I got my Kellogg denial mail today. And this was even without an interview. I personally feel my application was not that bad that I didnt deserve an interview. With my past experiences with Kellogg, I think there has again been some mistake. I did check with the adcom by calling them but they said its the rigth decision I am looking at. Anyways I cant do anythign now.
In all it wasnt a nice experience.
Since I started applying to B schools, I always used to think this whole process can not be so subjective. Considering schools get ~ 6000 applications and in case of Wharton, Harvard which select ~900 students, there must be a objective way to select or reject a student. Moreover as there are people with 800 score in GMAT not getting admission further makes me think that there must be a objective way. What do I mean by objective way. I mean there must be a set of rules which will define what a good or bad candidate is and that is what I believe will help one to introspect and gauge oneself as a good or bad or average case. I know everywhere people say there is no one unique formulae to get into an MBA, but from my experience I am trying to make the process more objective rather than subjective. I am thinking of getting into an top MBA school as a complex engineering problem and its solution as a implementable engineering solution. Now what top MBA is ? So for me a top MBA is a combination of:
1. Ranking. No matter what several people say, everyone ( all I know of) have definitely had rankings affect their decision. Esp. if one is looking for traditional post MBA careers as consultant/ investment banking, I believe rankings does a pretty good job of telling you what a top school is. No doubt rankings differ in criteria for rankings so I believe one should look for all the different rankings available.
2. Strength of recruitment in your area of choice.
I am stopping this discussion here only as this is not what I intend to do.
So moving ahead to the initial problem, converting “admission to a top B school” into an equation.
Let Y = admission to a top B school.
And the various factors affecting the result Y be x1, x2, x3 and so on.
Lets define some of the x. This is in no way the comprehensive list and can be different for different schools. Use your best judgement to develop this list.
For the sake of this argument lets say this list has:
x1: GMAT
x2: Academics
x3: Recommendations
x4: Interview
x5: Data Forms filled with the applications.
x6:
x7: Essays
Therefore:
Y = a1*x1 + a2*x2 + a3*x3 + a4*x4 + a5*x5 + a6*x6 + …….. equation 1.
Where a1, a2, a3………are the coefficients or in a simpler jargon how important x1, x2 …..x6 are.
For eg if we define that all a1, a2….will vary between 1 to 10 (10 highest), then if all a’s are 10 there is highest probability of getting an admission to a top B school. If all a’s are 1 there is least probability of getting an admission into a top B school. And now I think this is the place some subjectivity crops in ( though I am still thinking of how to eliminate even this subjectivity). How to differentiate between a value of 3 to 4 among values of a’s.
Now assuming all x’s are known. A prospective applicant can increase his/her probability of getting an admission to a top school by making all of his/her a’s to be maximum possible.
In my opinion x1, x2, x5 are pretty straightforward. What needs most attention are x3, x4, x7 ( that doesn’t mean x1, x2, x5 doesn’t deserve respect). And among these I would say x3, x4 are relatively straightforward compared to x7, reason being for x7 its only you who will decide what is value of a ( 1 or 10) whereas in x3 and x4 there are others also who would participate in deciding the value of a. For x3 other person is your recommender and for x4 other person is your interviewer.
I believe if you will score a value of a for x’s more than some threshold, lets define it at say 5, then you will for sure get an interview call. Again, I believe there may be cases where this argument doesn’t hold true but I believe this can be a reasonable enough generalization.
In subsequent posts I will be writing what I think needs to be done to score high value of “a” for each “x”.
After finishing my Chicago GSB and Wharton interview over the weakened I have been just enjoying and having fun...
But now as its 4 days to that day I have started to think where are others...didn’t I applied to 3-4 more B schools. I think I did. So where's tuck, Ross, Kellogg. Please invite me for interview.
Kellogg has been giving me fits. I did my MS from US so I did not give TOEFL assuming my TOEFL will be waived. And so did all the schools but for some indigestible reason Kellogg adcom said I cant be waived for TOEFL as they need one to have done his/her undergraduate from USA. wow what a reason. Anyway, the person who mailed was good enough to tell me that if I give a letter from my undergraduate school that my undergraduate was done in English medium I could be waived for TOEFL. I did that and hhah did got TOEFL waived. SO I thought now Kellogg is on track but I was wrong as some days later I got a mail saying my application is incomplete...hohoh what can I say. I checked online and it said I have not submitted my transcripts. I called adcom and came to know that a person with same first name and last name has also applied and they filed my transcripts into his file. Again got this rectified and thought I am now on track. Again, I was wrong.
