Done with "in line of fire" and "Eleven minutes"

so finally doen with these two books. I had staretd to read these with the idea that these can be helpful to me if I land up with an interview. ( i am still hoping the saem). But now i feel that both of these books were junk, one is terms of content and other in terms of te statistcis and worng information mentioend. "Eleven Minutes", I just bought it considering the excellence paulo cohelo had shown with masterpiece like "alchemist"m but this time i was disappointed. This book is about a prostitute and dear paulo is all around trying to say that the Maria( the female heroine of the book) a prostitute is a amazing girl and blah blah... as a whol;e dodnt like the book much.

now about the "In line of fire" by dear and deadly Pervez bhai. I think the review depends on which side of the LOC one is. i tried to be on the LOC so as to me neutral and read the book. My main idea to read this book was to prepare for the question for the interview ( hope i get form both wharton and Ross) "Which book are you reading now" " Why are you reading this book". For the Why answer i wanted to see what pervez bhai thinks of the whole india pakistan problem and what kind of a person he is.. But i think i still cant answer what kind of a person he is.. Throughout the book he went talking about himslef.,..that he has done he has done that....i think he has bosted a lot about himself. Somre of the interesting chapters i was particularly peeking on were whne he talks on the issue of kargil and the like wars. He tried to be very cleaver but failed completely in the attempt. In the book he did not accpet defeat in all the ars and kept praisingin his work his army his ocuntry his people.

Another common approach i have seen of thsi dude is that whenevr somwething is against him and is negatyive for him he simply denies the very basic existence of the source. For eg in the kargil chapter he simply says that what india did in media and in war was totally different. media was just highlighting the stuff which did not existed oln the warzone. I dont knwo the reality but still find it difficult to digest. ANother issue he talked was to improve the relationship between india nad pakisatn, again he denies lot of stuff that i knew . May be i am wrong but his books didnt had the weight in the content to prove his sayings.

Most interesting stuff to me in the book was when what we know as POK is called as Azad Kashmir. Another was when the beautifull state we know as Jammu and Kashmir is called as Indian Occupied Kashmir. Though he has not at all sunstantiated whey he says all this.

Finally i dont understand why now is the time when Pervez bhai has written this biography. Normally people write biographies when they have retired or have no work. All thorugh the book he has tried that the reader does not get the impression that pervez is a dicatotor but as i read more i was more convinced that he is a dictator. Having said that i dont hink he has enough time to think and write about htis book. So dont know what made musshi to write this book of 280 pages. I think his idea is to talk biggie biggie stuff about himself and create an impression for the world and the public that he is a gem of a person ad is there to take a U trun in the path where pakistan is going. No dount the things he has talked of in the book are amazing, considering all those facts and figures are true, i think pakistan has a good future ahead. But who know he might he ousted by some another militart personnel of his only.


Anyways a nice read though, only if you are on LOC. A single step here and there of the LOC will make the read a not very good one.

Wharton Interview Questions

Why an MBA, why now, why Wharton.

Post MBA goals.

International experience.

Tough situation at work.

Describe a typical day at work

walk through your resume

Know your story and what you want to contribute.

Some believe leadership is innate, others think it can be taught... which do you believe?

What do you bring to Wharton?

What do you see as the differences between Harvard, Stanford and Wharton?

How do you measure success

Is there any perceived weakness in your application that you would like to address ?

What clubs and activities would you get involved in at Wharton ?

Is there any perceived weakness in your application that you would like to address ?

Do you have anything else you would like to talk about ?

Describe yourself. Difficult to know where to start but once you get going its quite simple.

Tell me something about yourself.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

who is the prominent figure that you admire? why?

"Have you ever had to work around a superior?"

"What part of your undergraduate program was most difficult for you?"

"Tell me about a time your powers of persuasion failed?"

telling me why you have made the decisions you made.

What extra-curriculars did you participate in during college?

You say Wharton would build your leadership skills - How?

How would you handle a conflict in your learning team?

Name a prominent figure you look up to.

Have you ever had an ethical dilemma?

