Talking with an insider is the next best thing in case you can’t visit a school. Personally, I benefited a lot by talking to students at my target schools and I’d strongly recommend taking advantage of this opportunity. All you need is to visit this link and contact one of the students in the city of your choice.

As for me, I am in NYC/Edison area for next four days and starting next Wednesday, I’ll be available in Atlanta. If you want to meet, leave a comment or drop me a mail at my mail ID from the link above.

“Leading Organizations and Strategy” is one of my favorite courses so far. The course, as the name suggests, primarily deals with the issues of people, strategy and leadership.  The class for the subject is highly interactive and offers opportunities for  learning from experiences of people from different cultural and professional backgrounds.

Last Thursday’s class dealt with issues of Organizational Culture. 10-15 minutes into the class, when we were done with the introduction to the concept, the professor asked us (about 60 of us in the section) to think of a single word that comes to the mind when we think of the culture at Goizueta. Next, he asked us all to come and write down the word on the board. I was juggling with “collaborative” and “community”, but then went ahead with “community”. As I returned to my seat, I was surprised to see the pattern that clearly emerged from about 60 words on the board. “collaborative” seemed to be the most common choice, with “community” not too far behind. Together, these two covered about two-thirds of the board. Some of the other words (with relatively lesser frequency) that I remember from the board are: intense, team and rigorous, (I agree with these too ) and some creative ones: JB (our associate dean ) and Ron Weasley (No clue where that came from. )

As I later came to know, the other two sections had  similar results too. The order may have changed, but the top two words remained the same. At this, I was reminded of one of the blog posts that I had read when I was applying to Goizueta. This post was written three years back and then, the answer was “family”, certainly not too far from the current result in the sense that it conveys. Clearly, the family/community culture at Goizueta is something that has been consistent across years.

I would certainly agree with the results from whatever I have seen so far. Right on my first day in the States, I was received on the airport by the Harriet Ruskin, the Director of MBA Program Office. I was really wowed by this experience. (I come from an undergrad institute that I still consider next only to my family, but even there, I would not expect a Dean/Director to be there at the railway station.) This was not all. For the next few days, she drove each of us through Atlanta, taking us for grocery, furniture, laptops etc. She also took us for some local sight-seeing, including CNN office and Georgia aquarium.  This again is consistent with experiences of previous years.

Later, I have found this feeling of community echoing time and again, during Winshape (our formal induction program), block 1 exams, preparing for a career fair* and even the routine classes. And this is true not only while interacting with batch-mates, but even with seniors, professors and the alumni. Everybody I reach out to is more than eager to help. I really feel proud to be a part of such a close-knit community.

*Each of these experience perhaps deserves a different post. Stay tuned; I’ll continue to bring you inside story at Goizueta on this blog.

Here’s a glimpse of the moment (Although no video can match up the experience of being on the spot of creation of history)

Really proud to be a part of Goizueta family!!

PS: I know that this blog is missing in action for some time now. I promise the readers that I’ll be back very soon providing you the live coverage of my life at Emory..

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School is pleased to announce that it is finalizing an agreement with an external partner which will provide loans to admitted and current international MBA students.  International MBA students enrolled at Goizueta Business School will be able to borrow for their MBA studies with a competitive interest rate and repayment terms.  A U.S. cosigner will not be required for this new loan program.  Specific details of the loan program structure will be available in the coming weeks after the agreement is finalized.

As highlighted here, I was now very nervous. But this news came in just at the right time. I would still wait before I start the celebrations. The terms and conditions are yet to be announced. But I am sure that there would be nothing prohibitive for the international students. I just hope that they decide to cover the expenses upto the costs of attendance.

Turned down the admission-offer that ISB had for me. The reason I am calling this as a bold move is that I have still not figured out the finances for Emory completely. Was busy in some other important tasks and have not taken any step on working on this in last few days.

But in any case, I am in no position to deposit INR 2 Lakhs that ISB would need as a deposit in case I want that safe in my kitty too. I am sure that Emory would come up with a no-cosigner loan that it is working on actively as per the Accepted Students website. Even in the absence of it, I guess I would somehow be able to arrange for the living expenses. 

I know ISB V/s Emory (with schol) is a debatable issue. I am very clear about what I want from my B-school and hence, clearly it’s Goizueta for me. I understand that this issue deseves a detailed post.. Don’t worry, it’ll be here very soon. Keep watching this space.

Going through the life-cycle of a number of MBA applicants through their blogs, I knew that after getting the admits, the next wait is for the official confirmation in forms of admission-packets. It’s a bit strange that even in this world of web and e-mails, how good it feels to have something tangible to see and show up. 

So I too was waiting for the official admission packets. In fact, I was regularly tracing the journey of my packet from Atlanta through  Hongkong through  Mumbai to finally Noida through the UPS tracking system. I was really waiting quite eagerly for this one. And suddenly, just 2 minutes after I had checked the status to be “Arrival-scan” at New Delhi, I got a mail from the office-mailroom informing me about the arrival of a letter for me. “They can’t be that quick”, I thought, but still reached the mailroom almost jumping and running on my way.

It was not the packet from Goizueta, it was the acceptance letter from ISB. The ISB letter was quite plain. It was simply the original mail this time in hard-copy format. No additional info of any kind. But as written above, it felt good to go through the contents again and again. 

And then, in the evening, the mailroom people contacted me again. And this time, it had to be from Goizueta!! I cut short whatever conversation I was having with my colleagues and rushed to the mailroom minutes before its closure for the day. And there it was: my admissions packet from the school that I’ll hopefully belong to in near future. The packet had a black leather folder with a Goizueta notepad. In addition, there were two letters one each about my acceptance and scholarship. And the best part was: a handwritten note by Director of Admissions, Mrs Julie Barefoot complementing me on my acadmic credentials. A personal touch like this surely does make you feel good. 

I was really very happy to see this. Monday wasn’t particularly a good day for me at office: some health issues, some struggle with the new line of work and then some more things.. But a moment like this makes you forget everything else. 

BTW, as you may have realized from the new category that has come up on this blog: “Go Goizueta!!”, I have frozen my decision to attend Goizueta. Have I arranged for the living expenses and other things already? Not yet! But I am confdent that I will be able to figure that out. Meanwhile, I initiated the wire-transfer for the initial deposit, but for some reason, it failed. (I got the mail informing about the same today morning.) I perhaps would need to do it the old fashioned way.(money order/DD)  :(