16th Nov was last date for interview intimation for Kellogg...and I did not got any mail. So here I was, again called up Kellogg adcom and this time I was told I am scheduled for an on campus interview because of the person with same first and last name. Though it got rectified but I knew it’s very very late to get an interview call, so as I expected I got the interview waiver mail. I hate it but I guess that’s all I can do.
So that being said my profile would have gone to the adcom around 17 th Nov, and today its 6th Nov that gives enough time. So am I expecting a call for interview a little to early or should still wait. As if I have a choice rather than waiting. Therefore, I will wait.
Hope I don’t need to wait long.
I had my Wharton interview with an adcom member, Marilyn, on Dec 02 in Bangalore.
I just had my Chicago GSB interview with a GSB alumni and I must say that the two experiences were radically different one being with adcom and another with alumni.
So the interviewer was very particular for time. I reached early and there were two interviews before me. She called each interviewee at the exact time allotted and finished in exact 30 min. Then she was taking full 15 min to do something (don’t know what) before starting the next one. Unfortunately, time was not with me. For some reason she called me 3-4 minutes late, although she did said I am sorry for being late, but she did not gave me extra time and completed in exact 30 min, giving the last 5 to me for becoming an interviewer.
She started looking at my resume, looking in detail for couple of min. I have my bachelors in electronics and communication and she asked me which field in electronics. I said signal processing and she even wrote it on the resume. I don’t know what she will do with that. Anyways she also commented on one of my extra curricular activities from the additional information section of the resume. Then she said we wont talk about the resume and lets directly jump into why I think Wharton would be good for me. I thought she forgot that she hasn’t yet asked me why MBA, goals and so on.
So I though let me only remind her that I haven’t said why I want to do MBA and what I want to do in my life. So, I asked I would like to first talk about my goals and intention for MBA. She obviously said yes and I started blah blah blah. I had some ideas about entrepreneurship in long term and she asked me do I know about the market in US. I had read about it and said whatever I remembered. Then she asked have I thought about the entrepreneurial angle of this idea and revenue and such detail. I said I don’t have a comprehensive business plan and talked about why I feel there is a need for this idea. Don’t know she was convinced or impressed or both or none, I hope both.
Then i said short term and then why MBA. She didn’t questioned me on that.
Then the million dollar question, why Wharton. I started talking on it. I said about breadth and depth of curriculum, 1st year core curriculum, BPC why I think Wharton’s BPC is ideal for me and what I want to learn from it and then I said about majors and then a couple of courses that centers on exactly what I want from my MBA.
Then I talked about learning teams with some specific information (got it while talking to a 1st year student). Then she interrupted and said what all you want to do outside of curriculum. Ooomm, I thought hang on lemme finish. But, anyways she was the boss there. So, I talked about entrepreneurship-in-residence program and SBDC. Again linking to why I want to do these.
Then I switched to extra curricular at Wharton. I play tennis and said I would join or lead the tennis club and how I think I would be able to contribute to the community from this.
There were 2-3 points which I wanted to talk about Wharton but missed saying as she was cutting me, so I thought to be very concise in my answers and not giving her a chance to cut me.
Then we went into my community related work. I talked why I am doing it and so on. I also got the coveted gift from her when she said, “you seem to be very passionate about your work". It was like jingle bell jingel bell to me.
Then she asked do I have to ask anything. I asked what she likes most about Wharton. And I was not at all listening what she said as I was wondering what to ask next.
Suddenly it struck me, to ask something which I wanted to say for why Wharton. I talked about the partners club why I feel that is important for my family (again going into specifics). I mentioned about the book club at partners club and linked that to my wife's reading passion. And then I asked her what does she think about partners at Wharton and as usual I don’t remember what she said. I don’t remember but I think I asked one more question and then thought its enough lets shake hands and say sayonara.
Did the final formalities like thank you, pleasure meeting you and such stuff and left the room.