Analyze yourself and tell me three strengths and three weaknesses.

At your graduation ceremony, what do you think you would be reflecting that you had
contributed to Wharton, and how would you have changed?

If you had 30 days without any commmitments, what would you do?

What will be your impact at Wharton?

If you were part of a team, the project was failing, and the leader wasn't doing a good job, what woudl you do?

If you had one free day, what would you do?

If you had 30 free days, what would you do?

What brings you here today?

Careerwise, was there anything in the last five years that you would have done differently?

How would you describe your best friend?

Name a leader you admire and explain why.

What do you do for fun

What do you do to relieve stress.

I wish I had known about the grading system

What will your impact be on the school when you have left?

If you were in a study group with one member who was overbearing and one member who was very reticent, how would you handle the situation?

If you did not gain admission to Wharton, what would you do?

What was your biggest challenge in life?

The most difficult question was what changes I would introduce if I were the Minister in the Government.

How would your colleauges describe your leadership style?

How would your friends describe you?

How do you plan to get the most from your time at Wharton? You have lots of things but not enough time so the most successful know how to prioritize.

What do you wish I would have asked?

What is the most recent book you read, and what do you think about it?

Have you ever disagreed with your manager?

What would you do differently if your were the CEO of your company?

What specific campus organizations will you join?

Have I had to persuade my superiors to go with something I came up with?

Have I ever been in a team conflict and how did I react to it?

What was the hardest thing you had to say no to in the past two years?

Give me your assessment of Wal-mart. Good for consumers or bulldozing machine?

What specific extra curriculars do you plan to take part in at Wharton?

Other than the reasons you stated in your essays, why do you want to go to Wharton?

What motivates you?

Why now? Why not next year or the year after?

Three qualities of a leader and an example of a situation in which you exhibited the same.

Talk about your extracurricular activities.

give an example when you conflicted with senior management

how would you want to be remembered after graduating from Wharton

What type of summer internship will you be seeking?

How would you want to be remembered?

If you are admitted, two years from now, how will your classmates remember you?

How will you fit in with the international atmosphere?

What characteristics do you look for in your team members? How do you work with a team to deal with a situation? Walk me through a situation at work that involves heavy quant skills

What do you think your friends at Wharton would remember you by at graduation?

What's a personality flaw you have?

Define leadership and how it differs from being a good manager ?

If you were the CEO of a company and had to do a downsizing - a) what people would you lay off b) how would you implement it?

Explain to me in brief what your company's product does?

What do you think makes an effective manager?

If you were working on a project with a team of peers late at night (I assume like a learning team) and they had an opinion entirely different from yours, how would you manage the situation so that the team completes the assignment the next day?

Discuss a situation in which you felt ethically challenged.

What was your best mistake?

How do you define success for a company? For yourself?

I am a 5 year-old. Explain to me what the 'internet' is.

What are the 3 most important technological innovations of the past 1000 years. (you read correctly, 1,000 years).

When asked what other schools I was applying to

How would your boss describe you? What would you did if you didn't get into Wharton? What if you didn't get into any BSchools

why are you unique,

why should we accept you

A question about something specific about my resume.

Describe a situation where you were the team leader, and had to make a difficult situation. What factors were involved, and how did you resolve it? Finally, what did you learn from it?

What is the one and only thing that you want me to know about you?

If I had the power to use one day as I pleased, what would I do?

"Assume you're a boarderline candidate. Give me your 2 best reasons to let you in."

If you could have lunch with anyone, who would it be?"

What would be the most challenging thing for you once you enroll at Wharton?

Describe an epiphany that you've had

How do you deal with political instabilities?

How do you retain the employees in your company?

What professors at Wharton are you most interested in studying under. Luckily, I read brochures and remembered a name

What's your favorite book.

What would I consider my dream opportunity? (could professional or personal)

If your friends were asked to give 3 words describing you, what would they say?

Themost difficult question was when he greeted me on entering the interview room and asked me why i was there

"If a big tornado hit all the MBA Schools in the world, what would you do ?"

Why did you choose to work for your current employer?

