Life on the way to an MBA

HBS Teasing

2004-11-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

As many of the other bloggers do, I have an SMS alert set so that any e-mail received from hbs.edu will message me right away on my cell phone. This morning I got an SMS saying that I had mail from HBS. My heart was pounding as I checked my inbox, hoping it was an invitation to interview.

Nope.

It was an invitation to a web enhanced conference call for round 1 applicants. I enrolled for the conference call, because I am interested to hear what they have to say. I'm somewhat surprised about this e-mail because I didn't expect to hear anything beyond interview / no interview or accepted / dinged at this point. I highly doubt this conference call portends anything significant other than an update on the process.

Laying low

2004-11-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

I've been torturing myself and spending time on the BusinessWeek forums. During my self flagellation I saw that the HBS round 1 invitations have started going out. A lot of people have started to make panicky posts, wondering if they will or won't get in. After reading through a lot of old posts though, it's pretty clear that HBS continues to issue invites right up to the round 1 deadline of January 19th. In fact there are some posts about people that got their invitation just after the deadline and were admitted several weeks later. It seems that if HBS isn't interested you will get a ding on January 19th. No ding is good news I suppose. At this point, I've done all I can do, I put every ounce of energy into my application, so I'm not holding my breath to get an invite immediately.

Maybe my perspective is somewhat different than some other people though. Even if I don't get into one of my top choices this year (Harvard, Wharton, Stanford), I won't be crushed. I will continue to work on my plan which involves several business ideas that I currently have. I think getting into these schools does involve a bit of luck, and if you don't get in this year, you can always apply again. It doesn't mean you aren't good enough. I don't think you should let any person or entity decide how much self esteem you'll have. Of course we'll see if I'm singing this same tune if I get dinged. :)

Get out and vote

2004-11-02T15:06:00.000-07:00

I voted earlier today, and wow the turnout was big. It took me an hour to wait through the line just to get to the poll. I highly encourage everyone to get out and make your voice count in this election.

Ready to head back to work

2004-10-31T20:49:00.000-07:00

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?

2004-10-28T02:19:00.000-06:00

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

2004-10-25T01:31:00.000-06:00

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!

2004-10-20T22:19:00.000-06:00

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!!

2004-10-18T21:08:00.000-06:00

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

2004-10-13T13:26:00.000-06:00

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

2004-10-13T10:55:00.000-06:00

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

2004-10-12T15:50:00.000-06:00

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

2004-10-04T23:41:00.000-06:00

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.

Finally in New York

2004-09-24T22:16:00.000-06:00

It's odd that I've only been to New York once, but arriving felt like coming home. I have found that I really enjoy the east coast, and I am very optimistic about getting into business school out here.

We flew with Buddy Passes on Jet Blue. The interesting thing about Jet Blue is the only flight to New York from my area is a red eye. I've done a few red eye flights, and boy do they leave you worn out. Because we were flying stand by, initially my wife and I didn't get to sit together, but the flight attendant talked another passenger into switching me places so I could sit by her. It was a good move because she isn't a big fan of flying in the first place, and it really helps her if I'm near to lend support.

We showed up at the Holiday Inn Express at 6 am in the morning to see about an early check in. I expected them to tell us we could leave our bags but that we needed to come back at 2 or 3 pm. Instead of turning the weary travelers away, they told us they would check us in as soon as a room was clean, but that the cleaning staff didn't come in until 7 am. So we crashed on the couch in the lobby and waited for them to get us into a room. Finally by about 8:30 am, we got into our room and headed straight for sleepyville.

Around 3 pm we got up and headed into Manhattan for dinner. We ate at Sardis which is just off of times square. It was a great meal, but at the cost something we won't be repeating frequently. It wasn't quite as expensive as our dinner at Blues in Philly though.

The plan is to hang out in New York until sunday, and then head up to Boston to check out primarily Harvard, and secondarily Babson. I don't plan to apply to Babson at this point, but since they are so consistently rated highly in entrepreneurship, I want to check it out.

After Harvard we are going to visit Tuck, then we are headed down to Philadelphia for a couple of days. It will be nice to see Wharton while classes are going. It was very impressive to see it during the summer, but I don't think you can really get a feel for a place without anything going on.

Watching a co-worker self destruct

2004-09-18T11:49:00.000-06:00

About six months ago we were looking for someone to handle the DBA role at our company. They would also be reponsible for doing night time deployments to our live site. Because of the industry we are in, it is very critical that we get our deployments out precisely when they are scheduled. Any kind of screw up in this process can have dire consequences for our company, so we took a long time looking through the applicants. As usual we didn't have a shortage of applicants, just a shortage of qualified ones. We had devised a rather rigorous test to give to people, and my boss was comparing all of the applicant scores to my score and to another co-worker's score. Both of us scored extremely high, and we were having difficulty finding someone that scored even half as well as we did on that test. If someone scored reasonably well on the test we would bring them in for an interview. Interviewing with my company is sort of a juggernaut, each person usually gets interviewed by five different groups of people. If you are lucky you then get to come back for three more interviews. We had been doing this process for several months when we finally found the guy we were going to hire. He scored reasonably well on the test, so we brought him in.

He was the type of guy who marches to his own drum. Very unique, but he was pretty sharp. I had some concerns about hiring him, and discussed them with my boss, but ultimately we hired him anyway. Over the next few months he got into the job, and largely my concerns were born out. I won't belabor the details. He was on probation for previous screw ups, when friday morning my boss comes in and says to me, "You know how wednesday you mentioned we should start a pool for when X will get himself fired? I want to bet $100 on today"

My boss then explained to me how this employee who was supposed to work a night shift, went and got completely smashed before coming to work. So instead of doing the nightly deployments, that are critical, he never came into work. He never called anyone or said anything. My boss called him friday morning and asked about a different problem, and while he was on the phone with him he noticed none of the deployments were done. So when X came into the office, he was fired on the spot.

It surprises me that anyone would take this type of self destructive behavior to that level. This was by far the best job the guy had ever had, he was making more money than ever before and he had a really lax schedule. To see someone throw that all away for one night of drunkeness is a terrible waste in my opinion.

Finalizing trip plans

2004-09-10T09:33:00.000-06:00

It's hard to believe I will be heading back east again for a week of visiting schools. I'm heading out on the 24th of this month, and I'll be coming back on the 2nd of October. I'm a little nervous about flying stand-by on Jet Blue, but it's hard to beat $250 round trip for two. We have been looking for places to stay, we are looking to do this trip on the cheap, but hopefully not stay in an area that will get us killed. ;) If you have any recommendations for decent cheap accomodations in Boston, New York (Manhatten), or Philadelphia please let me know.

I probably won't be blogging too much between now and the deadlines, but I'll see if I can squeeze in a few more posts than I have this last little while.

Thinking about Essays

2004-09-02T08:42:00.000-06:00

As I have been struggling to pour the essence of myself into 500 and 1000 word increments I have struggled with finding the right words. Yesterday I was listening to an interview with an author on NPR. They were discussing the impact that certain words made on the overall feeling of the story, and he quoted Mark Twain, "The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning-bug,". It's a herculean effort to get the right words down, words that properly convey the tone and meaning that you intend in a clear and concise way. In the end it's worth all of the effort though, because if you nail the essays you maximize your chances of getting in.

Wharton Admissions Blog

2004-08-31T09:38:00.000-06:00

Wharton has launched an Admissions Blog that you can see here:
http://adcomblog.wharton.upenn.edu/

I have to say that I'm really impressed with their approach to admissions. They really try hard to make sure that we have what we need to know when it comes to applying. If you read the comments on the first post, you can see my overly effusive praise of Wharton. I guess my only saving grace is that I'm hidden behind a pseudonym. I probably praise Wharton too much, but honestly their approach is impressive. I wish the other schools would follow their lead.

Force over time

2004-08-26T13:00:00.000-06:00

Probably the most powerful force on earth is the geologic force. When we look at the vastness of the grand canyon, or we gape in awe at the sheer majesty of the alps, we are marveling at a process that took tens or hundreds of thousands of years to create. Not created in a singular burst of energy, but rather through a sustained pressure that is maintained for eons.

I have been dealing with an infestation of weeds in my yard for the past couple of weeks. They are a nasty type of sand bur. They have the little barbed heads, so that when you pull it out, it hurts. Even after you pull out the sticker it leaves a poison in the wound that makes it hurt for hours. To get ahead of these weeds I need to pull three to four buckets of weeds per week. There are so many weeds that if I tried to pull all of them at once it would just burn me out. Towards the end I would become shoddy in my work, and miss many of the weeds that I should be getting. Not to mention I would miss all of the seedlings that haven't sprouted yet. Instead of taking that approach, I have taken a more sustained approach. By spending thirty minutes three to four times a week I allow myself to make significant progress on the problem without burning myself out. I accomplish much more over time than I could in a short period of time.

There is a great analogy here to the application process. Instead of trying to jam through the essays and the recommendations in a couple of days or a week, it's better to make consistent progress over time. This approach allows you to be much more thorough and gives a better polish to your application.

By doing a little bit of work every day on your application you can make a huge amount of progress over a few weeks. It helps with the feeling of being overwhelmed at all of the work you need to do, and I believe it yields a vastly superior work product.

Added Wharton s2s feed

2004-08-26T10:42:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Hella, I've added an rss feed to the Wharton s2s boards. I have found these boards incredibly helpful during the application process. If you haven't had a chance to check them out, I highly recommend you take this opportunity to see what they are all about.

School visit the last week of September

2004-08-24T09:06:00.000-06:00

I secured some buddy passes this week for JetBlue airlines. My wife and I will be heading back east during the last week of september to check out some of the schools. My preliminary list of schools to check out are: Wharton, Columbia, Harvard, Babson. I have been contemplating checking out MIT as well, but their requirement of a full year of Economics and a full year of Calculus prior to attending their program probably rules me out. I called their office to double check that requirement, but I haven't received any call back to date. Sadly this has re-inforced an already negative impression of that school.

Business Discussion on NPR

2004-08-23T11:42:00.000-06:00

My local NPR station carried an excellent discussion on business today. The discussion included a venture capitalist from Boston, a law professor from the local area, and a vice president of the Albion group. The discussion was very wide ranging, but primarily covered the governance of a corporation. Who has the power, and what is the most efficient way to control american business.

Of particular interest was the type of structure venture capitalists look for in companies, and how much control / interest in the company they require. For initial start ups they are looking for a sales / marketing CEO, whereas as the company grows they often explicitly define when it is time for the initial CEO to step down and for a professional to step in.

Gmail account finally

2004-08-17T15:21:00.000-06:00

I finally got my gmail account today. I've been trying to get one ever since the service launched. So far the service seems really nice, hopefully they have fixed some of the spam problems that plague yahoo and hotmail. Currently I have two yahoo accounts, one hotmail account and a gmail account. I'm not going to post my gmail address at this point in time, because it uses my real name. I'll post updates on how I like the service though.

Marketing and its application to Applications

2004-08-11T15:08:00.000-06:00

I have been planning to sell my Honda Accord for several months now. I bought a cheapo car that I paid cash for so I could get rid of my expensive car payment and reduce my debt. We put for sale signs on the car with my cell phone number, but we received very few phone calls. Of the phone calls we did receive they were very poorly qualified prospects, typically they had no idea how much a 2000 Honda Accord went for, and when they learned the price that was all they needed to know.

Instead of putting a hand written note on the window, which looks cheap in my opinion, we put up professionally made stickers that said For Sale, and had my number. That marketing effort was abysmally unsuccessful. The signs themselves cost about $20, and led to very poor results as stated above.

The next step was to put an advertisement on autotrader.com. I paid for a premium listing and a thumbnail image, but I didn't opt to put multiple images up. The listings are a bit unfair though because dealers get the most prominent listing, and typically there is at least a full page of dealer listings before the premium private party listings. I used a somewhat unusual strategy in my advertisement though. I started the advertisement with "I'm headed to graduate school so I need to sell this beautiful car." I proceeded to explain how much I loved this car, and that I hated to part with it, but it was necessary. My thought process was that people want to know why you are selling the car, and if you have a really good reason that doesn't involve a problem with the car, you should state it up front.

I created the advertisement on friday ( 8/06/2004 ), and it started showing in the system later that night. By sunday night I received my first phone call. The caller knew the price of the car, knew all of the features, knew why I was selling it, and had seen a picture of it. In other words, he was an extremely well qualified prospect. Monday night he came and took the car for a drive, and we struck a verbal agreement that night. We finalized the deal on tuesday, and he is now the proud owner of a 2000 Honda Accord V6.

The interesting thing about this process though was the role of the advertisement. In more ways than one it reminded me of the Essays for the application process. The car had the right stats, and the right fit for what he was looking for. The advertisement prompted him to call me for an interview and the interview closed the deal.

The key point for differentiation in this process though was the advertisement. Because there were at least twenty other cars that were the exact same price and were similar in model year and features. Why did he call me then?

