The admissions committee looks for high levels of self-motivation, commitment and expects your essays to reflect the same. However, that does not mean that you need to have something extra-ordinary or fake to boost your profile. If an essay wants you to talk about some major achievement in life, then the achievement need not necessarily be from your work experience. Even personal life achievements can be described. The evaluator is interested to understand your personality. During the application process for INSEAD, one of my students felt that his purchase of a flat in Mumbai was an achievement. He felt that this was a significant achievement based on his family background. He asked me whether he could take this case. Of course it is an achievement. He mentioned that along with another achievement at work. If you think his chances were slim, think again. He has secured admission into INSEAD and one of his interviewers told him that the achievements were definitely noteworthy.
As I menioned in the earlier post, your passion and drive to achieve results brings in a sparkle to your essays. These are stories of your life. One lady applying to Oxford (Said Business School) felt that doing a post graduation from a metro city like Bangalore and moving on to become a teacher was an achievement. She grew up in a rural area in Karnataka and the conditions there were such that hardly any girl was sent to college or for that matter even high school. This no doubt is an achievement. The story must be showcased well and if al the other parts of the application are well placed, an evaluator will certainly like to see such an achievement. At the end of it all, there is no right story or wrong story for achievements, failures etc. Its all about the ones that matter to you the most (for achievements) and what you learnt from experience (failures / setbacks).
Talking about a failure, setback, try not to shift the blame to some other party. This is one of the gravest mistakes one can make in an essay. I fully agree that there are external forces that come into play during our setback periods. Just make a one line reference and focus more on what happened, how you rectified things from your end and what have you learnt from mistakes. Mistakes are bound to happen and we all learn from our mistakes. As long as you emerged stronger from that event, you fall into the professional achievers category by default.
Most universities these days ask for the starting and ending salaries during your tenure at work. Unfortunately, a vast majority of business schools ask for salaries in USD, Euros, GBP etc and the amount seems extremely low when rupees are converted into these currencies. Don't worry about that. Check whether the form has a field that allows you to show the conversion factors. In case you don't have provision for that field, then do make it a point to explain the ROE conversion in the Additional Admissions part. The evaluator is more keen on analysing your career progress as higher remuneration implies that you have grown well at your workplace. Also the growth levels are measured by the ratio of later incomes with previous ones. Ultimately, this ratio will remain the same regardless of currencies used in the calculations. So if you were earning 3.5 Lakhs PA in 2006 and now earn 5 Lakhs PA, your growth has been almost 100% This will work in your favor even though the dollar amount may seem low. If all other aspects in your profile are good, the university will certainly help you with the scholarships and financial aid.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Ace The GMAT - Part3
Today we will look at tips and tricks to crack the Reading Comprehension (RC) part of the Verbal Section. Typically, you will come across 4 passages on the GMAT. The passages revolve around General Science, Social Science and Business Science. General Science passages are dense with scientific details. Social Science passages normally trace developments in social welfare related issues. Business Science passages revolve around strategy and results.
Normally, you get your first passage within the first 12 questions and the next passage within the next 12 questions. These passages will normally have 4 questions per passage. The first 2 passages actually determine the overall score level you will reach at the end of the Verbal Section. (Not to forget that the questions here on SC and CR will also determine your score). Roughly you have 2 minutes per question on Verbal translating to 8 minutes per passage for the first 2 passages. Of this, 4 minutes should be reserved for going through the passage and the balance to answer the questions.
Never ever let your personal knowledge about a subject interfere with your unerstanding of the passage. Treat the passage as text to read and analyze. Never go too much into the details as you don't get scores for that. You need to quickly comprehend the passage and attack the questions. I quite like the approach suggested by Princeton Review and Kaplan. A passage map definitely helps crack the RC part very well. Even before you start reading the passage, you should have a template in place with the following details to be filled in....
Purpose of the Essay, Scope of Topics/Subjects used and Paragraph structure. One way is to have the following format ready on your rough working sheets.