One thing I forgot to mention. She had an interview form in front of her and it seemed to be pretty detailed. I couldn’t see what’s written over it but it seemed it had various fields. All along the interview, she was making notes, in one of these fields in the form. To me it seemed like she has definite topics to cover and taking notes all along. Throughout i wanted to ensure I am clear and crisp and talk new and critical things so that she can write more and more.
even when i said about partners club when asking questions to her, she scribbled something and obviously this made me happy thinking there is one more thing about me in her form. Eventually it would be this form only that would count.
So enough of my experience. My takeaways:
1. Be very clear and crisp in what you are saying. Practice to cut short your answers to say the same stuff in least possible words. I think if I had practiced this I would have been able to speak more points. This is esp. important when one is attending interview where there are slots and there is for sure someone waiting after you. So the interview won’t go long.
2. Why Wharton. I think your 1st point must hit the bulls eye esp. when interviewing with adcom. With due respect to adcom interviewers I think interviews with them is very objective as compared to interviews with alum which I found pretty subjective and more conversational. So that makes it more important so say something that really really links 1:1 with your why MBA argument. I think I did that to start with but then got a little general and thus she switched to what outside of academics I would do. So I think preparation of why xyz will be different for an alum vs. adcom member (just my thoughts, I know several people must be thinking that this is not right).
3. Energy and passion. I was recommended this by Wharton alum and I think it worked. I think these are two qualities which they would be looking in you. So do show lot of energy, enthusiasm and passion in what you say. Being an Indian and interviewing with an US adcom member, I think one should try to modulate his/her words depending on what is being said and that way you can show energy (I am not sure what I wrote is exactly what I wanted to say, but in summary do whatever you can to show enthusiasm and energy and passion).
4. Do not go too early for the interview. I reached almost 1.30 hrs before the interview and it did make me nervous as I was sitting there waiting and watching people.
5. Hope for lot of luck and wishes from all near and dear ones. Thats also a small pie in the circle of success.
Best of luck to everybody.
I had my Chicago GSB interview with an alumni in Bangalore. This is first time the alumni got together and had this event where 4 alumni were taking interviews in parallel all day long. My interviewer in response to one of questions about alumni also said that this is their initiative and Chicago GSB is really working these days to improve their alumni network ( not directly but he did convey that the Chicago GSB alumni atleast in India is not a very very strong community but they all are working to improve that).
Anyways my interviewer was well prepared as in he had taken a print out my resume and had thoroughly disected it. I could see his notes on my resume. He started by talking about himself, seemed to be a well accomplished person, and then straight away jumped into my academics. Then he asked me about my work experience and our interview for the next 15 min revolved around here. He asked me what exactly I do. He was also from a technical background so could relate to what I said. After i gave a generic answer of what product I am working on and what I do he said "lets delve deeper into what you do and how you do". Then we discussed about my transition from a team member to a team leader role and the difficultis I faced in this. How I manage teams and what I find challenging in doing so. SO I believe be prepared with managerial kind of questions related to your work environment.
Then he came back to my resume and picked couple of things from "Additional Information" section of my resume and then next 10 min we discussed on this. He was very curious to know why I am doing so and again how I am doing so. Again these activitioes involved working with teams so he again asked how I handle teams, what difficulties I face and how I measure success in these activities.
Next he asked Goals. He did not grill much on that and then asked Why Chicago. After 3-4 points I said he interrupted and said I seem to have done my homework and then started talking more about GSB. Then he asked why not some other school. I was prepared for this and answered. I brought a work life balance to this answer and he said yes thats really important.
Then he said I am done with my questions and do I have any thing to say. Then I took the opportunity and talked about my interest with Tennis and we went into a discussion about "Federer vs Sampras" who is great. He seems to be inclined towards Sampras and I with Federer and I said I am sure Federer has lot of tennis left in him and he will do wonders. I also told why I like Federer thinking he might be judging me on this argument.
Then I asked couple of questions about how GSB helped him in career progress and also how about GSB alumni community and such stuff. He gave good answeres and I do not remember anything he said as I was thinking "Thank god" the interview went well.
He finished and said I can anytime email or call him for any help I require.
Overall a good experience. My takeways:
1. Be very crystal clear on your work experience. What are you doing needs to be very clear.
2. Why GSB argument is like a trump card,rather why GSB is best for you needs to be well prepared to win the battle.
3. Need to have good share of luck and wishes from loved ones.
Best of luck to everybody.
