[General] What is your clan spread?

Thanks to Sepia Mutiny I came across this site http://www.gens-us.net/ If you type in your last name, it will give you a map showing the distribution of your clan (clan <=> last name) across the various American states.

The pic on the left is my clan spread. As expected we are pretty under-represented. I think they only use citizens and/or permanent residents to generate this map. So I don't show up on this.

[MBA] Wharton says - so long sucker

So Wharton has snagged the privilege of delivering me my 1st ding. Wharton was a stretch school for me, so am not surprised. But ding without interview - Ouch!

I have always maintained that Wharton has the most humane applying process. All decisions on one day instead of the drip, drip chinese water torture of some schools. All interview invites within one month instead of the marathons of some schools. So no hard feelings. Just a punctured ego.

[MBA] Wharton offers a peek into the future

The one day you are not obsessive about your MBA app status something actually does happen. Apparently due to a technical glitch, many people were able to see their dinged status on their Wharton account last night. Using the s2s boards as the sole indicator, this window lasted from about 7pm ET to about 9am ET. The problem has since been fixed. Every night before going to bed I religiously check all the discussion boards. Last night was not one of them. So there goes my chance to put the Wharton thingie to rest before schedule. My application went complete a gazillion years ago. So my chances of getting an interview invite now are pretty minimal. But early closure would have been good.

[MBA] Differentiate this

If you want to explicitly hear an admissions officer say how strong your application is, get yourself put on a waitlist. Had my Tuck waitlist review. Even here the stumbling block seems to be 'differentiation'. Surprisingly no direct mention was made of Tuck love or lack thereof in my application. In a way it's good. Both the schools who have waitlisted me encourage additional materials and both want me to differentiate myself. So less effort for me.

We went through the various aspects of my application (essays, work exp, recommendation etc.) Most of my application components, including - surprise - the interview, fell into the 'good/great/strong' category. I don't read too much into adjectives like these as they are thrown around with such abandon. I did however, learn a thing or two about my application during this review. Apparently my academics are 'extremely strong'. And I was worrying myself silly about my undergrad gpa. My work experience at X is 'interesting'. Well, thats an interesting choice of words. Had the lady not been so friendly I would have thought she was being sarcastic.

I haven't talked about recommendations too much here. Doesn't mean that I have not worried myself sick about them. Both my recommenders are engineers, not given to hyperbole and I didn't do any recommender management whatsoever. When I went to ask for recommendations, this is how the conversation went

Me - I am applying to business schools. Can you give a recommendation?
Recommender - Sure, why not.
Me - I hope it'll be strong. (self-deprecating laugh)
Recommender - Yeah sure.
Me - (awkward silence followed by hasty exit)

So it was a relief to know that the recommendations fell in the 'great' category.

[General] Me too

When I started reading Bschool blogs around mid 2005 something called tagging was going on. I never quite understood the concept. Was it an online version of something which happens in the real world? It was interesting anyway to read people's choices of books. This year the tagging includes a much longer list, so it's even more interesting to read. But Ash had to interrupt my lurking and push me out onto the stage :)

So here goes.

Four jobs I've had in my life:
Teaching Assistant
Instructor
Personal Tutor
Engineer
Everything related to software/programming/computer science - yawn

Four movies I can watch over and over:
O Brother, Where Art Thou? - I still don't understand why I like this movie so much
Sholay - No self-respecting Indian should leave this off the list :)
Padosan - More for nostalgic reasons than anything else
Matrix (II, III) with subtitles on - So that I can finally get it!

Four places I have lived:
Boulder, CO
Madison, WI
Kanpur, India
Rourkela, India

Four TV shows I love to watch:
Raymond - An example of acquired taste
Seinfield - Appeals to the inner stoner in me
Colbert Report - Bill O'Reilly pisses me off so much that Colbert's take is more fun that it should be
No I didn't flunk elementary school math, I am more of a channel flipper than a faithful tv watcher.

Four places I have been on vacation:
Redstone, CO
Rapid City, SD
Yellowstone
Chandipur, India

Four of my favourite dishes:
No name - baked potato, fish and a killer sauce (wife's concoctation)
Don't know english name - some sort of spinach and mashed fish
Mutton curry
Fried chicken at an obscure joint near Rapid City, SD

Four websites I visit daily:
Businessweek - someone please save me from this addiction
Sepia Mutiny - a blog for Indians not in India
Unstrung - for wireless geeks
Hella - fellow bloggers

Four places I would rather be right now:
Anyplace with a sea and without net connection

Four bloggers I am tagging:
All the bloggers I 'know' have already been tagged. So I'll pass on this.

[MBA] King Kong ain't got - whatever

It seems I am the king of waitlists. Tuck placed me on the waitlist today. I haven't talked to the waitlist coordinator yet, so I have only the general waitlist mail to go by for now. But it looks like the ability 'to demonstrate a clear desire to attend Tuck' is what will matter most now. I can't help going back to my interview and the absolute disaster I made of the 'Why Tuck' question. Hell, it was not even a 'Why Tuck' question. It was more like 'If you get into X and Tuck which would you prefer' question.

Anyhow, it's funny how expectations can affect your perception of the present. Getting put on the K waitlist was a big downer for me as I was looking forward to an admit. However, since on Tuesday I had assumed that I was getting dinged at Tuck, the waitlist news today has made me happy. Ah, the beauty of lowered expectations.