Purpose
Scope
Style
P1 (Outline of Para1)
P2 (Outline of Para2)
P3 (Outline of Para3) so on and so forth.
As you red through the passage, put down the outline as soon as you finish a paragraph. After going through the entire passage, make a brief summary of summaries and plug in the purpose, scope and style. Style basically helps you eliminate some of the options on General Questions.
For general questions, you should not have to go back to the passage again. Your passage map itself should help you eliminate wrong answer choices. For detail questions, your passage map should help you locate the context quickly. Again use passage maps to your advantage by eliminating wrong options. Always read the line before and after the detail question so that you are very clear about the context. These methods do need some practice. However, if you follow these patterns, you will definitely raise your scores signifantly.
Many people dread RC but the fact is that RC can be a very high scoring part. The questions are not varied in terms of difficulty level. The system is not computing your score after each question. You enter the RC passage based on where you stand vis a vis other questions. The system classifies entire passages into easy, medium, difficult levels etc. If you have entered the first passage with a good strike rate on the other questions, your scores are bound to increase. As with SC and CR, go through all the options before you select your answer.
With these tips, I think I have covered the Verbal Practice tips. The next post on Ace the GMAT will focus on AWA and some tips regarding Quantitative section.
Friday, March 13, 2009
University Applications
We have been discussion preparations for GMAT, researching business schools etc. I will continue to post further on those topics. However, I now want to also focus on the university applications part. Some myths and facts that we need to clear before we move further.
Myth1: I need to have a lavish vocabulary to impress the admissions committee
Fact: While a lavish vocabulary is good, using too many woolly and fluffy words can actually reduce your chance to grab a berth and get short-listed for the interview. Based on inputs from friends, peers and acquaintances in business school, and some pedantic knowledge via media (now I could easily have said theoretical instead of pedantic. What was your first reaction when you read 'pedantic'?), the evaluator of your essay has about 10 minutes to score the essays. What the evaluator is looking for is your experience, your thought process and your power of communication. The evaluator could be a senior student from the business school, a faculty member or some external consultant hired to do the evaulation. The evaluator wants to understand your story not your vocabulary. Trust me if the evaluator has to resort to the thesaurus every minute, its a big turn-off.
Myth2: I need to spend a lot of hours and money to get a good essay done
Fact: You don't need more than 10 hours to get a crisp application package in place. Your resume is in place but it typically is drafted to apply for jobs. A typical MBA Application Resume is never more than 1 page giving an executive summary of your work experience, proficiency in your area of work and academic skills. A lot of information, normally present in the job resume is filled in by you in certain forms provided by the business school. You need not repeat it.
Moreover, its going to be extremely difficult for an external consultant to draft your story. You know your story best. You should be the one driving this. That being said, it is always good to have 2 or 3 opinions on the essays preferably from various backgrounds. Lets say you are into marketing, you should try to choose 1 friend, 1 business acquaintance and a good consultant if you can find one (this is not mandatory at all) There are multitudes of people who pay consultants hefty sums of USD 150 to USD 500 to get an application package done. Unless you don't really value your money, don't go for it. Either get a consultant who can do at least 3 applications for you within USD 100 or seek assistance from some local freelance journalist who writes about careers and education. (Typically they charge about USD 10 to USD 25 per hour. A fruitful application session is done within 3 hours)
To simplify myths further, I have decided to share some of the Winning Essays done at GMAT Wings. These are all essays that either got our student admitted or at least an interview call. These essays have been reproduced with permission from the candidates. Sensitive information has been masked for obvious reasons. I would like to stress that any attempt to reproduce the essays will only harm an aspirant's chances with business schools. These materials are not protected by copyright laws. Feel free to share these with your friends, colleagues who might benefit from these inspiring essays.
