Invited to Interview with Columbia!

After months of silence, it’s almost unreal to get two pieces of good news in as many (business) days, but that is exactly what has happened. Yes, this afternoon I opened up my email and found an invitation for an interview with Columbia!!

This is especially exciting because it makes my trip seem really worthwhile. I’m leaving tomorrow for San Francisco, then to Ann Arbor on Jan 22 and to New York on Jan 29. In between I’m visiting friends on the weekends.

In San Francisco I will be too early for the regular class visits, but I do have a coffee booked with a current student who I met through this blog, and I will also try to meet the director of the nonprofit management program.

At Ross, I will attend some prospective student activites and also the Black Business Students Association conference. I’m not black, but it still looks like an interesting conference with good speakers and a good way to get a sense of the school and its students.

For New York I haven’t got things arranged just yet, but the general plan will be about the same.

Anyway, there is lots to do before I leave, but I will try to post along the way! Wish me luck!!

 

Accepted at Michigan!

Guilty secret: I was haunting the Business Week forums the last couple days, because I discovered that Ross was making phone calls before the Jan 15th official decision release date. I tormented myself by checking to see who else had received a phone call while I hadn’t.

By 2pm this afternoon I was convinced that I was getting rejected, but fortune smiled on me in the end and I arrived home to a voice mail and email informing me that I am in at Michigan! Yippee!!!

Now I can relax and not worry about sending in back up applications because I have somewhere to go in the fall. This ought to really help with my anxiety over still not having an interview invite at Haas.

Have a good weekend, everyone! I know that I will….

 

I Don’t Like Waiting

It’s Official. I DO NOT LIKE WAITING.

I still do not have a Haas invite, the Michigan decisions don’t come out for another week, and Columbia is just opening the files tomorrow. Ack! I would rather know, for better or for worse, and move on with my life.

I have not managed to get motivated to do the Boston U application, and now I’m starting to be very short of time. My excuse is that I can wait until Feb 1 and do the Schulich one, but the truth is that three applications was more than enough and I really don’t want to do another one. Anyway, an offer of admission would make this problem go away nicely, wouldn’t it?

But I don’t have one yet, and they will come when they come, so I just have to learn how to wait, and Wait, AND WAIT……

*sigh*

It’s a good thing I am leaving on my trip in a week. I need a distraction.

 

Long time, no write

Hello! Yes, I’m still alive!! Did you miss me??

I haven’t written in a long while I know, but that’s because there has been nothing to report. No interviews, no applications, no admits, no dings, just… nothing!

So here’s a quick recap: I have submitted R1 apps to Ross, Haas and Columbia. I got an early interview with Ross, and nothing yet from Haas. Columbia doesn’t start reading until Jan 9th, so no news is exactly what I expect for now.

Now that it’s 2008, I’m starting to get nervous. What if all three ding me?? I would be quite disappointed if I don’t get into one of my top three schools, now that I’ve put so much blood sweat and tears into them, but a dose of realism might be worthwhile. And I *really* want to be in school for Sept 2008, so I’m wondering if it’s time to put a safety app or two out there.

I’m thinking Boston U because it’s got the good nonprofit program, strong scholarship offerings, and great location. The other option is Schulich in Toronto, which is where I was planning to go before I embarked on this whole crazy US school journey, so ending up there would be highly ironic, but it also has a good nonprofit program, cheaper tuition and an almost good location. (Almost because Toronto is a great city, but the school is not in a great part of the city and commuting might turn out to be a major hassle.)

Another wrinkle is that Jan 15 is Ross’ decision date, and this is also the deadline for Boston U, so I can’t wait to find out if I’m in before preparing the application (although if I do get in, I can save myself some money and not submit it). I need to write the essays and get the recommenders started right away. For Schulich I have until Feb 1, so there is a bit more time.

But I’ve saved the most interesting news for last. I’m going to go travelling down to the States for three weeks and visit my three top schools! Of course, I’m leaving Jan 15, so there is a chance that I might be visiting schools (Ross!) that I’ve already been dinged by, in which case I might just go to Chicago or something rather than letting them rub it in. Of course, I’m hoping that I will have a big decision to make when all three accept me, so I need to check them out for myself to be ready for that.

Anyway, that is the latest in my MBA world. I guess I will start preparing the BU application and keep trying not to obsess about why I haven’t received a Haas interview invite yet. Hopefully I will be posting with good news soon though!!

 

Ross interview debrief

Well, I just got off the phone from my interview, and it was… mixed.

My interviewer was nice but quite formal. He was a second year student. He started out by asking me to describe my profile, or how he should remember me. I think I handled that one okay, but many of the other questions I felt like I rambled a bit.

Other questions included asking about my entrepreneurial experiences, why Ross, what does action based learning mean to me, why I was changing careers (and then two follow up questions on that, which really made me think that I didn’t explain it well at all), three weaknesses, and a behavioural question about a challenge I faced in a team environment, how I handled it and what I learned from it. This isn’t the right order, but you get the idea.

I think the part that went best was when I asked questions. I came up with some good ones that really caused him to go into some detail about his experience at Ross and that was what I wanted.

One thing that threw me off was that he started the interview by complimenting me on my profile. It got me confused about whether he’d seen the whole application (he hadn’t - I asked him later) and just really surprised.

Also, I’m sick today, so I think that my rambling can be at least partly attributed to that. (Even my writing is kind of rambling and disorganized!) Hopefully I didn’t mess up my chances, but I didn’t want to cancel the call.