The buyer told me on Monday after the test drive that my ad had really struck him. He said he has been looking for about ten days for a vehicle, and he has looked at many different makes and models, and read a lot of different ads. He said that my ad was completely different than any other ad he saw, and that it really intrigued him. He said it conveyed that I wasn't selling the car because it was beat up and tired, but because I'm headed to graduate school (exactly what I intented to convey). He said further that it told him the car had a young owner, someone who probably didn't have many, if any kids, and that the car was probably in good shape (un-intended positive conveyance).

Selling this car has really confirmed to me the importance of admission essays. There are a lot of qualified people applying, the vast majority of them would be successful in the program. I believe the vast majority of them would also make the school proud. Ultimately though, they have to have some criterea to determine who they want to look more closely at. Since the stats are just a starting point, and at this level most of the applicants applying have phenomenal stats, you have to have something else to differentiate the candidates. Interviewing all of the candidates would be a lengthy and expensive proposition, just as a car buy can't physically test drive every car for sale. The car itself was in wonderful shape, and we went to great pains to make sure it was immaculate for the test drive. Although in the case the test drive was probably the most crucial element of the sale, the advertisement was the gatekeeper to that next step.

So it comes down to the essays. Writing clearly and concisely is a highly valued business skill anyway, why not use it as a differentiating factor in this process? The key then for us as applicants is to find some positive factor, something that will weigh heavily in our favor, and then differentiate ourselves with it. I believe if we can do that in the essays, we will be successful in getting into the best schools.

Response to Brit-Chick on statistics

2004-08-09T14:12:00.000-06:00

I wish I could do a Trackback on blogger (if anyone knows how please leave a comment). I want to respond to one of Brit-Chicks posts.

Let me start by saying that this post is quite good, and that overall I agree with much of what she is saying. However I think there is a subtle point about the statistics that she didn't get quite right. :)

You can read the article here, it's the post with the heading "Lies, damn lies and statistics".

The point I want to address is the concept that if total applications are lower then it's easier to get into business school. Her thought was that unless the total number of applications drops below the number of open positions for the school, she didn't see how it would be any easier to get into school. I want to show that a simple decrease in applications can increase your chances of getting in.

Ok, let's consider a typical application process. Wharton is good enough to post this information for us, so I'll use their numbers. You can find them here. In 2004 there were 7200 total applicants to Wharton of which they admitted 1,130. This number works about to be 15.694% of the people who applied were admitted. However of the 7200 people that applied roughly 20% to 30% of them were not academically qualified to attend Wharton (According to FF and Alex Brown). Let's take the 20% number just for the sake of argument. That means there were really only 5,760 qualified applicants to Wharton, of which 1,130 got accepted or 19.618%.

Wharton is shooting for a class size of around 800, by managing their wait list properly and by understanding yield, they successfully crafted a class of 799 students.

Now let me present the crux of my argument. Let's say for the sake of this discussion that Wharton ranked all graduates from top to bottom with no ties (they don't do this from what I understand). So we now have a ranked list from 1 to 7200, anyone with a number above 5760 wasn't academically qualified to attend Wharton. However the people with numbers 1 through 1,130 were the best qualified (again for the sake of argument only) and thus were offered a spot in the class. Let's further assume that Wharton is aiming for a fixed class size of 800, and they know that traditionally about 29% of the people offered a position will go to a different school. To arrive at the number of offers the school should place we use the following equation (100% - 29.20%) = 70.8%, plug the percentage in as follows: .708x = 800 and solve for x. x is approximately 1130 in this case. Now let's assume that in this particular year you were ranked 1131, and just missed the cut.

Now to illustrate my point, next year lets say only 6,000 people apply to Wharton instead of 7200. Assuming 20% of the applicants were again not academically qualified, we have a list of 4800 applicants that are qualified to attend Wharton. Again for the sake of argument, Wharton is using the same ranking methodology, and again they expect the same yield so they know to issue 1,130 offfers to craft a class of 800 people. Based on this we can see that if 1,130 people out of 4,800 are accepted, the acceptance rate is 23.541% versus 19.618% for the previous year. We can see that the odds of getting accepted are now higher than the previous year.

The crux of my argument and perhaps it's weakest point, is that people are ranked for admission. From what I understand the process of admission is much more complicated than this. However if you assume that there are more qualified applicants than there are slots, the admissions committee uses *something* to make a determination about who will get accepted and who gets rejected. This means that somewhere along the line they are saying I like candidate X better than candidate Y, even though both of them would fit at Wharton. If however candidate X doesn't apply, then canditate Y gets admitted instead.

Another problem with my argument could be the distribution of the candidates that don't apply. For instance if for some reason all 1,200 of the people that didn't apply were ranked below you on the list, it wouldn't help you to get accepted. I don't know what the breakdown is, but I would expect that at least some of the better applicants won't apply, therefore increasing your odds, if not exactly by the numbers shown above.

My point isn't that decreased applicants necessarily increase your chance, but that it can increase your chances depending on the situation. This post is in no way meant to slam on Brit-Chick. I enjoy her blog immensely, I just wanted to clarify this one point. :)

Liars Poker

2004-08-06T10:14:00.000-06:00

I finished reading Liars Poker last night. I really liked this book. The author has a very engaging writing style, with clear and lucid prose. The book covers investment banking primarily from the trading side. I would like to find a book that deals more with Corporate Finance, and some of the other aspects of investment banking. The author is very down on the investment banking industry as a whole, pointing out that people are paid beyond any proportion to their contribution to society. Not that I actually believe people are paid based on their contribution to society. If that were the case, teachers, nurses, police and many other professions would be paid far more than they are. I think pay is a much more complex issue than that.

In this book Michael Lewis covers the story of getting a job with Salomon brothers. He covers what life is like for a trainee, and his transition to the trading floor. He gives a lot of insights about the mentality of this particular investment bank. He does stress that Salomon brothers is a great deal wilder than the other IB's like Goldman Sachs and Drexel. For those of use who are pursuing and MBA and considering investment banking as a career, I'm not sure how directly applicable it is. If you are interested in bond trading this book is tailor made for you. If you are interested in other areas of investment banking, it won't be as directly applicable. This book is worth a read, just to get a glimpse of what the inside of an investment bank looks like.

Doom 3!!!

2004-08-03T23:54:00.000-06:00

I finally got past my computer problems ( I bought a new motherboard with good onboard sound and returned the Audigy 2 card), and got into Doom 3 tonight. HOLY SHIT!! That is one scary game. I watch the occasional horror / terror flick for the fun of it, but this game is *intense*. I was sweating and twitching as I ran through the first part of the game. The music is intense as well, of course it didn't help that I had my speakers turned up to an earth shattering level and all the lights were turned off. Hehe, my poor wife is trying to sleep in the other room as people are screaming in horror and I'm blowing zombies away. Time to go watch some cartoons before I go to bed so I can try and fight off the night terrors.

Brody Admissions Article

2004-08-02T11:10:00.000-06:00

I have been reading some articles on brody.com. Before I post the link, let me just say that I'm not endorsing brody, I haven't used their services, nor do I intend to. I think this article does have some relevant information though, much of it is along the lines of Montauk. It's worth reading through this article and some of the linked articles.

Bachelor Party

2004-08-01T23:19:00.000-06:00

I went to my friend's bachelor party on friday night. The plan was to do a poker night, no naked women (my wife double and triple checked that). My wife went to the bank to get fifty dollars in cash for me, and she asked for thirty dollars in ones and twenty dollars in fives. The teller said, "wow, thirty in ones? That's an odd request." My wife responded that I was going to a bachelor party that night. The teller raised an eyebrow and said "Oh!", clearly she thought there would be naked women. My wife blushing furiously said, "they are just playing poker!". The teller looked at her doubtfully and said "uh-huh". Needless to say she double checked four more times when she got home that there wouldn't be any strippers there.

The poker itself was pretty interesting. It was the first time I had played Texas Hold-em. We each put in about forty dollars, and played all night long. I ended up with $46.50 by the time we were done. At one point I had been up to about $70, and then down to $15. It was pretty fun, and something I wouldn't mind playing every now and then, provided we don't start playing high stakes games. I hate throwing my money away, and I feel bad when I take someone elses money.

Saturday we went and saw the Manchurian Candidate. That was a pretty interesting show. The plot was a little far fetched, but getting more realistic every day. The acting was decent and it had a decent ending. I enjoyed the movie.

We went golfing this morning. We had planned to hit the swap meet before our 7 am tee time, but the swap meet wasn't running yet, so we grabbed a bite to eat before heading to the golf course. The plan was to do 18 holes but two of the guys only wanted to do 9, so we wimped out and only did 9. :( I did ok, shooting a 50 for 9 holes. I would have been quite happy with that at the beginning of the season, now I'm only marginally satisfied by that score. I got some nice long drives that landed right square in the fairway though, finally all that time at the range is paying off a bit.

After golfing we headed to the swap meet. It was painful watching two of my friends pay full price for things. They were practically afraid to negotiate. So we ended up by them telling me what they wanted and me negotiating the price for them. That arrangement seemed to work out better. They paid less money, and I got to have fun haggling the price down.

After that I came home and just lounged around for most of the day, reading a book and watching golf. Back to the grind tomorrow.

Wharton Essays

2004-07-29T20:31:00.000-06:00

I have been mulling around the optional Wharton Essays for a while now. The essays are:

Required: Please complete two of the following three questions (500 words):

Describe when you were part of a team where the group process and/or intended outcome failed. What did you learn?
Describe a situation where your values, ethics, or morals were challenged. How did you handle the situation?
Describe a personal characteristic or something in your background that will help the Admissions Committee to know you better.

The question is which two essays to do? I have a good story to tell for the first one, something that I learned a lot from.

I have been debating with myself which of the last two to do. I have a story for each of them, but I have this nagging feeling that by doing one of the essays, the adcoms are going to ask themselves: "why didn't he do the other one?". Specifically I'm probably more worried about choosing the personal characteristic essay and the adcom questioning why I didn't do the ethics question. It's also a question of the type of information to provide, if I do the team failure and the ethics question, they are both business related, and both related to a company I ran, although the stories are different. If I choose the personal characteristic essay, it will give me a chance to explain something about my background. The question is if I should relate this story at all, it was a very difficult time period for me, and something that I learned a lot about myself from. I don't want it to come across as whining though, because I feel like I wouldn't be who I am today had this experience never taken place.

I could also choose to do the last two questions, but then of course I'm leaving out the team or group process failure, and what I learned. That essay is probably my favorite, because it most directly relates to why I need an MBA, and why now is the right time.

I could be over thinking this, but the essays seem to be *the* key to getting into a good school. I've been thinking about writing essays for all three, and then have people choose the most compelling two of the three.

Computer meltdown

2004-07-28T11:27:00.000-06:00

I've been having a lot of problems with my home desktop computer. I would be playing a game, and it would just shut down. When I tried to reboot the computer windows would display the message that my computer was not fully ACPI compliant, please re-install windows and disable ACPI. If I let the computer sit for a while, it would stop being mad at me and boot up. For months I kept putting off, then finally I broke down and did a full re-install. I got everything set up and working, was able to play games on Sunday, then Monday it started shutting down again. Like usual after a shutdown it wouldn't boot up, this time it didn't display a message, it just sat there starting at me with a blank screen.

So the problem isn't windows related (even though it never shut down when I was booted into Linux). I thought the problem would be one of the following: bad ram, faulty power supply, faulty processor. I talked to a tech at the local computer store, and he suggested checking for heat problems. A typical processor shouldn't run hotter than 50 degrees celsius. I booted into the bios and checked the CPU temp: 78 degrees celsius. Ouch! That's really hot, and its not even doing anything, just sitting in the bios. I'm sure when I loaded Warcraft and it had to start processing, the temp shot up a lot higher.

Realizing the temp was a problem, I pulled out my can of handy dandy compressed air and blew the dust out of the heat sink on the processor. Reboot and temp check 58 degrees. This was quite a bit more promising, but still hotter than it should be. I went to the computer store and got a Cooler Max fan for $30. I removed the old fan, and put the new fan on the CPU, pushed the power...nothing. No bios, not beeps, just a black screen. That is a bad sign by the way.

Oh crap, so I pull the fan off the CPU and look at the Thermal Paste. Shit!! The heat sink wasn't making contact with the processor. The second I hit the power button I burned up about twenty million transistors. There was a little inducer on the motherboard right next to the CPU slot. When I tried to seat the fan over the CPU, one corner hung up on the inducer preventing contact with the CPU core. Instant burnage.