The essays can be found on www.gmatwings.in
Myth1: I need to have a lavish vocabulary to impress the admissions committee
Fact: While a lavish vocabulary is good, using too many woolly and fluffy words can actually reduce your chance to grab a berth and get short-listed for the interview. Based on inputs from friends, peers and acquaintances in business school, and some pedantic knowledge via media (now I could easily have said theoretical instead of pedantic. What was your first reaction when you read 'pedantic'?), the evaluator of your essay has about 10 minutes to score the essays. What the evaluator is looking for is your experience, your thought process and your power of communication. The evaluator could be a senior student from the business school, a faculty member or some external consultant hired to do the evaulation. The evaluator wants to understand your story not your vocabulary. Trust me if the evaluator has to resort to the thesaurus every minute, its a big turn-off.
Myth2: I need to spend a lot of hours and money to get a good essay done
Fact: You don't need more than 10 hours to get a crisp application package in place. Your resume is in place but it typically is drafted to apply for jobs. A typical MBA Application Resume is never more than 1 page giving an executive summary of your work experience, proficiency in your area of work and academic skills. A lot of information, normally present in the job resume is filled in by you in certain forms provided by the business school. You need not repeat it.
Moreover, its going to be extremely difficult for an external consultant to draft your story. You know your story best. You should be the one driving this. That being said, it is always good to have 2 or 3 opinions on the essays preferably from various backgrounds. Lets say you are into marketing, you should try to choose 1 friend, 1 business acquaintance and a good consultant if you can find one (this is not mandatory at all) There are multitudes of people who pay consultants hefty sums of USD 150 to USD 500 to get an application package done. Unless you don't really value your money, don't go for it. Either get a consultant who can do at least 3 applications for you within USD 100 or seek assistance from some local freelance journalist who writes about careers and education. (Typically they charge about USD 10 to USD 25 per hour. A fruitful application session is done within 3 hours)
To simplify myths further, I have decided to share some of the Winning Essays done at GMAT Wings. These are all essays that either got our student admitted or at least an interview call. These essays have been reproduced with permission from the candidates. Sensitive information has been masked for obvious reasons. I would like to stress that any attempt to reproduce the essays will only harm an aspirant's chances with business schools. These materials are not protected by copyright laws. Feel free to share these with your friends, colleagues who might benefit from these inspiring essays.
The essays can be found on www.gmatwings.in
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Explore B-School Options
I have been blogging about how to ace the GMAT. Before I continue with that, I would like to address a very key issue regarding B-Schools. From personal exprience, I have observed that a lot of MBA aspirants don't spend a lot of time researching their B-School options. Some are so obssessed with B-School Ranks and Brands that they forget their own career goals in the process. There are some very reputed business schools who have joined the bandwagon with a plethora of new business schools, locating campuses in fancy locations abroad and try to entice students with the aid of these backgrounds.
The reality is that it doesn't really matter whether the campus is in Dubai, Singapore, Toronto, Montreal or whatever. The business school may be one of repute but what is the value you can get out of that B-school? Will it help you strengthen your foundations and help you secure good placements? Whats the faculty background of the business school? How strong is its alumni network? How much of alumni access do you get in the program?
Another strange observation has been the desperation to get into B-School in a particular year. There are a lot of people who do research schools and short-list schools for themselves. Due to some reason (GMAT Score / Interview / Application etc) these people don't manage to get into their dream schools or reach schools. Suddenly something takes them over. They are so bogged down by the pressure to go for the MBA that common sense becomes an extremely precious commodity! They just look at a business school abroad and feel that they can get in (and thats probably the case many a time). However, as mentioned above, once in this mental frame, they forget about all the research they did. All that they know is that they want to join 'some' b-school. Well if you wanted to join 'some' b-school, why take the pains of investing (in this case wasting) precious time and money. There are plenty of fly by night b-school degrees that will fetch far better returns. At least the fly by night operators don't end up getting you in a terrible loan position.