 

Back to reality

It’s always a bit sad coming home from vacation, isn’t it? I was away for just about two weeks so I can’t complain that I didn’t get a good break, but a part of me is still wishing it didn’t have to end. On the plane ride home I had the strange coincidence of being seated next to someone who is pursuing a remarkably similar career direction to me. He is currently studying in Finland, in a program that they don’t call an MBA but is clearly the same thing, and his concentration is on corporate governance, which is an area that I am very interested in, albeit on the nonprofit side. I gave him my email address and told him to let me know where he ends up working. This world is so small that I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to run into him again in the future!

Anyway, I’m back now, and I was certainly happy to sleep in my own bed last night. I sent off the acceptance and resume for the Michigan interview invite when I got in last night and this morning a response was waiting for me. The bad news is that their requests for alumni interviewers are up 300% and so I have to interview with the admissions committee. Since I have to interview by November 21 and I don’t live anywhere near Michigan this means I will have to interview by phone. I think that this is a disadvantage, for me at least. It’s so much easier to have a nice chat with a person you have never met when you can see their face at the same time.

I’m not quite sure when to book it because I am going to be somewhat jetlagged this week. I’m thinking of making it Monday, which will give me time to recover and prepare. Of course, I’d really rather get it over with sooner so that I have less time to worry about it, but I think that it’s smarter to make sure I am awake for it.

Before I left I was too busy to post much, between the final push on my applications, getting ready for my trip, and clearing the decks at work, so here’s a quick recap. I submitted Columbia and Haas on Oct 28 just a few hours before I left. I ran into a small snag with Ross in getting my transcripts scanned, and I had to get my dad to prepare and upload the file for me. He put the transcripts on up October 30 (but I wasn’t able to check them) I did the submission from an internet cafe on October 31. I was a bit worried about that one, so the interview invitation came as a relief.

Despite weeks of planning, the last minute is always the last minute for me. I didn’t get the Haas “why MBA” essay up to 1000 words like I had planned. After struggling mightily to edit it down to 500 words for Michigan, it suddenly didn’t feel like I had that much more to say. Out of the 14 essays I submitted I would estimate that about 5 were great, and the rest were various shades of acceptable. By the end, I was so essayed out that doing final readings was probably a complete waste of time.

I have returned to the usual backlog of work, so I plan to let the MBA quest remain dormant for the next couple weeks, except of course for the Ross interview. After I’m feeling more caught up, I will need to address the question of R2. Hopefully I get a R1 acceptance early enough to save me and my reviewers this extra work, but they don’t guarantee this so I will have to be ready.

I would like to thank everybody who has sent me interview congratulations. It’s so nice to have a community to share this journey with!

 

Interview invite from Ross!

I’m still away on vacation so I’ll post a better update when I get back home, but I logged in to my email today to find an invitation to interview with Ross. Just wanted to share the good news!

 

This is me, panicking!

Pressure is mounting, and now every time I read my essays I become more certain that they suck. I still have the Haas “why MBA” essay to write, but Columbia’s is now done. My schedule has filled up completely from now until I leave and I don’t know when I’m going to get all of this done.

…I would push the panic button, but I don’t know where I left it…

 

The countdown is on!

I’m leaving on vacation on October 27, so October 26 will be submission day (”S-Day”?) for my three round one applications. That means I am now entering my final week. Both of my recommenders have now made their submissions, my transcript requests are in, and I have filled out “most” of the online forms. What is left? The resume, and of course… the essays!

Out of 14 essays here is where I am at:

• Michigan (4): 4 drafted, 4 reviewed twice (I’m not counting the reviews from my parents, which consisted of “My, aren’t you wonderful, darling!”)
• Columbia (4): 3 drafted, 2 reviewed once, 1 not reviewed yet
• Haas (6): 5 drafted, 5 reviewed once

So I have two left to draft (the lengthening of the why MBA essays) and then three to get reviewed for the first time, but ideally I’d like all of them to go past at least two reviewers. And with only one week left, I’m suddenly worried. I’ve been taking it easy for several days now, since I finished the majority of the drafts, and I am now realizing that this is crunch time. Especially since time will become more and more limited as my departure date approaches. Yikes!

So no more lollygagging around… it’s time to get to work! This weekend I will finish the two remaining drafts and do full reads of each set to look for internal consistency. I am going to brainstorm potential reviewers who may agree to look at them early next week, and get in touch with them or leave emails for Monday morning. Next week is all about review, check and double check, so that Friday I can hit the submit button without having a heart attack.

Seven days and counting!!

 

Is it all “too much”?

I had a very interesting comment from a reader today. I am pasting it below in its entirety:

My goodness, reading your blog entries made me cringe… there’s a little bit of “too much” in almost every step you describe. I hope you get admitted to your top-choice school, but at the same time I hope your top-choice school is not the school I will be attending. I imagine going to class (or, worse, being in a study group) with a few people like you… wow, no thank you. Good luck with your essays, though.

I had mixed emotions in reading this. Am I doing too much? What does too much mean? And why would this person not want to be a classmate or study mate of mine?

When I started on this journey, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I read the websites and blogs and was highly intimidated by the people out there who seemed to have it all together. Getting into a school is nothing like this in Canada. I knew that I was out of my league… yet I wanted to try.

So maybe I blog too much. Or maybe I think about my MBA essays too much. Or maybe it’s too much when I run up against something that looks big and intimidating so I try to break it down into steps. I don’t know…

But the cool thing is, I think this is a good sign. I have arrived. People read my blog and think I’m one of “those” super-candidates who have it all together. And if I can convince people like today’s commenter, then maybe I will convince the admissions committee!!

By the way, your comments on my blog are always welcome… positive or negative. Thanks for reading.