Ready to head back to work

After spending nearly two weeks on vacation in the last six weeks, I am ready to go back to work. Taking time off is all well and good, but it gets old very fast when you aren't doing something productive. This vacation was quite a bit different too because we were watching a one year old the entire time. It's very difficult to go and do anything exiting when you have to stick to a very strict schedule for a child. Secondarily not being in our own house compounded the problem. While the house we are staying in is very nice, there is a certain unfamiliarity when staying in someone else's house.

My aunt just called, they are at the airport now and are collecting their luggage to head home. We are headed home tomorrow night. It's surprised both my wife and I at how ready we are to go home and get back to our lives.

I've been hearing news of interview invites for Cornell and Wharton. Congratulations to all those that have received invites, I hope the interviews go well.

What curse?

For the first time in 86 years, the Red Socks have won the world seriers. They've finally broken the curse of the bambino. Congratulations to all Sox fans.

My wife and I are out in Seattle watching my aunt's son. She was headed down to Mexico for her birthday and she couldn't find anyone she trusted to watch him for the week, so she imported my wife and I. It works out well because she gets a great baby sitter (my wife), and we get a free vacation out of the deal.

I spent a good deal of last night talking with her husband about his business. He is an entrepreneur and runs the largest property management company in Washington state. I always find it interesting to get the perspective of entrepreneurs on an MBA. My aunt seemed a little down on the prospect, using her husband as an example of someone who was successful without one. He of course wondered how many less mistakes he would have made if him or one of his partners had an MBA.

He also told me that the number one problem for all small businesses is capital. With a name brand MBA, he said I would have better luck raising capital and a have strong network to utilize. Not to mention the business education to build a properly functioning organization. In short he was in favor of an MBA from a top institution, but thought that if I didn't get a name brand MBA, the opportunity cost was too high.

I've been having the same thoughts, realizing that getting an MBA commits me to approximately a six year course of time. One year until the program starts, two years in school, three years paying off the loans. Of course, based on the BW payment calculator, it takes an average of 3.2 years to pay off the student loan and recover the foregone income. Choosing a field like investment banking or management consulting should reduce that timeframe some. At that point though I should have some significant seed capital to start a business and have a good network to draw upon. Once again, I've had the value of an MBA confirmed to me through talking with someone that has gone down the career path I wish to follow. That has to be a good sign.

Bumping Stanford to Round 2

I have mentioned that I've been having difficulty with my Stanford essays. Doing an assessment of my progress today, I made the decision to bump the application to the next round. I have been very aggravated with my lack of progress on these essays. I was somewhat surprised because the Harvard essays came relatively quickly and easily to me. The universal advice though seems to be don't rush your applications to hit a specific round. Since I am only applying to two more schools this year, I am going to push both of them to the next round. Of course the key issue will be to make sure I keep my motivation up and really push to get these essays done long before the round 2 deadlines.

I've also been somewhat concerned how light the extra curriculars look on application. I have several ideas that I have been mulling around for a while now. By giving myself some extra time, I am going to get some of them rolling, and if nothing else I'll have a few more non-work related stories to tell.

I'm sort of bummed out that I need to bump it to round 2, but that puts Stanford in good company with Wharton. Ultimately, I think getting the application done right trumps getting it done soon. Let's hope this strategy pays off in the long run.

Now that I have a little more spare time, I will finish my writeup of the school visits last month.

Sox win the ALCS!

Congratulations to all the Red Socks fans on winning the 2004 ALCS!

I have been struggling through the Stanford essays. I am having a hard time really getting something solid down though. I spent so long on my Harvard essays coming up with short, powerful sentences, now I am up against an entirely different type of essay with Stanford. 3 to 7 pages sounds like a lot, but when you double space the text it really isn't that much room. On the other hand, because the essays are vague, it makes it interesting to provide a full picture of your candidacy.

The career essay that I have is pretty dry so far. I think I really need to go back and make it more interesting. On the what matters most and why essay, I have been struggling with my approach. I did get some good advice though on how to progress through that particular issue, so I'll post an update on how well I do with that one.

I have been settling more into the decision not to apply to any safety schools this year. There are three schools that at this point I feel very strongly about: Harvard, Wharton, and Stanford. If I get in at any of the three, I would attend. I'm not sure I could say the same about my backup choices. If I apply to a backup school, but in the back of my mind I am thinking maybe I can get in at one of my top choices next year, I probably wouldn't attend the backup choice school. So in order to save time, money, and energy, I am only planning to apply to my top three. It's very possible that I will change my mind come december though if I don't hear anything from Harvard or Stanford.

Congratulations to Boston!!

The Sox have just pulled out game 5! In the bottom of the 14th inning, Ortiz came through for them again! This has been an amazing series to watch. I was so wrapped up in the game today that I ended up leaving work early and heading home to watch it. It's a good thing I didn't try to stay at work and listen to the radio until the end of the game. They say no professional team as ever come back from a 0-3 deficit in a championship series, Boston has now brought the series back to 2-3. Let's see if they can bring this baby home.