Congrats to fellow bloggers sghama and vatsa for making it to Tuck.

[MBA] More essays?

Every waitlisted candidate in Kellogg is assigned a waitlist officer. I talked to mine last week. I tried my best to cut through the usual platitudes - strong application, too many good applicants - to get to why exactly was I waitlisted. It seems I couldn't differentiate myself enough from my 'applicant pool'.

Phew! Given my 'applicant pool' I knew right at the start of this process that differentiation was going to be the albatross around my neck. And I had paid a lot of importance to it while preparing all my applications. Hell, Kellogg had a 1000 words uniqueness essay. But obviously it was not enough. Wish, I had asked a few more questions about what kind of differentiation they are looking for exactly. Now, I don't know how I can differentiate myself further without resorting to outrageous lies. I do have something in mind - non-fiction btw. But I don't know how much it would differentiate me from my 'applicant pool'.

Right around the time I was starting off on the full-time MBA quest, I had a conversation with a friend who is a 2nd year student at UCLA. He said for Indian male engineers, the MBA app process is a bitch. Back then I was surprised by this negativity. When I got off the phone the other day with my very nice waitlist officer, his statement was all I could think of. No point in whining about this too much though. The rules of this game were always known to me. I had the option of not playing it.

Tuck decisions will probably start going out from tomorrow. The official decision date is Feb 1st. Well lets see, I got invited for the Tuck interview on the very last day that they sent out such invitations. I got my Kellogg decision on the very last day that those decisions were released. So what are my chances of hearing from Tuck early next week? Given the way I answered the why Tuck qs. and my Kellogg decision I am not even sure I want to hear the decision any more.

Finally, in response to my last post, Linda Abraham of accepted.com had left a couple of very informative links in my comments. I am posting them here.

http://blog.accepted.com/acceptedcom_blog/2006/1/17/

admissions-tip-waitlist-letters.html
http://accepted.typepad.com/admissions_almanac/2005/01/

mba_waitlist_ti.html

[MBA] Kellogg pulls me back in

Now, there I was shifting apartments, ruining my back, trying to make sense of the jibberish that passes as customer requirements - you know fun stuff. Then K comes along, on the very last day I may add and delivers this message.

"Dear XXX - or was it YYY - whatever, though I sort of like you, it just ain't enough for me to make a commitment right now. You know, I'd much rather wait for someone better to come along. But just in case no one shows up you'll still be there for me right? Right?"

I got waitlisted at K. I guess it's better than getting dinged but now for another long wait (March-June) wrt K. I can almost hear a booming voice from the heavens saying, "Thy who complainst the most, shall get shafted the longest."

So now I am back in the MBA game, trying to figure out how best to get myself off the good side of the waitlist train. I don't know what to think of this waitlist though. It scares me a bit because I always thought that K was my most complete application. I am all paranoid now about all the interview invitations and the Tuck decision.

Yeah, I am definitely back in the MBA game.

[MBA] I'm outta here

Submitted my Sloan app today. One of my recommenders is still working on his stuff. But I'll ignore that and declare this phase of my application process over.

Now, here's my plan. For the remainder of January I'm going to be MBA free. Now that won't be completely true as Kellogg and Tuck results will come out in that period. But from my side I'll be MBA free - no bweek, no s2s, no blogs. I have some killer deadlines at work, we are shifting apartments and some travel might be in store. So this would be difficult but not impossible to do. I really really need a break from this crap.

So everyone, I'll see you in February. Pray that I come back with atleast one piece of good news.

[MBA] Now to the final stretch

Submitted Stanford and Wharton over the last couple of days. Wharton essays are quite standard and I have been sitting on them for a while now. So am pleased with the way they have turned out. The 2nd Stanford essay looked good to me when I last saw it. Hopefully I managed to tie together my interests and goals into what I can get from and contribute to Stanford. The 1st essay is so out of whack that even if I had 1 full year to work on it, I would still be whining about it. And I had just 4 weeks of which, 1.5 was lost to Kellogg decision anxiety + Tuck interview decision anxiety + Some old fashioned illness. Now if I were Marina I could have finished this essay and thrown in a couple of extra apps in 2.5 weeks :) But I am a very slow writer. That's just a polite way of saying that I am a champion procrastinator. So that essay went out without my 100% satisfaction. I wanted to make it completely from the heart but ended up writing it strategically. Anyway, it's over now.

Now on to my last application - MIT. Sloan is my biggest strategic mistake this app season, well until the decisions reveal something else. I knew that I was applyingt to Sloan right from the beginning and this is the only school where there is an advantage to applying in the 1st round. Yet, I postponed it to the very end. Now I have to tackle it with my energy, enthusiasm and ability to stay sane at extremely low levels. Don't know how it will turn out. Couldn't they just have a standard why mba/why sloan/career progress essay. Now thanks to the Cover Letter I'll have to write that from scratch.

I hope, no I swear that this coming weekend will be the last weekend I'll spend telling adcoms how I have repeatedly saved my company from ruin, while working for the poor and downtrodden of the world and maintaining a moral stature which would put Jesus himself to shame. I can't put up with this !@#$ any longer.