Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Have a great Holiday season.

"The Best MBA admission posts of 2009" in the Blogosphere

I had two choices to make during the month of December, wait for the application results or wait and do something while waiting. As a part of "doing something" I started reading some books; see my previous post.

Now after three books and three hundred blogposts on social media, I thought why not consolidate the best MBA admissions posts from the blogosphere - something I like to call blog-networking. So here is my first attempt to bring together the best of the best advice from my fellow applicant bloggers so that readers/applicants/bschool aspirants can benefit from a "one stop know all" write-up.

So here it is The Best MBA Admission Posts of 2009:

1. GMAT is often considered as the first hurdle in a b-school journey. This involves (speaking from my own experience) a lot of hard and organized work. Yet there are many daunting questions in the mind of test takers. Why not take some advice from a guy who shattered the GMAT with a 97th percentile score. William Wallace share in this post some invaluable advice on How to best prepare for the GMAT and answers some frequently asked questions.
Also if you need some inspiration you can also check out Rocky's debrief on his second attempt at the GMAT that he aced in his post GMAT Take 2

2. mad-bubbles, who recently got admitted to Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business (and selected as Forte Fellow), shares with us a post on What constitutes a Dream B-school. This very popular post elaborates on how to assess fit with a b-school and would definitely be a great read for anyone who is going through the nerve-wrecking process of business school selection.

3. After you cross the GMAT hurdle and have selected potential b-schools to apply to, you might want to know what are the business school application requirements and how to plan your application. To enlighten you with this information, The Dreamer has highlighted in her post "Application requirements and how to plan and meet them"a detailed check list of the application requirements.

4. Now that you have all the required information, its time to put your brains to work and start writing the essays. Essays are a very important part of your application since they become your pitch as to why you are a deserving candidate for the particular b-school. To get you started, here is a post that I wrote sometime back on The Perfect B-school Essay.

5. Once you have turned in your application, your treacherous wait begins! But hey, instead of simply waiting do yourself some good and start preparing for the final inning of your application - The Interview. To help you with this there are several resources online. You might want to check out my post on Preparing for the Admissions Interview. Here is another useful post by The Dreamer on How to prep. for admissions interview

6. If you want to know how a typical interview sessions goes, you could check out Rocky's post on his Rotman Interview report.
Another useful post on the admissions interview is by Steve in his post about his interview experience. Here he also highlights some interview questions for your reference.

I'm very sure that there are more useful posts out there. So, my dear applicant bloggers, if you think you have written a post which might be useful for the readers, please poke me with a permalink to your post and I'll definitely add it to the list above.

So I hope you all enjoyed the articles. Until next time herez wishing you a Very Happy New Year!!

Cheers,
Hari


Disclaimer: The Best MBA admission posts of 2009 are merely my personal opinion. This does not reflect a judgement of any kind, nor is it listed in any particular order. The bloggers' permission was sought prior to posting.

Reading while hibernating and some updates

Firstly let me apologize for not updating this blog. Its probably been 2 weeks since my last post. Let me briefly explain the state of my mind and my reason for not updating: I'm Blue! Thats it, I said it and thats the reason I went on a short span of hibernation.

Why blue? Well, its rather childish. Like a kid waiting for his Christmas gift, I'm simply waiting for mine, but in this case the gift would be a simple email telling me that somebody just loves me so much that they've decided to offer me a place at their esteemed business school. Now that I've turned in all my applications, the wait is just cramping my brains. The sad part is that the wait just began! phew..

Anyways, during this what-else-in-the-world-can-i-do period, I've been really happy to strike gold in 3 books. And I absolutely, truly, and positively recommend these books for anybody who has anything to do with the word "business"

1. Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki I'm a huge fan of Guy, so I might be a bit biased towards his books. But nonetheless, this book is a gem. It is simply a working manual of how to start and successfully run a start-up. But more importantly, its not a generic "you should strategically position your brand" kind of BS. Its more of a step by step, information sharing, fun-filled guide.

Bottom line: Now I wanna start a business!

2. Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath I was referred to this book my the book Reality Check (notice the chain reaction!). Anyways, the Heath brothers have put an extremely comprehensive book of why some ideas stick such as proverbs or business ideas, and how to make an idea stick with the audience. The core of this book a 6 step process (abbreviated S.U.C.C.E.S) which is brilliantly explained (and made to stick) with the help of real world cases (or examples).

Bottom Line: Really sticky!

3. Snapshots from Hell by Peter Robinson This is more like a journal (or a personal blog, if you will) than a knowledge imparting book. But what makes this book such an amazing read is the truth it reflects about the business school world. In short it is the story of an atypical business school candidate and his struggle at Standford GSB! Honestly, this book, for some reason, made be long to go to a business school. Weird ain't it?!

Bottom line: Can wait to go to Hell!

So there you go a round-up of my past couple of weeks for you.

Have a great holiday season.

Ciao!