Take stock of your personal, financial and career position. Remind yourself why you want the MBA. You want it for career growth, right? You want to be in a good position with bright future prospects. Your GMAT score is valid for 5 years. If you have a good GMAT score but somehow faced the closed door, take a chill pill. What possibly went wrong? If the b-school gives you feedback on your application, its extremely good. However, many b-schools choose not to given individual application feedback. Look at the pool of admitted students. What was so distinct about people who got admitted with lower GMAT scores? What extra efforts can you put in to enhance your skills, professional courses and career progress before applying next year? It helps to discuss your applications with a seasoned professional. This professional could be some senior person in your known circles or an external consultant. If everything is fine and the GMAT score is below 20 points from the median GMAT score, try taking the GMAT once again with more practice.
Placement Statistics / Return on Investment
Always look at the median salaries of the previous placement cycle. Average will simply distort the numbers. Median gives you a realistic measure. Always remember that even the median figure discloses 'Cost to Company (CTC)' and not salary. A pragmatic measure in terms of net take home salary would be about 60% to 65% of the quoted CTC (Factoring perquisites, taxes and other deductions). If you have to take a loan to finance your MBA, what portion of the median salary will go towards the loan. It normally takes about 4 to 7 years to repay the loan amount. These are messages sent down by the hundreds and thousands of people who have gone for an MBA from sub-optimal universities/b-schools only to realize that they burnt their fingers big time.
To Be Continued...Raj
info@gmatwings.in
www.gmatwings.in
The reality is that it doesn't really matter whether the campus is in Dubai, Singapore, Toronto, Montreal or whatever. The business school may be one of repute but what is the value you can get out of that B-school? Will it help you strengthen your foundations and help you secure good placements? Whats the faculty background of the business school? How strong is its alumni network? How much of alumni access do you get in the program?
Another strange observation has been the desperation to get into B-School in a particular year. There are a lot of people who do research schools and short-list schools for themselves. Due to some reason (GMAT Score / Interview / Application etc) these people don't manage to get into their dream schools or reach schools. Suddenly something takes them over. They are so bogged down by the pressure to go for the MBA that common sense becomes an extremely precious commodity! They just look at a business school abroad and feel that they can get in (and thats probably the case many a time). However, as mentioned above, once in this mental frame, they forget about all the research they did. All that they know is that they want to join 'some' b-school. Well if you wanted to join 'some' b-school, why take the pains of investing (in this case wasting) precious time and money. There are plenty of fly by night b-school degrees that will fetch far better returns. At least the fly by night operators don't end up getting you in a terrible loan position.
Take stock of your personal, financial and career position. Remind yourself why you want the MBA. You want it for career growth, right? You want to be in a good position with bright future prospects. Your GMAT score is valid for 5 years. If you have a good GMAT score but somehow faced the closed door, take a chill pill. What possibly went wrong? If the b-school gives you feedback on your application, its extremely good. However, many b-schools choose not to given individual application feedback. Look at the pool of admitted students. What was so distinct about people who got admitted with lower GMAT scores? What extra efforts can you put in to enhance your skills, professional courses and career progress before applying next year? It helps to discuss your applications with a seasoned professional. This professional could be some senior person in your known circles or an external consultant. If everything is fine and the GMAT score is below 20 points from the median GMAT score, try taking the GMAT once again with more practice.
Placement Statistics / Return on Investment
Always look at the median salaries of the previous placement cycle. Average will simply distort the numbers. Median gives you a realistic measure. Always remember that even the median figure discloses 'Cost to Company (CTC)' and not salary. A pragmatic measure in terms of net take home salary would be about 60% to 65% of the quoted CTC (Factoring perquisites, taxes and other deductions). If you have to take a loan to finance your MBA, what portion of the median salary will go towards the loan. It normally takes about 4 to 7 years to repay the loan amount. These are messages sent down by the hundreds and thousands of people who have gone for an MBA from sub-optimal universities/b-schools only to realize that they burnt their fingers big time.
To Be Continued...Raj
info@gmatwings.in
www.gmatwings.in
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