors approached me to ask for information about writing my letters of recommendation and not the other way around. In order to aid them in the process I put together a information packet (adapted from a template one of my friends who is using a consultant was kind enough to let me borrow). In the packet I made sure to include:

Why I want an MBA?
What I plan to do after I receive my degree.
Key projects I had worked on during my time at the company.
Schools I am applying to
How each school would contact them
Updated Resume

Also, since I am applying through the consortium I made sure to include a brief paragraph on what the Consortium is and why I am applying through the program. In the letter I wrote them I made sure that my personality shined through. I am fortunate that these individuals know me really well which means they are also very familiar with my sense of humor and it would be so unlike me if I didn’t include a joke or two in my letter to them about the joys of the application process.

I’m pretty sure all of them will get the recommendation in on time, especially one of my supervisors who is always amazingly punctual, but I’ll be sure to give a little reminder a week out just to make sure.

Now the hardest process will be deciding what to buy for thank you gifts. Maybe I will take a cue from my summer interns and have trees planted in their name

The Final Application List

mbafome — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 06:53:40 +0000

Now that the school visits are done I have managed to narrow down my school list considerably. So without further adew… in no particular order I will be applying to:

-Fuqua

-Yale

-Wharton

-Tuck

-Washington University in St. Louis

-Emory

For four of the schools (Tuck, Yale, Washington U, Emory) I will be applying through the Consortium, so my hope is that I save some time in the essay writing process and also save money in terms of application fees.

This whole business school process has been way more intense then I could have ever imagined. I am very happy that I took my Business School Extravaganza trip and went to see all my potential schools. I can now write clearly about why I want to attend each of the institutions and why I think I would be a good fit at each of them. The trip also really help cement the fact that I want to go to business school, I really loved the time I spent in the classrooms the discussions with the current students and other applicants. I can see myself at business school, now hopefully the feeling is mutual with at least one school. I also became really good at trip planning, so if this whole MBA thing doesn’t work out I think I am going to go into business as an MBA tour guide.

I have started writing my essays, but after I take the GMAT one last time and finish my MacroEcon final I will devote my whole heart and soul into the process. I don’t worry about writing about myself, I now have a clear idea about why I want an MBA and what I hope to accomplish with the degree. Plus, thankfully words have always come easy to me, I feel the only essay writing difficulty will be making sure I stay within the word limits

School Visits

mbafome — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 07:44:18 +0000

Next week is it, the big business school extravaganza travel adventure. $1,204 will take me to 4 (Kinda 5) schools with a stop off to visit my bestie in New York. I will be visiting:
-Fuqua
-Tuck
-Columbia
-Wharton
I will also be heading back to HBS…not because I’ve changed my mind, but because I will be looking at a student created tech company on behalf of my firm.
In an effort to keep all the school details straight I will be taking copious notes and hopefully sharing them on here.

GMAT UPDATE
Still studying. I learned a really great tip from the Beat the GMAT forum about going back to the problems you got wrong 2 days later and reviewing them again to make sure you really got the concept that has been the best tip ever!

Business School Extravaganza

mbafome — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 06:33:31 +0000

I haven’t posted for a while, that’s what happens when life takes over.
Couple of updates:
Received the official copy or my GMAT score which showed my score for writing (91%). It also showed the schools I had chosen to send the report to…so its funny my school choices have changed since I took the test. Good thing I’m testing again.
I have planned the bigges

t and best tour of

East Coast business schools, a tour I have nicknamed my Business School Extrava

ganza. I will post the exact tour details once I’m in front of a proper computer. I am so excited for this trip and hope that it will (a) help me gather some really great information for my essays and (b) help me eliminate some schools from my list.
I am currently using the Beat the GMAT 60 day study guide. I like that it emails me each morning and tells me what to study that day. Sometimes I like people telling me what to do. I am also using Magoosh an online test prep company that is AMaZing if anyone is interested I will write a review on my Magoosh experience.
I have paid for what will hopefully be my last GMAT ever. It is for sometime in December, but I am not revealing the date because the pressure of everyone knowing is more stress than I need.
So that’s my life how is yours?

Trying to be perfect, but failing kinda hard

mbafome — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 06:56:48 +0000

Brief nostalgic story: As a child I read the book Matilda, where main character (Matilda) is really smart, but her family doesn’t appreciate her intelligence and her school is horrible, so instead of learning the normal way she vows to read every book at her local library and she succeeds. Inspired by Matilda and not realizing at the time how impossible this task was, I too vowed to read every book in my school library and spent all my recesses, and lunchtimes in the library at school . On the bus home from school I would read, at the dinner table I would read and instead of doing my homework I would read. Unfortunately, I did not succeed in my goal and actually almost failed 2nd grade in the process (because of not doing my homework). For a long time (a couple of months, which is a long time for a little kid) I was disappointed in my failed attempt and didn’t really realize how much I had actually accomplished on my journey. I had read at least a 100 books and learned about all sorts of things, such as how to take care of your hamster and the various species of butterfly that live in North America. I tested at the 5th grade reading level, which my teacher’s thought was amazing and I became a master at spelling, a skill which I unfortunately no longer posses.

Today after being tutored in GMAT math by one of my amazingly brilliant co-workers, who is also an awesome tutor happens to run an online tutoring company (it pays to be connected:) ) I again felt like the little second grader on that endless mission towards a goal which is impossible to reach. I thought to myself, no matter how much I study all the MGMAT books, watch all the Magoosh videos (which are great by the way) I will never be as smart as folks like my co-worker or even my MGMAT instructor and for a second had a moment of self-pity. Then I realized that the purpose of studying for the GMAT or any other attempt in life, is not to achieve someone else’s goal, rather it is to be the best you that you can possibly be, which sounds really corny, but I feel that it is really true.

With that said I am going to get back to studying in the aim of not only kicking the GMAT’s butt, but also suprising myself on how truly intelligent I really am.