I made my third trip of the day to the computer, this time for a new processor. I bought the AMD Athlon 2400+ for $83. The guy told me the retail fan that comes with this computer is much better than the fan for the 1800+ (the one I just smoked), and that they will take back my Cooler Max fan. I would've bought the 2500+ but it runs at a bus speed of 333 Mhz and my ram is only 266 Mhz. To save on cost I just got the 2400+ and avoided a ram upgrade. The fan for this had a copper core right where it is supposed to make contact with the silicon (Copper dissipates heat better than aluminum), and a good preset swab of thermal grease. When I put the new CPU in the computer and checked the temp it was running about about 39 to 40 degrees celsius. I was able to get everything set up and running, and I didn't have any computer crashes after that. Of course today is the big test, it usually works fine for day. Ultimately it sounds like my other processor was bad, it was just running a lot hotter than it should have been. Which prompted my destruction of it.

Incidentally, after I swapped out processors, Windows XP made me activate before logging in. You are supposed to have 30 days, but apparently a hardware change prompts an immediate activation.

Family vacation and school debate

2004-07-25T10:35:00.000-06:00

I'm back from a family vacation. It was nice to get away from work for a few days and retreat into the mountains. Who would have thought the reunion would turn out to be all about business school. :)

I have mentioned previously my uncle who is an entrepreneur. I have another uncle that has his own business as well, although he just has a small accounting shop. The interesting thing about this uncle is that he has an MBA from Columbia. I talked to him at great length about getting an MBA over the weekend, in fact both of them were there. The uncle with an MBA from Columbia doesn't think I need an MBA. He admits his MBA has been very instrumental in his career. Having an MBA from Columbia allowed him to get a job with Price Waterhouse, and with the experience he gained there he was able to start his own company. He also said that having an MBA from Columbia helps him out daily when dealing with new clients, because it adds prestige to the service he offers. This same uncle is the accountant for Orson Scott Card (if you are a book reader).

So now we see that his MBA has been crucial in his career. The education and the prestige have allowed him to operate his own private business for a lot of years. During our discussions though, I made it pretty clear that I know which direction I'm headed. His opinion is that since I know where I want to go, I don't need to get an MBA, instead I should just go down that path (starting my own company). He was remarkably persistent in his attempt to "set me straight".

My other uncle, the entrepreneur, was also at the family reunion. The first day I bounced back and forth between the two of them, picking their brains. The entrepreneur saying, "go to school, it would've made me more successful". The other uncle saying, don't go to school, it made me successful, but I don't think it will do much for you. The last day of the reunion I got the two of them together and set them at each other. :)

It was quite interesting sitting there listening to them discuss the issues. My entrepeneur uncle was very clear and articulate. He emphasized that although he doesn't have an MBA, he has been a lifelong student. He has more than enough credit hours to complete his undergraduate degree, and now he's simultaneously finishing his undergrad and an MBA. He strongly attributes much of the success he's had to his education. He also says you simply cannot over pay for good education. They went back and forth for a long time, and they discussed many more points than I will reproduce here.

It was very interesting to listen to them discuss this issue. It has been clear to me for some time now that an MBA is the path I'm headed towards. Listening to my uncle cogently and intelligently defend why and MBA is not only useful but nearly a necessity reaffirmed my decision.

An interesting side note, one of my cousins is good friends with the Dean of Harvard Business School. Apparently he is coming out to my area with his wife this week, and my cousin will be having dinner with them. She said she would put in a good word for me, and maybe arrange for me to meet him. :)

Who would've thought a family reunion would turn into an application process mecca.

Stanford returned my call

2004-07-21T16:59:00.000-06:00

Nancy Gross (I hope that is spelled correctly) from Stanford admissions called me back today. She was extremely nice, and very helpful on the phone. Something that is a huge negative for me is when a school acts haughty and arrogant. A little less than a year ago I was speaking with a professor from MIT, and he was extremely arrogant. He suggested that it is very difficult to get into MIT, and that I shouldn't get my hopes up too much. It wasn't that he was just letting me know, I felt like he was extremely dismissive of me in general. I personally detest that type of attitude. Most applicants know it's tough to get into these schools, we are competing with the top tier of applicants in the world. There is no reason to be haughty and arrogant about that fact. The point of my little diatribe is to emphasize that Nancy from Stanford couldn't have been more different than the professor from MIT. She was very warm, and very kind on the phone. I've stated before that attitudes pervade an entire institution. To me, if the admissions people are rude and inconsiderate, it reflects very poorly on the school as a whole. Conversely, if they are warm and polite it reflects extremely well on the school.

Nancy said the round one deadline for application is October 28th. Class visits begin on October 11th. Apparently students don't start school until late September. She said that if you plan to visit, mondays and fridays are the best because you can do the class visit, the school tour and the lunch session all in one day. Also there are no classes on wednesdays.

Playing phone tag with Stanford

2004-07-21T13:59:00.000-06:00

I've been playing phone tag for a couple of days with Stanford now. I would like to talk with some Stanford Alumni that had an entrepreneurial focus, to see what courses they took, how they feel it has helped them in their career etc. I left a voice mail last week, got a call back the day I forgot my cell phone, then I called them back today, still voice mail. It can be tough to get this information during the summer. :(

I am particularly interested in talking with Alumni that have started businesses after attending the program. I am intrigued to hear how well the program has prepared them for starting and running their business. I also want to know how they handled the debt load coming out of that program. Did they consult for a few years? Did they work in banking for a bit to pay off the loan? Or did they go right into a startup situation.

Talking with a Wharton Alumni

2004-07-17T21:29:00.000-06:00

I had a really great discussion with a Wharton Alumni in my area friday. He was very good to answer my questions about the process. I had a relatively long list of questions, and my keyboard clacked away during our discussion as I tried to capture as much of the information as possible. We talked about his background, what he did before Wharton, what he did at Wharton and what he does now. We also talked a lot about what the student body at Wharton. He said that the people are very friendly and helpful, that the atmosphere is highly collaborative and team oriented. He stressed several times that it's important to build an individualized experience for yourself. By taking the classes you are the most interested in and by maximizing your time at business school you will get the most out of it. He said because of the collaborative nature of the program there are some people who just coast through it, but overall the benefits of the atmosphere outweigh the drawbacks. He was a big fan of the grade non-disclosure policy because it allowed him the opportunity to take classes in areas that weren't his strength areas and not worry about his GPA.

Talking with him also really helped to humanize this process for me. It's very easy to begin feeling isolated and cut off during this process, and actually speaking with a Wharton Alum was nice. He was very helpful and very nice through out the conversation. It's all the more impressive that all of this started from a simple post to the Wharton s2s boards about talking to an Alumni. I mentioned where I lived and gave an e-mail address on the forum, less than one day later I was contacted by this local Alumni. Very impressive, and something speaks to the quality of Wharton.

Thoughts on insider trading

2004-07-16T14:31:00.000-06:00

Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in jail and five months of home incarceration today. My brother and I have been talking about this a bit, and we have come to the conclusion that the current insider trading laws are ridiculous. The problem is that you are relying on the fox to watch the hen house. If one of the hens wanders into your hands, you as the fox shouldn't eat it, yet that's exactly what any good fox would do. The problem is that the farmer should've kept the hens cooped up, if they get out *he* should be fined. In other words, people are always looking for an edge in the stock market, that's how you make money. Obviously people shouldn't illegally gain insider information, but if they come across something that is, they should be allowed to use it. If anyone gets in trouble for it, it should be the person that leaked the information in the first place.

BusinessWeek thread now a flame war.

2004-07-15T18:39:00.000-06:00

That thread has definitely turned into a flame war. The thing
that is so irritating is when people claim they have the one true
universal answer to a problem. When they claim they know
everything about a situation, and everyone should follow their
example. I've stated over and over on that thread that someone
should do a serious evaluation of what they want out of school.
There are a lot of factors to consider, you should seriously evaluate
going to a second tier school with a full ride, etc. Apparently
that isn't enough though, I swear it's like he wants me to say "No one
should ever go to a top school, because they suck!". He just
can't see beyond the facts of his own situation and realize that some
people in the same situation would still want to go to a top
school. *Sigh*

Entreprenuership discussion on BusinessWeek

2004-07-14T17:17:00.001-06:00

I have been following this thread on the BusinessWeek forums. There is a guy posting that entrepreneurs shouldn't go to a top ranked program, that instead they would be better off simply attending a local program and avoiding the debt. He has a point about avoiding the debt, however there are many ways that one can compensate for the debt of the program. It seems to me that the top ranked programs are highly regarded for a reason. People don't just attend them because they are "prestiged", but because they will actually get a better education than they would at a local school. That is my perception, and is the primary reason I want to attend a top tier program. My uncle who is a highly successful entrepreneur was also highly supportive of attending a top program like Wharton. The guy on this thread seems to think that your background and credentials as an entrepreneur don't matter, however having run my own businesses, I can tell you that your background is *more* important than if you just worked at a company. Prospective clients tend to scrutinize new companies, they want to know the company will be around for a while. They want to feel like the company is in good hands, and that it isn't being run by Joe Blow down the street. Business is all about differentiation. Why should they spend money with you instead of the three other companies trying to win their business? Would it make a difference to you if one company was run by a Wharton MBA while the other company was run by a person with an MBA from Phoenix? It would matter to me.

The prestige factor won't apply if you plan to open a retail business of some sort, unless you need to get funding, or work out distribution deals, or make business contacts with other business owners. Oh wait, it's important there too. Of course actually getting a top notch education cannot be understated either. Mostly I think this guy is trying to justify to himself why he didn't go to a top tier program.

Contacted by a Wharton Alumni

2004-07-13T16:39:00.000-06:00

I followed Hella's advice and posted on the Wharton s2s boards, and I have already received an e-mail from an Alumni in my area. I find this very impressive, and something that I think speaks to the overall quality of Wharton. My post on their boards was very unofficial, but it got immediate results. I haven't yet had a chance to speak with the Alumni, but I've responded via e-mail to arrange further discussion. This is exactly the kind of response that puts Wharton very high on my short list of schools. I am interested in a school that is highly attentive to the student needs, because I believe their attitude about students permeates all levels of an organization.

Since the other schools I am interested into don't have a forum such as the s2s to post on, I'll need to contact them directly. I will post an update about my experience with those schools. It's going to be hard to top Wharton's performance though.

Golfing

2004-07-11T16:20:00.000-06:00

I have been golfing a lot this year, probably more than the three previous years combined. Certainly by the end of this season (barring anything unforseen) I will have golfed significantly more in this one year than all of my previous years combined. I am really starting to see some significant improvement in my scores as well. This morning when I went out I shot a 50 on nine holes. Last year I would've been ecstatic about that score, however today I know I really didn't do that well. I'm hoping that by the end of this season I'm shooting mid to low 40's consistently.

I've started re-reading some of the branding sections in Montauk. I need to refresh my memory, and look at my themes from a new perspective, to make sure that is really what I want to emphasize in my essays.

The effective executive

2004-07-08T13:09:00.000-06:00

I've been reading the effective executive by Drucker lately (yes I've taken a break from 'My years with General Motors'). It is a very interesting, and a very quick read. It also pinpoints a problem I have been trying to articulate at my company for a long time now. The people above me are very intelligent, and they are all very good at what they do, but they are not effective in their jobs. They spend all of their time operating, or managing reactively. They just are not doing the right things, they are not proactive, they don't handle long term issues. Now that the book has helped me to identify the problem, I hope it presents a good solution for becoming an effective executive. The next couple of years will be critical for the company I work for, because they are going from a medium sized company to a large enterprise. In order to make this transition, a lot of things will have to change. It will be very interesting to see if they are capable of making the jump to the next level.

Counting lane changes

2004-07-07T09:02:00.000-06:00

I was thinking about my previous post on changing lanes this morning as I drove to work. I thought it would be interesting to quantify the reward for changing lanes, versus remaining in the same lane. I stayed in the same lane of traffic for this entire experiment, while the car behind me was itchy to "get ahead". During a ten minute segment of the commute he changed lanes 14 times. I estimated that he was approximately 8 seconds ahead of my current position when I exited the freeway. So he gained on average 0.57 seconds per lane switch. On the other side of the equation he cut off 4 people during that time, risking either an accident or a road rage incident.

It would be interesting to quantify the overall average time savings per lane switch versus the overall risk per lane switch. Clearly this single data point doesn't give a valid statistical representation, but it is intriguing to see that there is not a high reward for lane switching.

Response to Brad and Byron

2004-07-06T19:42:00.000-06:00

Originally I started typing this as a comment, but it got long enough to turn it into a post. :)

Brad said...

Yes, Helen got in on the 2nd time.

If you don't apply, you surely won't get in :)

Brad, as obvious as that sounds, it is a good point. I am still planning to apply. Reading that blog just struck a nerve today.

byron said...

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I also got dinged everywhere my first time out. My big mistake was that I rushed the process -- I didn't plan things out, and as such I didn't research the programs carefully enough for fit.

Aside from W, which programs are you targeting?

Byron, you raise a good point about fit. My primary interest in business school is Entrepreneurship. So my list currently goes something like this: Wharton, Stanford, MIT, Harvard. I'm also considering looking into Haas, Kellog and Chicago, but I don't know too much about their programs yet.