Now that I've spent the last five hours avoiding getting any real work done, time to get some work done for a client, then hit the Stanford essays.

Harvard application submitted

Well my application to Harvard Business School is submitted. After sending it in I went and got some great mexican food with my boss. I feel much more calm now. Now I just have to find someway not to think about my application all the time. Anyone else applying to Harvard, drop me a line.

Getting ready to submit to Harvard

I'm waiting for my brother to finish a final read through of my essays now that I have them in the final form. I have this incredible urge to submit, submit, submit. The last few days have been a total frenzy trying to get everything completed and ready to go. Recommenders....I really wish I had followed Mark's advice and told them a week before the actual deadline. Actually, I did do that, but I didn't treat it like a real deadline so it passed by silently. Seriously the last thing you want to be worrying about the night before the deadline is if your recommender is going to come through for you. Thankfully all of them got their recommendations completed and submitted yesterday.

Something I didn't realize and wasn't prepared for was the detail information the application system asks for once you start you application. I spent so long working on my essays, and I didn't even think about actually logging into the system. I was in for a mega surprise though when I did. They want to know *everything* about you. I'm surprised they didn't ask the name of my first born child, and what I'm doing next tuesday night. It was a good thing I logged in a few days early to check things out. I highly encourage you to get into the application system early and start filling out the required information well ahead of time.

I thought I would log into the Business Week forums and see if anyone else was stressed out about the Harvard R1 deadline. I saw one thread with four posts in it, three of them from the same guy. It makes me wonder how many of the people applying really take this whole process seriously (not to even remotely hint that posting on Business Week makes you serious, hah!). I spent a very significant amount time working on this process, and I really think it shows in my essays. I have received very good feedback from some pretty tough readers. Let's just hope the essays are good enough.

I found that in order to really bring out my best writing, I had to dig down deep and really analyze why I want to do things. I had to look into the root of my soul and see what makes me tick deep down. After that I had to find some way to put it on paper, get it ripped on by other people, edit it, get it ripped on some more, rinse and repeat. I tracked all of the revisions to my documents and I'm sitting at about revision 10 for every essay. I don't remember who at this point, but one of the bloggers was suggesting that 10 revisions was the magic number. It looks like that may well be true.

I have to apologize for the poor structure and grammar in this post. Not because it's any worse than my usual posts, but because after I have spent so much time really tightening up my writing, editing, revising, re-wording, and re-working my prose, this writing looks pretty sloppy and loosely structured to me.

Well, maybe I'll go run around the building and try to burn off some of this energy. I had trouble sleeping last night as well, after about three hours of sleep and an hour of laying there doing nothing, I finally got up. I finished the last of the job history information that needed to be entered, and made a few last minute revisions to my essays.

A note of caution when you find editors for your essays. When people make editing changes, often times they will re-write something because the word you used was not a word they would have used. Be very careful of this, when they make that type of suggestion, they are injecting their own personality into your writing. It's a difficult temptation that even the best of my editors have fallen into. Be very diligent to ensure any wording changes, and sometimes even grammar change, don't change the tone and spirit of your writing. If they do, make sure they reflect you, and not your editor.

The final push has begun

It looks like all the applicants have started hammering on the HBS application system. I started filling out my application yesterday, and it was pretty responsive all through the day. Earlier today it was pretty responsive as well, but it looks like the East Coast applicants are hammering on it now, so it's going dang slow. I hope this system doesn't go down, it would be a bummer to miss the round 1 deadline because of that. I guess that's what I get for waiting until this late in the game to start filling this portion out.

I have decided to apply to Harvard and Stanford during round 1, and I've bumped Wharton to round 2. My decision was based on the fact that there is just no way I could whip both my Wharton and my Harvard apps into shape in the time I had left. I really want to make sure I nail my Wharton essays as well, so I didn't want to try to rush them.

I feel pretty good about my HBS essays. I really tried to lay my personality and my dreams out there for people to read. It gets tougher and tougher though, because as you dig deeper into the layers of your psyche and expose those thoughts to the world, the pain of rejection goes up. Well, this is sort of a jumbled up post that I have dashed off while waiting for the HBS system to respond. Time to get back to working on my Resume while this system makes up its mind about what its going to do.

Back home

I finally made it back home. I thought I would write a quick post to let everyone know that I'm still alive and kicking. I will post a detailed account of my trip when I get a chance ( don't hold your breath before Harvard and Wharton R1 deadlines ).

I would like to say a quick word of thanks to the blogging community. I had a great opportunity to meet some people that I have been reading about for a long time. Mark and Jie are incredibly nice and hospitable. It was great to meet them in Boston. Mark really went out of his way to help us a lot, despite his hectic schedule.

I got a chance to meet both Hella and Future MBA Girl while I was in Philly. They are both incredibly nice. Brad was very Hospitable to our entire group as we barged into his apartment during a busy day for him.

Thanks again to everyone, it was great to meet all of you.