The season begins with a win…

… Rotman said yes.

May the Force be with you!

“Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.”

Rotman wrote to me saying I get my decision this week. Wharton has started sending out invites and they will continue to do so till Nov. 12, which is the date they will also send rejections to people who don’t make the cut.

Wish all fellow applicants to these schools (and others) the very best!

“Great Kid. Don’t get cocky”

Music I listen to

ACM

Tonight is a big game in the Champions League. My team AC Milan travel to Madrid to take on the great Real Madrid team at the Santiago Bernebeu. Games usually start at 00.15 in India and you can be sure I will be up and supporting my team.

Forza Milan!

Things that make me happy

1. Seeing a product we launch work in the hands of the customer.

2. Seeing the customer’s delight from Pt. 1.

3. Establishing a good relationship with the customer wherein he places his full trust in us and believes that my team will do its best to serve him.

From the onset of my career, I have been in customer facing roles in IT operations. It is a challenging job to build confidence in a customer and ensure timely deliveries, sometimes frustrating given the way the business works, but there is no feeling I have experienced like that of a product that simply “works.” After countless assignments, enhancements, delivery dates, process implementations and teamwork efforts, it still brings me great joy to finally taste the sweet success on seeing a happy customer. I wouldn’t call myself a saint, but it is one of the purest emotions I feel.

This desire to see happiness in others has served me well in my career so far. While having my ups and downs, I have managed to do well for myself in the time I have spent in the industry.

But somehow, in the midst of all the promotions and successes, I seem to have lost sight of what I truly want or things I truly care about. My job is a high pressure job and in the constant bid to please others, I seem to be neglecting my own needs. This is something I have been feeling for quite sometime, but possibly am able to vocalize only today. A lot of this has to do with the fact that my body is crying out for a break. And a lot of its complaints are stress-induced.

With this thought in mind, I have decided to step back from the application race and re-evaluate my priorities, take some time off to refresh my mind (that has been in constant turmoil owing to the apps) and come back stronger to put more of myself into each application than I have been doing so far. I may not even apply any more, but whatever decision I take now will be taken after I have my break.

I am going to spend the next few months recharging myself, watching movies, reading books Iv been meaning to read since long, just chilling out and taking things easy. To start with, I have signed up for French lessons beginning next weekend. Learning a new language has been a desire since a long time and I had been putting it off. Now is a good time to start with developing a new skill.

In the larger course of life, I realized its not going to be a business school that makes me happy. It is going to be just myself and my hobbies.

I wish everyone the very best for completing their applications, for interviews and admits. I will post regularly and keep you updated on my status.

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I’m happy. I can’t figure it out. What am I doing right?

~ Charles Schulz

Rocky has a birthday

Early in my acting career I realized the only way I would ever prove myself was to create my own role in my own script. On my 29th birthday, I had $106 in the bank. My best birthday present was a sudden revelation that I had to write the kind of screenplay that I personally enjoyed seeing. I relished stories of heroism, great love, dignity, and courage, dramas of people rising above their stations, taking life by the throat and not letting go until they succeeded. But I had so many ideas in my head, I couldn’t focus on any one. To cheer myself up, I took the last of my entertainment money and went to see the Ali-Wepner fight on closed circuit TV. Chuck Wepner, a battling, bruising club fighter who had never made the big time, was having his shot. It wasn’t at all regarded as a serious battle. But as the fight progressed, this miracle unfolded. He hung in there. People went absolutely crazy. Wepner was knocked out in the 15th and final round, almost lasting the distance. We had witnessed an incredible triumph of the human spirit and we loved it.

That night, Rocky Balboa was born. People looked on him as the all-American tragedy, a man without much mentality and few social graces. But he has deep emotion and spirituality and good patriotism. And he has a good nature, although nature has not been particularly good to him. I have always seen him as a 20th Century gladiator in a pair of sneakers. Like so many of us, he is out of sync with the times. To all this, I injected doses of my own personal life, of my frustration at not getting anywhere.

~ Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Balboa)

Im 26. Hoping to get my shot at an interview with Wharton.

Adrian: Why do you wanna fight?
Rocky: Because I can’t sing or dance.

かまぱい

If Wharton was difficult…

… wait till you get to the Duke essays.

Be afraid… be very afraid ^-^

Happy Birthday Amma!

It’s my mom’s birthday today! Here’s wishing her a very happy birthday! Love you ma!

The Long Winding Road

This is a guest post for Beat the GMAT, a GMAT preparation site started by my friend Eric Bahn. You can catch Eric on twitter and Facebook. Eric started BTG as a weblog of his GMAT preparation, which has slowly, but steadily metamorphosed into a community driven site used by thousands of people from around the world to prepare for the GMAT. I have personally used several resources from BTG and I encourage anyone taking the GMAT to register with them and explore the community.

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This post is aimed towards people looking to apply to business schools. It aims to give some insights into the application process. I write this based on my own experiences and perspectives and all are welcome to share in with their thoughts.

Please do note that there are no commercial interests in my writing this series.

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Introduction

As part of entering a top business school and earning an MBA, one has to apply to the school to be accepted. Different schools have different intake methodologies, but the uniform standard amongst US schools is the presence of an application, which includes submitting your:

• Test scores (GMAT, TOEFL/IELTS)
• Data sheets (Personal Information, Background information)
• Educational History
• Professional Resume
• Recommendations
• Essays to questions put up by the school

This information is used to pick candidates suitable to the school and call them for interviews (sometimes optional), and if selected, an offer of admission is made to the candidate.

My strategy in the application process

I started with a list of 7 schools and decided on applying to a maximum of 4-5 schools out of them. The order of schools I applied to was decided by the school’s R1 deadlines and chances of scholarships.

I started out by writing my mission statement. This was a personal statement capturing my career progress, my reasons for wanting to do an MBA, schools I want to apply to and timelines. I keep returning to this document to re-read it and frame my responses to different questions by schools and to keep track of where I am in the app cycle.

What I’ve learned about myself from the process

The process is gruelling. Make no mistake about it. But it is also effective, since it has made me question the next step for my career and helped me find reasons to make choices. My way of approaching my career has changed as I question my goals objectively and set realistic timelines on goals I hope to achieve in the next few years using the MBA education and networks.

Recommendations to tackle the app process

• Applications are harder than they look. And expensive! Hence a good choice of schools needs to be in place by the end of July if starting with R1 apps (especially for internationals).
• Do not be too harsh with yourself for not having all the answers in place at all times. Your’s is an evolving story and you will keep re-aligning yourself as you keep getting to know your goals better.
• Take help from and contribute back to the online community. It isn’t a one-man journey and there are times when you will feel down and out. The online community comes to your aid here. And when you are the Ninja Master of school selections, essay writing and application advice, please share it back with the people just starting out.

Best surprises for me through this process

• I have been able to form new friends from around the world, some of whom are taking a lot of time in helping me with essay reviews and advice.
• Through my research on schools, I have been able to appreciate the fact that whether a top 5 school or top 25 school, since my school choices have been carefully researched, I will end up going to a school where I get a good education and be able to take my career forward from there.

Things I would do if I started over

Nothing! Im happy to be learning as I go.

The Nobel Prizes are fixed

This is absolutely without basis.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention.” – They have conveniently forgotten Mahatma Gandhi so many years later, but they can see the potential in a US Senator cum President within a few months of campaigning and a presidency which is yet to deliver.

This is just a blatant give-in to the charm and persona of an individual, instead of working with hard facts that other candidates bring to the table.

I denounce this award.