I really want to get into a program with both good entrepreneurship and good general management programs. My strong background in technology makes me think that Stanford, MIT and Haas might be good fits. The overall strength of the programs in the two areas I'm looking at are why I think Wharton and Harvard are good fits. The learning environment seems to be quite different between all of the schools, and to a certain degree I really feel like I need to visit some more of the schools before I can really have this list whittled down. The reasons cited above are much shallower than my actual reasoning, but I haven't fully articulated why I want to attend each school at this point (which is something that obviously needs to be done before I complete my essays).

It is very difficult to determine fit simply by reading the marketing material from a program, or from the write up on their web site. I really need to talk to some current students and some alumni of the different programs. I think that would give me a much better idea of the type of people in the program and what the program is all about.

What is the best way to contact Alumni and students? Should I just call the schools and ask for some contacts? If any of you are current students at these schools or know some current students or Alumni, I would love to talk to them.

Beowulf

My recurring nightmare

2004-07-06T13:23:00.000-06:00

I have this terrible fear that I'm going to apply to all of these schools and get dinged at each and every one of them. Now I have come across a blogger that had exactly that experience. You can find the blog here. Of course he had the exact same GMAT score as me, which doesn't lend itself to security and comfort. Reading through those posts are really sad, particularly reading the early posts knowing the outcome. He was so full of confidence and excitement in the early part of the process, then to get dinged at every school...ouch. I think it was Helen Chiang who was dinged the first time around too, then got into Wharton the next year (all these blogs are starting to blur, so don't scream if I'm wrong). I wish this guy all the best, and hope he re-applies successfully.

Reading that blog makes me realize that I need to be very careful, and put everything I have into this process. There are quite a few differences between myself and this other candidate, hopefully the differences are enough for me to get into some of the top programs. My wife is very supportive, but really not that helpful in this process. She keeps telling me that I'll get into one of these programs no problem, but these programs are *really* hard to get into. I know myself, and I know that I would be successful at these programs, now I just need to make sure and convey that to the adcomms.

Reading that blog has really thrown me for a loop, maybe it is good though, time to get that fire re-ignited under my butt.

Happy 4th of July

2004-07-04T20:40:00.000-06:00

Today is the fourth of July! I love to see firework displays, unfortunately in my area there aren't many displays today because it is sunday. We will go see a decent display tomorrow, then later in the month there is usually a really great display that we go see.

I golfed 18 holes this morning and shot a 101. I would've broken under 100 if I hadn't blown up on one of the holes by shooting 5 over par. I'm going to golf again tomorrow since I have the day off, probably another 18 holes. :)

I may actually get some work done on my essays today for a change. :)

Don't cut me off!!

2004-06-30T11:03:00.000-06:00

People are strange about some things. Look at the diagram below:

------------------------------------------
Lane 1 C C W X C C C
------------------------------------------
Lane 2 C C C Y Z C C C
------------------------------------------

This diagram represents a not too uncommon situation on the freeway. Imagine that Lane 1 is moving faster than Lane 2. In this situation car Y is going to do everything in their power to merge between car W and X, while typically car W is going to speed up and close the gap with car X, thus forcing car Y to merge behind W. If car Y does speed up and get in front of car W, it will typically piss off the driver of car W. On the other hand, if car W speeds up and closes the gap, forcing car Y to merge behind car W, the driver of car Y will often be upset.

I have been noticing lately that people who are quite content to do their own thing will often become dissatisfied when they find that they are "behind" someone else. This seems to be a universal trait that applies across nearly every human endeavor. Certainly not everyone is so afflicted with the doings of others, but it seems to be widely prevalent. I believe a large portion of these type of activities are motivated by selfishness. Most people seem to be concerned primarily with their own position, but are without consideration for the plight of their fellow man.

Personally I tend to be very individualistic, and I believe in looking out for number one, but does that always have to be at the expense of other people? On the freeway for instance, a lot of the accidents are caused by this type of behavior. People are always forcing their way in between other cars in order to save a few seconds, while the other cars are following very closely in order to prevent someone from merging. If either side would just back off and drive a little less aggressively, a lot of accidents would be avoided. Unfortunately, that would probably be require a change in human nature.

Getting back into the swing of things

2004-06-28T22:06:00.000-06:00

Now that I've been home for a week, I am finally starting to get back into the swing of things. Last week I had to pull a near all nighter at work to fix a problem with a deliverable. I was there until 3:00 am, went home and dropped into bed then got up at 7:00 am and started working until 4 pm. After that I went and dropped into bed for a few hours. It made for a long couple of days but I fixed the problem. An interesting note about our company leave policy; we have to work a set number of hours per year, we can accrue those hours at any time during the year. Since the week I took vacation was split between two pay periods, I worked enough hours before I left and since I've been back that I won't burn any of my accrued leave. Interesting that I can be gone for an entire week and not burn an hour of leave. :)

So maybe I should change the title of this blog to slacking my way to an MBA. I haven't spent any time on my essays for a while now. I really need to start cracking on them and make good use of this extra time. I also really need to start hitting those letters of recommendation hard. I would like to have the rec's done and the essays mostly tied up by september so that our next trip to the schools is focused on helping me polish the essays.

I'm also reading through "My years at General Motors" by Alfred Sloan. So far it's been a great book, but I'll post more a more thorough review when I get done. There is also a big reading list posted on the Business Week forums. When I get some more time I'll pull the list out and post it here on my blog.

How I prepared for the GMAT

2004-06-24T15:26:00.000-06:00

My brother is studying for the GMAT now, and he asked me how I prepared for it. I thought I would post about what I felt was important during my study time.

To brush up on my knowledge I read through the Princeton Review and the Kaplan books. I found them to be useful for tips and tricks on certain types of problems. They were ok as far as review went. Probably the most helpful thing I did here though was the Pre-Calculus class I took the semester before the test. I took that class specifically to refresh my knowledge before the test, and to ease me back into math before diving into Calculus this semester. Ultimately it's very important to get yourself back into the mindset of working with math problems.

Every weekend I would take two practice tests, one on saturday and one on sunday. The practice tests give you a good feel for what the test is like. It's a lot easier to read problems in a book than it is to read them on screen, so it's important to work several practice tests per week. One thing to note, when you do these tests, set your resolution to 800x600 or 640x480 because the tests are designed to run at that resolution. If you don't you will be squinting to read the small text.

When I used the official guide, initially I started just working through the math problems, but soon realized I needed to use the practice time to reinforce the timing of the test. So every night I gave myself two 75 minute blocks. In the first 75 minutes I would do 20 Problem Solving Questions and then 20 Data Sufficiency problems. Then I'd take a five minute break before starting the verbal section. For the verbal section I would do 10 - 12 Reading Comprehension problems (this section varied because I would do all of the problems for a given reading passage). After Reading Comp I typically did 10 to 12 Critical Reasoning questions. I used this section to round out the questions I did with Reading Comp. Then I usually did 20 or so Sentence Correction. I focused heavily on Sentence Correction because it was my weakness in the verbal section. Overall I usually did 41 questions a night for verbal.

The reason to structure your daily study this way is to fully ingrain into you how long you have to do each question. By doing it this way, I rarely needed to look at my watch, I had a built in clock and I knew how much time I had left and how quickly I needed to approach different questions. I kept my watch handy, just so I could check my timing and make sure I was on pace. I really believe that using this approach helped me immensely on the test. By doing that many questions every night I built up endurance and an ingrained knowledge of test timing. Those two things are every bit as critical on test day as actual knowledge of how to solve the problems. Be careful though not to over do this. I was really burned out towards the end, and the last week before the test I only studied a few days.

Make sure you do you practice tests and your studying in a quiet area free from distractions. Try to talk your loved ones into leaving you alone while you are studying. The idea is to recreate as closely as possible the conditions of the test you are about to face.

Take the practice tests with a grain of salt, here are my practice test scores:
Kaplan: 610, 560
Princeton Review: 640, 670, 710
Power Prep: 690, 740
Actual Gmat: 740

it might look like the Power Prep 740 correlates to the 740 on the actual GMAT, but I don't think it does. The math on the actual GMAT was much harder and I'm quite certain I missed more questions on the actual GMAT than I did on that Power Prep. I believe the practice tests tend to score low. Of course, if you suffer from test anxiety you may do worse on the actual test, it's hard for me to say because I don't suffer that way.

If I were going to do this again I would change my study in the following ways:

1) I would take more Kaplan tests. The scores are wrong and their verbal questions suck, but their math quesions would be good practice for the test. Their questions are harder than the actual test, but the Power Prep and Princeton Review math questions are way easier than the test. I think it would be better to practice at or above the difficulty level of the test. Be aware though, their score system is downright wrong.

2) I would probably not study for 2.5 - 3.5 hours every day for a full month. I would ease into it a little slower, maybe 2.5 hours 3 times a week, 1 hour 2 times a week and 2 practice tests a week (3.5 hours). My burnout at the end was pretty bad, I would be a little more careful to avoid this going in.

3) I didn't ever work the last 150 problems in the problem solving section of the Official Guide. This is where all the hard questions are, I would make it a point to work all of these questions and know the techniques behind all of them.

4) I would keep a log book of all the concepts I missed when taking a test, or something that I was confused about. Review this book daily to make sure that you understand the concepts that were confusing.

5) If the power went out during the test again, I wouldn't wait around as long as I did to finish. I would've counted my blessings that I saw some actual test questions for free, and rescheduled for the next week.

Completed Jack, Straight from the Gut

2004-06-22T09:51:00.000-06:00

I finished reading Jack Welch's autobiography today. It was really a great read, he covers a lot of interesting material about his position as CEO. The book is filled with his philosophy on organization and leadership. If you're looking for a new business book to read, I highly recommend this book. It gives a very lively account of his time at GE, his progression through the ranks, and his eventual selection as CEO. He then spends a great deal of time talking about the reforms and initiatives he put in place, and his goals for improving the company. There is also a lot of coverage of acquisitions and divestitures of different divisions within GE. I really liked this section because he covers the rationale for the decisions, and discusses the numbers behind the deals (albeit in a light fashion).

Next up, "My years with General Motors" by Alfred P. Sloan Jr.

New Apple cinema display

2004-06-22T09:48:00.000-06:00

I've been waiting for this announcement for a while. There have been rumours circulating about this new 30" monitor for almost a year now. Hopefully the new 23" monitor will have a faster response time making it better for games. Now that they are DVI they will be fully PC compatible, and with the price drop, I think I'm going to have to save my pennies for one of these monitors.

Here is the link:
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=512

Back from vacation

2004-06-20T16:33:00.000-06:00

Our flight left at 7:20 am this morning from Philadelphia, which meant we had to be up by 4:00 am to get the final parts of our packing completed and return the rental car. Remembering our near flight miss on the way to Philly we decided to make sure we were at the airport plenty early.

Yesterday on our last day in Pennsylvania we went went to see my uncle in Red Lion. It was great to see him, I've had very little opportunity to see him as he lives on the east coast. We met at a very nice country club near his house and had lunch. The great thing for me about talking to my uncle is that he is a very successful entrepreneur. He started Zero Restriction which is the number one outer wear supplier for the PGA, LPGA and Senior PGA tours. He has several patents on the jacket design, and believe me they are nicest golf jackets on the market. We got a chance to talk quite a bit entrepreneurial principles and the creation of wealth. He gave me a number of good ideas, and really forced me to rethink some of the ideas that I have been pursuing lately. One of the really great benefits for me personally going to Wharton would be the nearness and availability of my Uncle.

We also got a chance to tour his local factory where the jackets are manufactured. That facility is a 50,000 square foot wharehouse, it is quite an impressive operation. He also has two more factories within the company and two independent factories produce material exclusively for his company. It is quite the amazing operation and it is very impressive to see in person. Talking with him and seeing the factory was the perfect capstone to this wonderful vacation.

After we finally made it home, I crashed in front of the couch for about five hours with the U.S. Open on television. I'm still relatively tired, but I have to admit, it was great to have my own pillow again. Time to make the rounds and go wish our fathers a happy fathers day.

Recovery day

2004-06-18T07:18:00.000-06:00

We didn't do much yesterday as we slept in quite late trying to recover from the day before. After we got up, we headed over to the Ben Franklin museum to check it out. Admission was free because there were a billion kids running around. Most of the displays seem geared towards kids. I wish there were more and better scientific museums around for adults that have a fundamental grounding in physics and science. I guess we aren't that big of a group though. :(

While we were there we decided to see a movie in the IMAX. The movie was mysteries of Egypt, and it was a designed for a real IMAX screen. That was the first movie I've seen that was designed to be projected that way, and they certainly make you feel a bit disoriented. My wife seemed to be more affected than I was, and the poor lady sitting next to me had to put her head between her hands and close her eyes several times. I guess those days of playing FPS games come in handy after all. :)

At the beginning of the movie there were a several kids sitting in front of us playing with flashing toys of some sort. They were quite irritating when the lights went out, and the kids actually held them up as high as they could and started waving them around. There were two kids right in front of us doing it, then several more in the next few rows, and around the area. When they started waving them around, I leaned forward and in my sternest voice possible said, "Hey! Knock that off." Heh, not only did the two kids in front of us stop, all of the kids in the vicinity stopped immediately. Several people around us said "Thank you", and wouldn't you know, those toys didn't flash once more the rest of the movie. I was surprised that was as effective as it was.