What do you enjoy most about your job?


Source: www.accepted.com

What is this period!!!

So what period is this…can I call this courtship period …I think I cant ,,,ideally the period after getting admission and before joining will be designated as a courtship period…so was just pondering what to call this period as.. “keep guessing days” everyday I think of something new about my application.. have I written this right or that wrong.. Although I know I can’t help now but still I keep thinking about my application…

Anyways so what is the confidence level I have in my application…to be frank I am not very confident… and to continue the frankness I don’t know why I am saying that… may be my less experience is the highest speed breaker in my path or is it the Indian IT tag a factor. I guess a mix of both…when I think of my essays I believe I have made them ok …no I guess good apart from one essay of Wharton which I modified completely on the S day ( submission day). All the small small issues which before submitting were taken by my mind as trivial are becoming bigger and bigger hurdles in my mind when I think more and more on those.. For example I crosses the word limit by 7-8 % and now I feel will that be an issue… anyways Wharton will be starting to call for interviews from 18 ( 2 days from now ).. So its time to check my email 1000 times a day (I can even add one more zero to that number)…

Anyways I have started the interview preparation and in the process of collecting all the questions I can manage …mainly from clearadmit.com and admitted.com … I think once I am done with all the question will save them as one more post on this blog.

Done with the big one Wharton!!
ooom i am done with one and one to go ....the first one is Wharton and the second one is Ross. I thought i could just copy and paste lot of material for Ross from Wharton and will be done in a day...but I was wrong....i need to work on lot many things to make Ross essays look like they were born for Ross not adopted for Ross.

Anyways i want to write about my experience about applying to Wharton. The experience after applying was just exhilarating. Wanted to go out and have some ice cream (around 1am on 5th January IST, 2006) but unfortunately we don’t have a Wal-Mart in Bangalore. Experience while applying for Wharton was just the opposite, I was just praying, what else I could have done.
And now the best part, experience before applying or rather I should say experience while preparing to apply.

Is the word enjoyed correct to explain this experience, i think its easy to use this word after hitting the submit button , but I am sure this was the last word in my vocab I would have used before pressing the button. Ok let me summarize what all i learnt in this process and see how many things I can say:
Dedication, perseverance, patience, hard work, and above all the mantra which i just love, networking.

I am always inspired by the word networking, and again I could proof why so. it was networking which came to my rescue when it came to perfecting the essays. I really want to thank from the bottom of my heart( kapil if u read this don’t be angry on me for using your words) Nitin Uncle, Sunil uncke,Ashish Kaka, Namrata, Aruna, swati,Salil and the most important and biggest critique of my essays my wife swapna.

I can’t imagine i would have submitted my essay in the condition i have if these people were not around.

This experience has taught me the importance of communication. To be precise written communication. If one can create a recipe with correct mixture of efficient written communication and knowledge about oneself, the recipe will win a gold medal. And here I did the biggest mistake I was doing while writing essays. DO NOT WRITE LONG SENTENCES. It’s so easy to say that but was so difficult to read and implement this before applying. There were so many times when just by changing some words or just rephrasing a couple of sentences the whose scene changed and brought life to the essay.

I learnt that one shud have a tree built before starting to write an essay. Frankly speaking I did not do this when I started my Wharton essays but realized after submitting the Wharton essays. Today I used this approach for writing the career essay of Ross and believe me it works.

Let’s say if one has to write for example about career goals. SO these should be the steps:

1. Write long term goal.
2. Why this is your long term goal.
3. Why MBA + how MBA will help you to achieve 1.
4. A little bit on why now. Again link to 1.
5. Write about short term goals
6. Link how you think short term goals will help to achieve 1.


Just after writing these 6 points I was thinking of how I used to take all this management fundas when I was in college. and boy I don’t want to even think of writing what is in my mind....hope the people who know me might guess what I mean... and see today I am dreaming a future in this.

Anyways i think that all for today...I have to wake up tomorrow and work on the 2nd and 3rd essay for Ross.

Thanks and best of luck if you are still reading!!!!