For dinner we went to Moshi Moshi, a sushi bar right around the block from us. My wife has never had sushi before and she wasn't very keen to try it, but she decided to have one of my california rolls. She said it was pretty good and had another one. I had only got one order, so I order another one, and she had two more!! I was so impressed that she would eat those, she even knew sushi was raw fish when she ate them. I have to admit their sushi tasted much better than anything I've had back home. I imagine living close to the ocean you can get much more fresh seafood.

That was about it for yesterday, we briefly debated driving up to Boston for the Harvard info session, but it's about a six hour drive and we didn't want to have to drive back down after that. So we decided to leave that until the september trip.

Hershey, Harrisburg, Gettysburg, Somnia

2004-06-17T08:23:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a jam packed day. True to the plan I got up at 5:30 am and moved the car to a metered slot, so I only ended up paying $20.50 to park for two days. Despite the headache, it felt like a minor triumph. :) After working out and showing we headed out on the road to Hershey.

The drive to Hershey took about two hours, and took us through some very scenic country. I was really looking forward to the tour of Hershey, I had understood a tour of the actual plant was what the tour was. When we arrived at Hershey, the first tour that I saw was the factory works. You might think the factory works tour is something about how chocolate is actually made, but then you'd be just as disappointed as I was. Factory works is in fact just a little thing for kids, basically it's just machine with a conveyer belt that moves pre-made chocolates around. Kids push buttons and it opens a bucket dropping out some candy onto the belt, then they get their free candy. I was seriously disappointed here, because I really wanted to see the actual factory operation. We bought some candy to take home for friends, and nearly left at that point. Right before we left though I asked if it was possible to take a tour of the actual factory. They told me it wasn't, and that they haven't done tours for thirty years, but the ride shows you the process. A ride? It shows the process? This sounded promising so we went and got on the ride. It was more what I was looking for, as it showed the process of how chocolate is made, with decent explanation. So at least I got a better feel for how things are done, although I'm still a bit sad that I couldn't see the actual process.

After Hershey we headed over to Harrisburg to see the National Civil War Musem and grab a bite for lunch. I must say, the Museum in Harrisburg is spectacular. There are a lot of relics from the civil war on display. There are also a lot of explanatory plaques and they have put together a nice collection of videos. The museum does an excellent job of giving you background and perspective on the war. I didn't realize before going to the museum that the anti-slavery forces and the pro-slavery forces had been at it for nearly a century, and that it finally boiled over with the civil war. There was a lot of great historic information here that I didn't know before going. I highly recommend this museum, it's well worth the trip. Try not to go when there will be a big group children going through though, they tend to ruin the somberness of the place.

After Harisburg, we were both exhausted, and I nearly talked myself out of going to Gettysburg. The drive from Harrisburg to Gettysburg was quick, but I was fighting sleep the entire way down. Finally when we got there I pulled into a parking lot to let myself fall asleep. It turns out this parking lot was one of the tour centers, and as it was 5:00pm I decided I'd better check and see if they were closing before going to sleep. They were closed, but they gave me directions to another one that stayed open later. We drove over to the other tour center, and bought a few trinkets and an auto tour on CD along with a battlefield map. Gettysburg is unlike any other historic city I've been in. The battle was fought all around and in Gettysburg, so the entire city is a monument to this battle. I wanted to see the wax museum before we did the tour, so we drove over there and saw that show. It was pretty neat, and gave another good set up for what was to come.

The auto tour was perhaps the single greatest thing I've ever done on any vacation. The tour itself is perhaps two hours of audio narration and dramatization. It took us about four hours to get through it, because you are driving around the battlefield, and at different sites you get out and walk around and overlook the battlefield. The feeling of somberness and respect for that place that comes over you while doing the tour is simply amazing. The battle took place on July 1, 2, and 3. We are very near that time of year so the conditions were probably almost identical to what we found when we were there. The entire area was covered in a thin, almost unearthly fog that prevents you from seeing too far. As you drive from site to site, and you see the monuments to all of the fallen soldiers, you can begin to envision the battle lines. You can see the positions where they were set up, where the attacks took place, and where the rivers ran red with blood. You go through all of the different areas of the battle, and it was fought in a surprising large area. I can vividly remember these places now, where the two groups first clashed. The battles for culps hill, for the big and little round top. What the devils den looks like. Where the final charge was, and where it all ended. You drive along the confederate battle line on seminary hill, getting a feel for their position, and looking across the field to cemmetary hill where the federal lines were. You drive along the union battle line, seeing what they must have seen during that fateful charge. At certain points they have erected massive steel lookout towers that you can climb to overlook portions of the battlefield. If you have any interest in the Civil War, I would strongly encourage you to go to Gettysburg and do the auto tour. In fact, next time we would get a room in Gettysburg and stay for a couple of days. There is a lot more to do and see there that we didn't have time for.

The park closes at 10 pm, and at this point we were both famished. So we stopped at Ruby Tuesdays to get some dinner before our journey back to Philadelphia. I was completely exhausted at this point and my wife was in no better shape, so we waged a pitched two person battle against sleep on the drive back. I probably should have pulled over to the side of the road, but pulling over at 11 pm into a darkened forest wasn't overly appealing to me. So we cranked up the radio, and my wife had to listen to my terrible singing voice as I tried to keep myself engaged in something to avoid getting too drowsy. After what seemed like hours, we finally made it back to the city. Of course at that late hour the only parking structure still open was the extortive parking garage. D'oh.

What an incredible day. What an incredible place to take a vacation.

Historical visits

2004-06-15T15:57:00.000-06:00

Today we did the historic tour of center city. We saw the Liberty bell, went to the national Constitution center and saw many other historic buildings. It was a great opportunity to see many great and historic sites in downtown philly. The plan tomorrow is to head for Hershey Pennysylvania, and then over to Gettysburg, we have to get up early to have any chance of making the trip worthwhile though.

Since everything closes at 5pm around here, we are thinking of going to a movie tonight. At the moment we are just chilling in the hotel, recuperating from all the walking and the heat of the day.

Wharton Info Session

2004-06-14T22:01:00.000-06:00

We attended an information session today at Wharton. We arrived about an hour early so we could walk around the campus and get a feel for the building. The building was pretty dead, just as we expected due to coming during the summer. Huntsman hall is an exceptionally nice building, the facilities are very modernized, and there are nooks all over the place for people to study. The classroom facilities were excellent as well. I can't wait to come back during the year when there are students and classes in session. Overall I was very impressed with the facility though.

The info session itself was incredibly useful. Kimberly was conducting the session, she was very friendly and very helpful. She made my wife feel very comfortable as well, which is a big plus in my book. There were two other couples there with us today, I was a little shocked that anyone else would come during the summer, although I was glad they were there. I highly recommend that anyone contemplating attending Wharton, attends the info session. She gives a very good description of what they are looking for in the application process, and she gives some very specific items to emphasize in your essays. I would also say that you should come prepared to take notes. I brought my laptop, and I was able to capture significant portions of what she covered, there is no way I could've done that with a notebook and paper. A lot of the information was similar to what is on student-2-student, but it's different to here the emphasis when spoken in person. I believe I have a much better feel for what I need to do overall. Specifically I plan to rewrite both of the drafts of essay number one and number two that I've written.

After the info sessio we went to Chillis and got some food. We were planning to head to the constitution center downtown and check out the historic sites in city center, but because the info session wasn't until 2:30 and we didn't get done until 3:30, we didn't have the time to make it to the sites as they close at 5pm. People complain that everything closes early where I'm from, but they obviously haven't been to Philly yet. This place shuts down at 6pm, including significant portions of the retail shops.

I also found temporary solution to the parking problem. I found a place that I can park the car after 4pm until 6 am the next day for $6. After 6 am, they charge $3 per 20 minutes up to a maximum of $13.50. So the charge is $18.50 per day, which is almost $5 cheaper per day than the other garage. I am thinking about going and moving the car to a metered spot at 6 am, then I can pay another $2 to $3 and park the car for $9 the entire day. Of course, if I need to leave the car parked the entire day I can just pay the $18.50. It's still something of a pain, but at least it's a bit more flexible than starting at $23 for the entire day.

Atlantic City

2004-06-13T20:27:00.000-06:00

We both slept quite late this morning after a much earned rest yesterday. Once we got up and worked out, I called the hotel to see what they were going to do about my wireless connection. They said they'd see if they could find a different room for us, and asked if I had any special requests. I said the nicer the room the better :), she responded that it was a long term executive room and it was nice. She told me she'd have to call me back in a bit though. After a couple hours and me getting restless, they finally moved us to a new room on the tenth floor. It is definitely a much nicer room, and I have wireless access here. :) I am impressed that they responded so well and got us a better room with wireless access.

We took a quick drive up to University of Pennsylvania to find Wharton. Huntsman Hall is an impressive building that you can see quite far away during the approach. We didn't expect the building to be open, I just wanted to find the building to make sure we wouldn't get lost on the way. The building was in fact open, although the guards said we couldn't walk around today, but tomorrow we could. He also told us that the info sessions are at 2:30 pm.

After grabbing a quick bite to eat we headed out to Atlantic city. It was about an hour drive to get there, it's interesting to think that the entire state of New Jersey is only about 60 miles wide. Atlantic city itself wasn't that exciting, as there is very little to do besides gambling and drinking. We walked around the boardwalk for a while (it's literally a walk made out of boards), bought a few trinkets, looked at the ocean for a while. After a few hours of walking around, we decided it was time to head back to Philly. My impression of Atlantic city is that of an embryotic Las Vegas. Even twenty some years ago when we went there, Las Vegas had a lot of things for non-gamblers to do. Atlantic city didn't seem to have much in the way of entertainment though. Of course we weren't there very long, it just wasn't as thilling as Las Vegas. It was really nice to see the ocean again though, it's such a refreshing site to see and be renewed by the purity of the ocean. I rolled up my pants and got my feet wet for a while and my wife got a picture of the waves splashing me pretty good.

We are now back in the hotel and will get some rest, while the rental car is back in the extortive garage racking up another $23 bill. The nice thing about having a car is that there are a lot of historic amazing places to vist. The problem is parking. If I can solve the parking problem having a car here wouldn't be such a bad thing. If any of you live here in Philly, does your apartment allow you to have a car? If so how much does it cost to park it?

On the way to Philly

2004-06-12T22:34:00.000-06:00

We finally made it here to Philly, although we almost didn't make our
flight. We were up very late packing and getting last minute items
wrapped up around the house. Both of us went to bed exhausted, so
when the alarm went off I turned it off, and didn't get up. Luckily
the Orbitz reminder call woke me up and got us moving. As it was
though we nearly missed our flight. We arrived at the airport just
shy of an hour before our flight, and we spent forty minutes getting
our boarding pass. At this point we had fifteen minutes to make our
flight, and the security checkpoint line was at least another forty
minutes. Luckily I ran into someone that I knew who worked at the
airport, he told us that to have any chance of making our flight, we
should run to a different terminal, one that is never busy, and go
through security there. We did so, and we immediately got through
security, then we had a ten minute run across to the other side of the
airport. We arrived at the gate about five minutes before the plane
was to depart, every other passenger was already aboard.

After narrowly making our flight, the flight itself was relatively
relaxing. Both of us felt more at home than last time we flew. I
was exactly one hundred pounds heavier than I am now.
Losing a hundred pounds will really make the seating a lot more
comfortable in an airplane. Of course my wife was a bit nervous
during the flight, she isn't a big fan of flying.

Getting our rental car was straight forward. I rented a Kia Sonata
from Dollar, it turns out it's a pretty nice car. The drive to the
city was quick, the airport is located only a few miles away from
downtown. Once we got into the city though, I began to understand why
people complain about having a car in Philadelphia. The roads are
very small, there is hardly any parking and people drive very
aggressively. After winding our way through the streets, we drove
past our hotel, not because we didn't see it, but because there wasn't
a single place to pull over and go sign in. The hotel doesn't have
any parking, and there is no drive way that would allow you to pull in
and unload your bags. After circling the block a couple of times, I
dropped my wife off a quarter of a block away, then I headed over to a
parking garage, but on the way I saw an open parking spot. I jetted
into it so I could run my bags in, on the way in I realized it was a
handicapped spot (d'oh), so I hurried in, then ran back out and moved the
car to the parking garage.

The parking garage I chose charges near extortive prices at a dollar
an hour, lacking other immediate options, I parked the car.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to find a cheaper garage to park in.

After we got settled into our room, I found out that the wireless
access doesn't reach my room. So they are going to move us to a
different room tomorrow that has wireless internet access.

We walked around and checked out the few blocks around our hotel.
This city is pretty incredible, it reminds me a lot of New York,
although it is more toned down. We went and saw the French Quarter,
which seemed to consist mostly of French restaurants. Since today
was our anniversary we decided to splurge and eat at one of the nice
restaurants named Bleu. The meal was excellent if a bit expensive at
$63.00 plus tip. Finally after a long day we came back to the hotel
room for the rest of the night.

Heading to philly

2004-06-11T18:17:00.000-06:00

This week has been very hectic as we prepare to leave for vacation tomorrow. I've spent the last two months training one of my employees to handle the project for a week, and I still feel like it's going to be rough. I am completely exhausted as we race around to make our last minute preparations. I should have internet access at the hotel, so I'll post updates to the blog as we tour Philly and the neighboring locations.

I appreciate all the book suggestions, keep them coming. :) I already have Gerstner's book and it's queued up next. I'll have to check out the book 'My Years at General Motors', it is rated quite highly on Amazon. I will say though that what has appealed to me about Jack Welch is the fact that he succeeded while having a very strong personality. That is something that I hear frequently said of me, and while I try to tone down the aspects of a strong personality that aren't always positive and capitalize on the good points, it's nice to hear that people with very strong personalities are successful as well.

Ok, time to go get some dinner and then start packing. T-minus 14 hours until flight departure.

Essays and a death in the family

2004-06-08T15:56:00.000-06:00

It's been a rough and tumble few days. This last week I got out two rough draft essays for Wharton Essay's number one and number two. Essay number one was really draft number two, but it's the first draft that I even kind of liked. I'll let them sit for a few more days before I pull out the red pen, I need to get drafts of two more essays done, then I'll decide if the optional essay is necessary. Montauk says that most people shouldn't use the optional essay because it typically adds very little value. I need to decide if my situation merits it or not.

We found out Sunday that my Wife's Grandfather passed away. It was a painful slow process for him, and it was very difficult to watch. He has been at hospice for a week now, refusing any type of treatment, just wanting to die. It was extremely difficult for his kids to sit by and just watch him die. I hope I never have to put my children or family in that position, I think I would rather have a quick death like my Grandpa. On the other hand, they each got a chance to say good bye and tell him they love him. The viewing is tonight and the graveside tomorrow (he didn't want a funeral). I took the day off work tomorrow so I could go to the graveside and then to lunch with my wife's family.

Jack, straight from the Gut

2004-06-08T08:34:00.000-06:00

I've started reading Jack Welch's autobiography. I am really impressed with this book and its lively and engaging story telling style. It is interesting to see how someone rose to the pinnacle of power from relatively modest beginnings. I've been reading every biography I can get my hands on lately, I find it illuminating to hear the story told from their perspective. Welch's unassuming writing style tells it the way he sees it, but unlike Trump who sees everything with an eye to flamboyance, Welch comes across with a certain dignity and innocent charm in his writing. It has also been informative to read about the culture at GE. It really sounds like a place I would enjoy working, I think really would have liked working under Jack himself. Many of his ideas are similar to my own views. He sounds like he's a tough guy that requires serious execution of the people underneath him, but if they perform he rewards them accordingly. I'll continue to post my thoughts about this book as I work through it.

Eventful day today

2004-06-05T23:14:00.000-06:00

The first thing today my wife and I went to Petsmart and volunteered for an animal shelter named Heavens Gate. They are a really great cause, and they do a great job taking care of the animals and screening the people that can buy them. They sell them because apparently a lot of people have taken to using free kittens as snake food.

When we got to the store there was a cat running loose in the parking lot. Now to envision this parking lot, it is a massive shopping center with thousands of cars and dozens of stores. The cat was quite freaked out, and was hiding underneath the cars. My wife and I jumped into helping retrieving the kitty. We were able to marshal about 50 people to our cause to catch it. It was truly an inspiring site to see that many people all pitching in to help round up this poor kitty. We were quite worried about the kitty getting away because one of our cats jumped into a neighbors van and was (unknowingly?) driven to this same shopping district, he got out of the van and the people didn't catch him right away, and we have never seen him since. With that background it was all the more important for us to return the kitty safely to the owners. It turns out that the owners were bringing the kitty to drop it off at the animal shelter we were going to volunteer at.

After the shelter I went and got a quick hair cut, then headed over to get my brother to play computer games at a local center. It was an interesting experience because the guy that was there didn't know anything about computers, which really made the overall experience much less enjoyable than it should've been. We weren't even able to join multiplayer games online with other players. It was ok though because I was able to show my bro the basics of the mod I wanted to play, now we'll just play the game at our respective homes via DSL.

Time to read a bit more of Watership down, then I need to head to bed so I'm ready for my 8:00 am T-time tomorrow morning.

Myers Briggs Personality test

2004-06-04T11:24:00.000-06:00

I decided to take another personality test today. This is the third time I've taken it in the last three years, and I've got the same results each time with different tests so I suppose it's probably accurate.

The tests that I've taken give two break downs a general personality type and a specific personality type within that group.

My personality type is: NT Rational,
with the specific type as: ENTJ - Field Marshal

There is an interesting description of the traits of a field marshal here:
http://keirsey.com/personality/ntej.html

If you are interested in taking this test you can follow this link:
http://similarminds.com/myers-briggs.html

ENTJ - "Field Marshall". The basic driving force and need is to lead. Tend to seek a position of responsibility and enjoys being an executive. 1.8% of total population.

Take Free Myers-Briggs Personality Test

If you take the test, please post your personality type here. I am interested to know the personality types of those applying to Business School.

Firestorm at Chicago GSB

2004-06-04T08:40:00.000-06:00

Quite the controversy is raging on the Business Week forums about the recent decision by the Chicago GSB dean to allow part time business school students to interview and compete with the full time business school students. Some 100 students met to protest the deans decision. It is an interesting dichotomy listening to the full time students complaints, the posts that I have read have been quite elitist in their viewpoint. Essentially they have stated that the part timers aren't good enough to compete with them, yet they are upset because the part timers are competing with them. It stands to reason that if the full time students are that much better than the part time students they will likely land nearly all of the jobs. However if the part timers represent an actual threat to their jobs it stands to reason that either the part timers are as good as or better than the full timers in the program.

Ultimately I think it is a wise move for Chicago to open up the recruiting process to their part time students, that's what the free market is all about. Here is an excellent post by Will Slaughter to the forums:

"I am posting this letter under my own name in response to the truly asinine debate which has been raging on other threads with respect to the recent changes in Chicago's recruiting policy.

I would like to ask all my fellow full-time students to cease disparaging the evening and weekend programs at the U of C. These attacks are unfair, inaccurate, impolite, and ultimately self-defeating. I take personal offense at such attacks on behalf of the many part-time GSB students and alumni that I have had the pleasure to know and work with over the years. These include my former boss, the director of research at a major Midwestern brokerage firm, and my prospective future employer at a major U.S. hedge fund. Other GSB part-time "losers" you should be aware of are Robert Steel, the current Vice Chairman of a little firm called Goldman Sachs, and Daniel Coleman, the Head of U.S. Equity Trading at UBS, to cite just two prominent examples.

A salutary regard for your own interest should dissuade full-timers from traducing the part-timers: You might very well be asking a part-time student or alumnus for a job in a few months. But further, it is neither right, becoming, or honorable to act like like a jerk. We have an honor code at the GSB, and that should at minimum impose a duty to behave towards one another in a gentlemanly manner.

As full-time students, we benefit from the university's large part-time programs. Each part-time student pays the same tuition we do, and attends the same classes taught by the same professors. The tuition paid by part-time students nearly doubles the revenue available to the GSB, and subsidizes the large and diverse faculty of world reknowned scholars that we prize here at Chicago. If, as some on these forums apparently wish , the school were to eliminate the part-time programs, we would have to kiss half the faculty and half the courses in the catalog goodbye.

Some also suggest, incredibly, that part-time students deserve second-class status because they have not made the the same "sacrifices" to attend the GSB as have full-timers. Such sacrifices are alleged to include foregone income and the expense/inconvenience of relocation from distant places. I thought we were at Chicago, temple of free markets and Ayn Rand disciples! Each student at the GSB, whether full or part-time, has voluntarily made choices according to his or her own lights. Life entails taking risks, and grownups take risks. If full-time students had really wanted to attend a part-time program, they could have done so. It is true that part-timers have the advantage of continued income, but consider also the disadvantages: (i) it takes twice as long to finish your degree; (ii) you cannot focus intensively on your studies, making your academic experience potentially less rich; (iii) it is much more difficult to share a common experience with and build community among your fellow students; (iv) in most cases, you remain wedded to your current employer, and (v) even under the recent changes, you have less access to on-campus recruiting resources. Who gets the better bargain here?

Also, in true Chicago fashion, we should consider the option value implicit in having both a full-time and a part-time program. If you believe the part-timers get a better deal now, the program allows you to switch, without restriction, to the part-time program. If that private equity firm you intern with this summer is just itching to have you start working on a full-time basis right away, you can! Just go to work in September, and finish your degree at night. Try doing that at Harvard. It is logically ridiculous for Chicago students to complain about opportunity cost, because Chicago's program is one of the few top-notch program that actually allows you to take the better offer (without penalty or inconvenience) the moment it comes along.

Finally, at Chicago we have the reputation for being tough, analytical realists. We think competition is a good thing in the real world. If so, competition is also a good thing for us as individuals. It forces us to be stronger, smarter, and more focused to succeed. I would submit that more competition, in the long run, can also make us more generous. I would like to attend a business school where every one of my classmates has full confidence in his or her own abilities, and an optimistic belief in the tangibility of his or her dreams. When you are confident, you do not believe that someone else's success is a crust of bread snatched out of your own mouth. You can honestly congratulate others on their good fortune without privately resenting it in a poisonous cloud of secret envy. What sort of people do we want to be at the GSB? I, for one, want to congratulate others on their success and wish genuine good luck to those who are still seeking.

So, could we stop the whining about part-time recruiting? The school has established that relatively few part-timers are affected, and they are people just like us: They've paid the same tuition, taken the same classes, are part of the same community, and happen to need a job. Why should we begrudge our neighbors the same success for which we hope ourselves?

Sincerely,

Will Slaughter

University of Chicago MBA Class of 2005"

He really does a great job of explaining why the full timers shouldn't complain about the new recruiting process, and their options if they don't like it. This was a very well thought out response, and some of the ideals he espouses makes me think I need to look more closely at Chicago as a possible school.

Final thoughts on Montauk

2004-06-03T10:14:00.000-06:00

I have completed reading through the essay section of the book. Rather than summarize each of the essays, I will give my overall thoughts here. The issues covered in the essays and the applicants themselves are quite diverse. There is really good coverage of different issues that should be covered for different types of applicants. For instance there are essays from people with an engineering background, entrepreneurial background, liberal arts background etc. Each applicant needed to focus on different areas in their background that could have been perceived as a weakness. After reading through these essays I came away with a stronger impression than ever that you cannot effectively copy someone else's essays. Good essays will be strongly branded and tailored towards benefiting the specific applicant, they will also be highly targeted towards the school. Certainly you can approach issues using a similar method, but the singlular thread that tied these applications together was the personalization of the stories themselves. Writing a good essay isn't about using big words, or even buzzwords, rather it is done through humanizing yourself and your life story so the adcoms feel like they know and like you when they have finished reading your essays. It's also about presenting a completely unified picture of your past, your present, and your future direction.

One iteresting note for international applicants is that I could not distinguish international applicants from domestic applicants based on their writing style. The only reason I could tell many applicants were international was because they wrote a lot about international experiences, and mentioned specifically where they were from. I don't think it's necessarily having just the spelling down, I truly believe the applicants had a very good understanding of english overall. The essays do a good job of covering both applications to American schools and applications to European schools. The international focus of a lot of the essays should be of great assistance to those applying from a different country. The issues addressed in an international essay are quite different than those presented in an essay by a domestic applicant.

As I've said before, the essays are unbelievably helpful and useful to any applicant. Something I have gathered from reading through all of them is the degree to which the applicants personalize themselves. I contrasted these essays with my first draft of my career progress to date, and after seeing good writing like this, I really get a feel for the type of changes that need to be made in order to liven up my writing. My first draft was a very dry recitation and mostly a list of accomplishments. Typically the applicants told one or two stories per essay, but told them in rich vibrant detail.

Now that I have completed the essays, I am going to go back and re-read chapters eight through ten (Marketing, Key Essay Topics, Writing Persuasivly), I plan to refer to them constantly and use them as my guide while writing my own essays.

My overall thoughts on this book are that it truly is the king of all books for the actual application process itself. The coverage of the GMAT and preparation was relatively sparse, but that's a good thing as there already is a lot material that covers the GMAT. Where this book shines is when it comes to writing the essays, getting recommendations, and going through the interviews. The overall broad perspective of business school is also quite good. I can't imagine any serious applicant not getting and reading this book.

Official GMAT Results

2004-06-01T19:32:00.000-06:00

I received my official GMAT results in the mail today. It's nice to finally have an official score in hand, I was a little worried that the power outage during the test could affect the official score some how. However they Quant, Verbal and Overal scores were exactly the same. I received my AWA score and got a 6.0. The freaky thing was that there was a FAQ page included with the packet and it had sample scores using a graph. The sample scores had a 580 overall and a much lower Q and V than I got. For a minute I was worried that my scores were completely wrong. However I found the actual report soon after, and all was well.

More thoughts on Montauk

2004-06-01T12:27:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I was a little overly ambitious in thinking I would finish Montauk over the weekend. I dramatically underestimated the number and length of essays in the appendix. I'll do a review up to where I am currently.

Chapter 16 (How to Get the Most Out of Business School) is about how to get organized and keep your head above water during school. As usual this is an excellent chapter that reiterates some of the common wisdom, for instance that this opportunity has a lot more to offer than just academics. He recommends that the reader make sure to use their time wisely to make friends and network with people. He also suggests getting involved in a few clubs and a sport, although he strongly cautions the reader to avoid joining every club and every sport. Instead he suggests picking a few clubs to really focus your attention on. By focusing on a select few clubs you will make better use of your time and form more lasting friendships. He also discusses choosing your study group wisely if you attend a school where you are allowed to choose your own. It is very important to have a diverse group with a lot of different viewpoints and experience. To a large degree the dynamic of your study group will determine how you view your experience in graduate school in general.

I think the best part of this chapter though is the discussion of the workload. He is quite frank that business schools purposely pile more work on you than any human being could actually do. The reasoning behind this is that as an executive there will be numerous demands placed upon your time, and you have to learn how to prioritize your time and deal with the most important tasks properly while giving less important tasks less time. He also discusses that it is possible to skate through some programs, taking easy classes and never really applying yourself. Doing so does a major disservice to you and your career, and is something you will regret in years to come.

The final section of the book is properly focused on stress control. He discusses the importance of a proper work / life balance. This balance is something that is stressed a lot in different ways in the literature, but it is important to note that while school can be overwhelming it is still vitally important that you keep yourself properly adjusted to avoid burn out.

If the book concluded here, it would still be an invaluable book that everyone who is planning to attend a top program should read. The wisdom, advice and insight he offers are highly worthwile, and when considering the cost of the book ($19.95 for my version) it's a no brainer, this book is a must have.

The book however doesn't conclude here, and in fact the appendix with the essays may be one of the most valuable sections in the book overall. It's one thing to discuss lively persuasive writing, but it's another thing altogether to read actual examples of essays that worked, and to have a discussion included that explains the good and bad points of each essay.

There are quite a few more essays than I initially anticipated, which led to my erroneous belief that I would plow right through them. :) The essays have a pretty neat structure to them with 115 essays written by 17 different applicants. The first four essays are by applicants that applied to the University of Chicago and were accepted; they represent the typical essays of accepted students. The next three are some of the best essays by applicants to Columbia. After the Columbia essays there are a series of applicants that Education U.S.A. worked with, for these applicants there are essays for many different schools. For instance Carol applied to a number of schools including Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, Tuck and Darden. There is also a grid at the beginning of this section listing the applicant down the side, and the issue addressed across the top. There is then a check mark on the appropriate row if that applicant addressed that specific issue. This should be particularly useful for reference later on if you need to see how someone handled a certain type of issue.

The Chicago essays were written quite well. You can definitely tell that the applicants took their time and really tried to convey the essence of themselves. Each applicant wrote several essays that are included in the overal application to the school, and while overall the essays were good, there were a few that I felt fell short on their marketing campaign. Montauk's comments at the end of these essays bore out my opinion. The essays were good, but there were definite areas for improvement.

The Columbia essays were exceptional and really stood out as great examples of phenomenal essays. They had great content and the writing was clear, quick moving and lively. I would be very pleased if I could produce essays that were put together as well as these. I really appreciate the opportunity to read these essays, because as I mentioned earlier it gives you a very different feel to read about great writing than it does to read great writing.

The next essays were written by Carol. She applied to a large number of programs and there are a lot of essays here to read for her. Carol's essays don't have the almost poetic rhythm of the Columbia essays, but they are exceptionally well written as well. I believe they stand out from the typical essays written for the University of Chicago. Again Montauk's comments on these essays are very helpful, however the one thing I wish he provided in this section was information about what schools she was accepted to. I think the level of her writing is very approachable through proper writing and re-writing. I must say it was very interesting to see how different the essays were for different schools. There were a couple of times where essays from one school were used verbatim to answer a question from a different school, but that was the exception rather than the rule. Generally each essay was specifically targeted at the school, which I believe must have greatly improved the overall effect of the essays.

I have finished reading Carol's essays, and now I'll be moving on to Roger's essays. I am very excited to read Roger's, because he is an entrepreneur, and I am interested to see how he handles that type of experience in his essays. I myself have started several companies, so handling this issue appropriately in the essays will be critical.

More chapter reviews on Montauk

2004-05-29T11:57:00.000-06:00

I have finished several more chapters in "How to Get into the Top MBA Programs", so I'll post a review of these chapters while it's still fresh.

Chapter 12 (Interviews) presents a lot of information about interviews. This chapter is packed full of useful information. There are several different lists of questions in this chapter that provide excellent practice material. The format for the questions is with a topical heading such as 'University Education', then a list of anywhere from ten to twenty five questions depending on the section. Following the questions are several key points that that should be emphasized with these questions, there are also statements and areas to avoid. The following sections are covered:
- University Education
- Work Experience
- Managerial Orientation
- Goals
- Personal

After the questions there is some very good interviewing information about practice and preparation. There is also some very useful information on how to read the interviewer as well as general tips on how to make it a good interview. Montauk points out that nearly everyone thinks they interview well, but the vast majority of people do not. So it stands to reason that some practice is in order for nearly everyone.

Chapter 13 (Application Timetable) is primarily and organizational chapter. The goal with this chapter is to get you proactively working through the process without waiting until the deadline. This chapter is useful material, but if you find that you are already a decently organized person it may not be as useful as some of the other chapters.

Chapter 14 (Responding to Wait-Listing, Rejections, and Other Disappointments) begins Part III (On the Road to Business School). I suppose applicants ought to consider it telling that this section begins with a chapter on rejection. This process is tough and many of us aren't trying to get into just a good school, instead we are trying to get into the best schools possible. Even the strongest of all candidates don't typically get into all of the schools they apply to. This chapter is kind of a pep talk to keep your spirits up. The lesson here is that you can learn from a rejection, and improve by it. He also strongly cautions that if you are going to re-apply make sure you give it your full effort and do a better job than you did last time. This is something I've seen re-affirmed by several schools, that a lot of re-apps do a very poor job the second time around. This chapter is pretty short, hopefully you won't need to read it. :)

Chapter 15 (What to do once you are accepted) starts off with a discussion of accepting the offer and resigning from your job (ie, when and how). It then provides good information about the type of academic work you will face when you start the program. The chapter contains suggestions on the subjects you should get exposure to if you aren't a b-school undergrad. There are eight core areas that are covered in the first year, in order of importance they are: Accounting, Economics, Finance, Information Systems, Marketing, Operations Management, Organizational Development/Human Resources, Quantitative Methods. He suggests several good books for each topic, and for some of them he highly recommends taking a course from a local school because they are difficult to learn from a textbook. He also highly suggests taking a Business Calculus course and statistics, as these topics are used extensively in other courses. If you aren't familiar with a word processing package and how to use spreadsheet, he suggests becoming familiar with Office. Some of the material in this chapter seemed a bit dated to me, but I am reading the 1997 version of this book, so it could be updated in the new edition.

The final paragraph of Chapter 15 is worth repeating here: "The last point is the same as the first. If you reach business school without having prepared properly you will regret it. Anything that is difficult two months before the program starts will get much more so when you have to learn it along with all the other concepts and techniques that are being piled on you each day."

That is how far I have read currently, I plan to finish Chapter 16 today and start working through the sample essays. After that I'll head back to Appendix for Chapter 10 and start working through the personal organizer. Time to connect back into work and get that taken care of so I can get back to playing Warcraft. :)

Quick review of Montauks excellent book

2004-05-28T14:43:00.000-06:00

I still haven't received my official GMAT scores. Even though I have the un-official scores, I would like to know what my AWA score is. I'm sure it's not that important with a 99th percentile on verbal, but I'd still like to know what I got. Hella keeps telling me not to stress about it, to which I say "I'm not stressing, just curious". I don't think he believes me. :)

I have also been devouring the Montauk book. I cannot adequately stress how much I appreciate this book. Even though I haven't applied yet, it has helped immeasureably with my confidence. Something I learned from my father a long time ago was to listen for the ring of truth in something. Generally you can tell when someone or something is giving you great, solid, and useful advice. I have also learned to listen to that small nagging voice in the back of my mind. If I have that nagging voice while listening to a salesman, or during an interview, or reading a post on the BW forums ;), I've learned to ignore it at my own peril. That little voice was pretty loud when buying my timeshare, but I ignored it and bought anyway. Ugh! That was a huge mistake.

While reading this book I find myself saying "of course! why didn't I think of that." while I'm reading through his suggestions. The ideas he presents are very self evident once they are explained. That is the mark of something that is truly great. Several of the sections are invaluable even if you don't read the rest of the book. To me those sections start with Chapter 8 (Marketing Yourself) and continue through chapter 12 (Interviews). I would also read through the Application Essay Examples in the back of the boook.

Chapter 8 (Marketing Yourself: General Principles) goes through the process of using themes and general positioning during your application. He spends a lot of time discussing how you want to present a totally unified message throughout your application essays. This chapter also includes statements from the admissions directors at many of the top schools. Universally they say that most applicants do a very poor job of marketing themselves. In fact if you can effectively market yourself through your essays and your interview, that will be the single greatest thing you can do to advance your candidacy.

Chapter 9 (Understanding the Key Essay Topics) covers twenty one different generic essays questions. While these essay questions are not exactly the same as those asked by the schools, the gist of the information requested is highly relevent. In this chapter he breaks down what the purpose of asking the question is, what the typical applicant does on this question, and then gives you a better approach to the question. Again there are a lot of quotes from admission directores attesting to this better approach.

Chapter 10 (How to Write Persuasive Essays) covers the nuts and bolts of organizing yourself and writing your essays. There is some really great advice in here on how to make the essays effective, how to tie them together, and how to extract the best information to use in each.

If you can only read a few chapters from this book, I would highly suggest that you read these three chapters.

Chapter 11 (Recommendations) covers the best way to choose recommenders, and how to guide and prepare them through this process so that you will get the most effective recommendations possible. He also discusses how to use the recommendations in the context of your overall marketing effort. Again, great information here.

Chapter 12 (Interviews), I have to admit this the chapter that I am currently reading so I can't give a complete review of this chapter yet. However so far I have been greatly impressed with the depth of questions presented in this chapter. Some of those questions might have given me pause if they were asked of me in an interview. So far excellent information though.

Posts are migrated to blogger

2004-05-28T10:38:00.000-06:00

Ok, my posts are finally migrated over from http://beowulf.opencoder.org. I'm not going to migrate the comments over though, I think that will be more pain than I want to feel today. Migrating posts is kind of a pain in the but IMO.

I really like the new setup that blogger has now. It is much easier to use, although it still lacks a few features that I would like. I would like a recent comments, similar to recent posts on the sidebar. I would also like better built in traffic analysis. Currently I'm testing two different traffic analysers on the site, so I suspect that is making the site load a bit a slower.

Overall, I'm quite please with the changes. I *really* like the ability to save something in a draft status. The other bonus is that the site is really fast.

Buyers Remorse

2004-05-27T22:37:00.000-06:00

So I bought an IPOD last week, brought it home and it sat there for a full week, undisturbed. I came to the realization today that I simply don't have much music to put on it, and in general I don't listen to music that frequently. Typically I listen to talk radio or NPR. So I took the IPOD back to Best Buy today. They were really good about taking it back, even though they are going to have to mail the check to me. The final kicker on the IPOD was when I realized that it's cost would nearly cover the airfare for another trip back east to check out the schools this september. So once again I'm IPODless, although I still have my Mac. :)

United Way

2004-05-27T18:18:00.000-06:00

I have really missed donating to the United Way at work during this past year, so today I decided it was time for me to take some action. I called the local United Way, and scheduled an appointment with the president. He is going to come out to my work and bring me an informational packet so I can make the presentation to my boss. Hopefully my company will go for it, United Way is a good charity.

I also decided that I would get more personally involved with the organization, so he is bringing me some information on helping out with some of their committees. I happened to mention that I'm a programmer, and surprise surprise, they need some help with their web site. Oh well, as long as I can get on some non-technology related committees as well. :) I have to admit, they definitely make it easy to jump in and help.

Golf frenzy

2004-05-27T06:12:00.000-06:00

As I tend to do everything I do, I've thrown myself into Golf this past week. With another trip on last sunday, a trip to the driving range yesterday and another early round of golf this morning.

It's been very nice to get back into a hobby that isn't computer related. It has helped to restore some balance back to my life.

Wife had surgery today

2004-05-25T19:02:00.000-06:00

My wife went in for a Laproscopy today. Everything went well, and they didn't find any evidence of problems. Surgery is a very exhausting experience, both for the patient and for the person taking care of the patient. I took today off work, and I will be working from home tomorrow in order to take care of her. She's a bit drugged up at the moment, but in good spirits.

Reassessing schools

2004-05-24T09:13:00.000-06:00

This last weekend was interesting for me. After reading the write up by MBA Traveler on the s2s forum, I thought I would take another look at Harvard as a potential school. Aspects of the Case Study method really appeal to me, so I actually began to lean strongly towards Harvard as a potential school choice.

In addition to leaning this direction, I have been reading the Business Week forums.
I posted a question for an essay consultant about my chances of getting into Harvard, Wharton and Stanford. He instantly dismissed my chances at Harvard, but said he thought I might have a shot at Wharton or Stanford. I was pretty bummed out after that experience. I talked to Hella about it over ICQ for an hour or so. He gave me some incredibly good information, and some very insightful comments. To all of you going through this process, I would highly recommend you find someone to mentor you along in this process, because it can be immensely helpful to get their encouragment when you are down, and their overall perspective into this process in general. Thanks Hella, you rock! :)

Let me state for the record that I don't recommend the Business Week forums. Negativity is very pervasive on them. Another good point that Hella made is that the job of an Essay Consultant is to sell doubt. If they can't make you doubt you have the ability to get into a good school without them, they won't make any money. I know Wharton for instance seriously frowns on using an Essay Consultant, particularly if they write your essays for you.

I've decided instead of using an Essay Consultant to focus on the Montauk book. I have to say I'm really impressed at this point. There is some very good information in there, and I feel my confidence climbing already.

New IPOD

2004-05-22T17:51:00.000-06:00

I bought a shiny new IPOD today. I opted for the 15 Gig version rather than the 20 or 40 Gig version. The 20 Gig was $100 more than the 15 Gig, and the 40 Gig was $200 more. It's charging up right now, I can't wait for it to finish charging so I can start loading some of my audio books onto it.

Early morning golf

2004-05-21T10:44:00.000-06:00

I went golfing with the guys here at work this morning. It was a great trip, despite the 6:32 am tee time. I shot a 55 on a par 37, which I consider quite good for my first time out. Surprisingly I was able to get a few solid shots with my driver, although my 3 wood had bad mojo today. I felt pretty good about the round, and I look forward to golfing again on Sunday.

Shrek 2

2004-05-21T10:40:00.000-06:00

I took my wife to see Shrek 2 last night. I found the show to be entertaining, although I didn't find it quite as funny as the last Shrek. There was good comedic interplay between the characters, Donkey wasn't as funny to me though. One of the new characters was quite good, and the antagonism between this new character and Donkey was thoroughly enjoyable.

I doubt you are supposed to critique kids movies on plot and character development, but I'm going to do it anyway. :)

The plot was pretty good, although not as solid as Shrek 1. There were a few times during the early parts of the movie that I felt my eyes getting heavy. Later however the action picked up a bit, and the interplay between the characters was better.

Shrek 2 was very character development oriented, as was the original Shrek. A lot of the story focused on the relationship between Shrek and Fiona. There were quite a few adult overtones mixed into the movie, and a lot of kissing between Ogres. Overall it was an enertaining movie.

I give this movie a 7 out of 10.

Excellent school visit journal

2004-05-20T23:55:00.000-06:00

On the s2s wharton boards, MBA Traveler posted an excellent diary of his visits to several different schools. The thread really tries to capture the spirit of the school and other salient aspects. Wharton is not the only school covered, and it is well worth a read. It got me considering other schools that I might like if I didn't get into Wharton. After reading through it, Harvard actually sounds like a very interesting choice as well.

Here is the link:
http://s2s.wharton.upenn.edu/wh-wharton/messages?msg=4478.1

Relaxing on the Golf course

2004-05-20T15:30:00.000-06:00

I went to the golf course and hit a bucket of balls today. That was good for my soul. I have been so filled with different anxieties lately that I've had a difficult time relaxing. I realized today that golfing is exactly what I needed. The guys have been trying to get me to golf with them before work, but I've been resisting because the tee time is at 6:30 am. After going out today, I caved and decided I'm going to go with them tomorrow. I also called another buddy of mine to set up a tee time for sunday morning. Now if I can just get my slice straightened out. :)

Troy

2004-05-20T08:48:00.000-06:00

I went on friday and saw the new movie Troy. I greatly enjoyed this movie and its excellent character development. One of my major pet peeves is when a story tells me that a hero is a badass but largely fails to show it. For good character development to take place, you can't tell something like that, you must show it. Hero development is handled excellently in this movie. The battle between Hector and Achilles was perhaps the best, most intense fight scene I've ever seen and the events leading up to it are an excellent escalation of the tension.

While the movie doesn't follow closely the storyline the Illiad, it instead sticks close to the spirit of the book. The gods are not active participants in the events of men as they are in the Illiad, rather they are deities to be consulted and prayed too, however they remain silent. Instead of the gods, they focus on the interaction and conflict between Agammemnon and Achilles, between Paris and Menelaus, and between Hector and Achilles.

The movie can be a bit bloody at times, which you might expect from a war movie. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed it, enough that I will go see it again in the theater, something that is rare for me these days. I also went and bought a copy of the Illiad, and started reading it again. If you like war movies, I highly recommend Troy.

Wharton essays posted

2004-05-19T22:07:00.000-06:00

I've been fighting some type of cold for the last couple of days. It's really been making me feel run down. It's odd too, because I'm not usually sickly, however the last while I've been pretty run down. Hella keeps telling me I need to eat some more calories.

Wharton has the new essays up for the 2005 application year. Time to start working through those now.

GMAT Perspective

2004-05-17T13:35:00.000-06:00

After completing the GMAT on Saturday, I never would've guessed that I would spend the rest of the day and most of Sunday sweating whether or not my score was good enough.

When I started this process of studying for the GMAT (after that initial Kaplan score [shudder]) I had set my sites on 690 for a decent score. After a bit more study, and some more serious thought though, I realized that if 713 was the average GMAT score of the schools I'm looking at, a score of 690 would put me towards the bottom side of that average. At that point I started thinking 700+ is what I ought to shoot for. That lasted for a while, until I realized that I just didn't want to be underneath the average all, so I was hoping for 713+. Of course, I didn't want to settle for just being average, so then I decided that 720+ would be ideal. I never really consciously changed my desired score higher than that, but I realized when I saw my 740, that I had been hoping for higher. Perhaps it was also that I realized I could do better than I had. The 82nd percentile in math didn't help either.

I posted on the s2s wharton boards though and asked if 82nd percentile with a 740 overall would be considered low. Alex Brown responded with "the quant score is greater than 80% so no worries there. cheers, alex".

I also sent an e-mail to Hella, and IM'd with him today about it. He's been very helpful in talking me down from taking the GMAT again. He had the same feelings that I did, for the same reasons. He knew he could do much better than he did on the GMAT. It also helped that we had the exact same overall score (740), so I feel like I'm in good company if nothing else. :)

So at this point, I don't think I'll take the GMAT again. I've got a lot of work to do on essays, and I need to pull in some extra cash this year to get rid of some debt. So it's time for me to buckle down and start writing out some essays. :)

Why and MBA?
Why now?
Why Wharton?

Took the GMAT today

2004-05-15T18:59:00.000-06:00

Ok, I finally got through the GMAT today. Wow, what a long day!! I got up this morning at 6:00 am, so I could walk on the treadmill and still have some extra time to review some questions and do some last minute cramming. I left my house at about 8:10 and got to the testing center at 8:30 am, 30 minutes before exam time. There was some paperwork to fill out, which included copying a paragraph verbatim saying that I won't disclose any questions. They are pretty serious about not letting you have anything in the testing center, no food, no water, none of your own pencils or paper etc. The only thing you can have is your ID, everything else they give you.

I worked my way through the analysis of an issue and the analysis of an argument, I think I had pretty compelling arguments. :) When I hit the math section I started getting some pretty tough questions, which I took as a sign that I was doing pretty well. I got a combination question at question 11, and at question 23 or 24 I got a probability question that stumped the crap out of me. When that question came up, the power went out!! wtf?!?!? I thought everything I had done was lost, but it turns out that they keep a very accurate running record of what you have done, pretty much up to the second. I had to wait around for 5 and half hours for the power to come back on!! For two of those hours I ran home and got a quick bite to eat and a 10 minute nap. Then I hurried back and waited for two more hours. I think the break in the middle of the math section really hurt me, because when I finally got back in there I felt the difficulty of the questions plummet. I never did figure out that stupid probability problem, it was much more difficult than anything I'd studied. I looked at my pre-calculus book and it didn't cover the material it asked at all.

I felt pretty good going through the verbal section although I was worn out at that point. I kept watching the clock hoping the stupid test would be over at this point. I had the thought of randomly clicking through the test just to get done a few times. I resisted my testicidal temptation though and slogged my way through.

I was a bit hesitant to see my scores, and thought for a minute about not getting them. In the end I clicked 'report scores'. My score break down is as follows:

Math Section:
Scaled Score - 47
Percentile Rank - 82

Verbal Section:
Scaled Score - 46
Percentile Rank - 99

Overal:
Scaled Score - 740
Percentile Rank - 98

So I'm not in love with my math score, but I guess that's a decent score overall. I'm a little worried though because on the s2s Wharton boards they have said they like to see 80th percentile or above on math. While 82 is above that, it's not above it by much. I really don't know if that 82nd percentile will hurt my chances, and I'm thinking about re-taking it, because I don't think it accurately reflects my abilities. I'll have to think about it for a while, for now I'm exhausted. Time to go get some grub.

Why Blog, Why Now, Why Moveable Type?

2004-05-10T13:30:00.000-06:00

In the spirit of the MBA essays, I thought I would answer these three questions to get the blog started.

Why blog?
The MBA process is a rigorous and time consuming process. It requires serious amounts of personal introspection, a deep understanding of where you have been, and a good idea of where you are going.
So why should I write about my experience? Part hubris, part sincere generosity, part desire to have a record. I believe that keeping a record of your life changing experiences can have a profoundly positive impact on your life. It gives you something too look back on and reflect upon. A journal could have just as easily filled the role of keeping a record.
The desire to help. When I started this process, it was difficult to find any good information about it. There are a lot of posts on bulletin boards, newsweek and businessweek, but many of the posts are incoherent, rude or incomplete. What I wanted was a more complete picture of the application process. What is it like, what should I know about it, what would you do differently if you had to do it again. I really have liked the blogs I've found. They provide many of these answers, and have been a great source of both information and inspiration to me.
Hubris. I believe I can get into a good school if I work hard enough. If I were just planning to attend some rinky dink local university, I don't believe I would find this blog inspiring. It's the desire to be the best, to compete with the best, and to ultimately prevail in convincing a top school that I would be a suitable MBA student. Even should I fail in this endeaver, I believe the value of this record lies in the attempt.

Why Now?
Because it has begun. I am now in the process, and if I want to have any kind of a record, I believe it is better to keep the record while you are in the thick of things, rather than recording it later. Personally my recollection of events tends to change in order to suit my interpretation. By recording my experience along the way, I hope to convey an accurate sense of the ups and downs of this process.

Why Moveable Type?
Initially Hella set me up with a blog using WordPress. I really like the interface of word press, it has some really nifty features. There are some problems with the beta implementation though, and it turned out not to be suitable for the arrangement between Hella and myself. The nice thing about Moveable Type is the migration to Word Press is easy, so the site will stay in Moveable Type until Word Press is good enough to meet our needs.
(edit 5/28/2004: I'm clearly not using Moveable Type any more)

Taking the GMAT

2004-05-10T12:06:00.000-06:00

I have registered for the GMAT this upcoming saturday. I have been studying for the last month or two getting ready for it. I have used Kaplan, Princeton Review and the Official Guide during this process. When I have more time, and I have a score from the GMAT, I'll go back through and discuss what strategies I used to study for the test. Saturday we'll find out how effective my studying has been.

Welcome to my site

2004-05-10T11:48:00.000-06:00

I am planning to get into an MBA program starting in 2005. This site is my blog about the process in general. I'm writing it under a nom de plume in order to allow me to be as truthful and honest about this process as I can, without jeopardizing my chances at a given school should someone happen to read this blog.

(edit 5/28/2004 - Previously this site was hosted by Hella on opencoder.org, you can check out his blog at http://hella.opencoder.org. Thanks for the hosting Hella!)