I was finding it tough to manage Ross and Tuck together. For Tuck,I am relatively in quite advanced stage and I’m in the process of fine-tuning my drafts. On the contrary, though I have raw drafts ready for all four Ross essays, they are nowhere close to even be called first drafts.. More importantly, I wasn’t myself convinced with the stories, particularly the most significant professional achievement. I feared that my app was not strong enough, but at the same time I strongly wanted to go by the R1 deadline.

Then, I was reminded of adcom’s fav line: “Best round is the one when your application is strongest”. Considering this, I decided to push Ross to R2. Their R2 deadline is in jan, I’m sure i’ll get some more clarity by that time and will be in a position to put in a stronger app. In any case, I do have an accomplishment-in-making on the professional front and I hope that’d give me a stronger answer.

IT was a tough decision as Ross (tied with Tuck) was my top choice. But taking this decision has surely made life easier for me. Now I can focus primarily on Tuck essays. The reviews are mostly in and I need to rework some of the stuff. Am targetting one round of overhaul this weekend, before I move on to Darden and Duke.

I am very impatiently awaiting detailed reviews from the first two reviewers. Both of these are quite senior to me and are very busy people. I’m already grateful to them that they could find time for me;  not really sure when I should  ping them for reminding.  But as of now,I’m really finding it hard to concentrate w/o their feedback and I feel that  before I proceed to write another set of flawed essays, perhaps it would be good if i can get the basics right.. (Am i using this as an excuse for procrastination!!) After reviewer2’s comments, I’ve gone back to read my Tuck-drafts at least ten times and somehow I stil am in love with my efforts.

So what else I’m doing other than getting confused over my reviewers’ comments.. Right now I’m concentrating on Ross drafts. Yes, I’m lagging behind the schedule that I had set for myself, but the essays are giving me a hard time.
Alternate profession essay is quite tricky, I’m still confused between two possible professions.. (Yeah, the goal-clarity is missing in alternate career too!! ) Also struggling with “Most significant professional achievent” essay.. Not sure how can I narrate my stories without getting too technical. Can’t tell them how the debugger was misbehaving and how I  cracked a number of the bugs by putting printf() statements in all the right places, neither can i go on to tell them how I dug  deep into code and resolved a number of memory leaks. (Non-IT blog-readers, pardon me here! ) Regarding “a challenging time in your life”, I have a story, but that’s in distant past and then it’s a bit common.. Essay-advisors on BW forums have advised me against using that.
Had planned to reuse the Tuck essay (in parts) for goals, but that too is under fire from my reviewers. Add to all this the fact that none of the four essays cover my extra-curricular leadership efforts, so i’m forced to go for an optional essay as well!!(May be here I can reuse Tuck leadership essay with some tweaks)
In sum, with less than three weeks from submission,my essays for Ross are really in a bad shape. But hopefully, I’ll be able to set things right soon. Maximum by Monday EOD, Ross first drafts will be dispatched to the reviewers.

Speed of time == 5 seconds/second!!
Now this is what I’m feeling these days!! Time is running out so fast..

It feels like yesterday, when I was talking to ahembea “With September starting tonorrow, every deadline would be “next month!!”". I find it hard to believe that 10 days have already passed and I’ve not achieved much. I know everyone around is feeling the same.. September is perhaps the fastest disappearing month for R1 applicants. (And perhaps December the slowest, when the results take their own sweet time to appear)

Meanwhile, here’re a few highlights:

• Have got my scores sent to Ross, Tuck and Darden. Amongst my target schools, I had already sent the scores to ISB and Emory on the G-day. Will wait for Duke. (See next point.)
• Duke is confusing me. The info regarding the no-cosigner loan on their website has changed from “guaranteed loans without a US cosigner ” to ” Information about the International Student Loan is forthcoming.” What does this mean?? Are they planning to discontinue their “International Student Loan “??
  My apping to Fuqua will depend on answer to this Question. I’ve written to them, but no response yet.
  (FAQs page still confirms theavailability, but I’ll trust the finaid site more)
• Talked to my recommenders:: Had told my boss even before writing GMAT. Needed to talk to two more. One of them, an ISB grad, is a program manager in my team.. He’s a great guy to talk to!!  I discussed the feasibility and practically of B-school targets and post-MBA goals with him. He’s ready to write a reco for me and to review my essays as well!!
  Today called upp my third recomender too. She too is happy to write a reco for me. She’s my supervisor from one of my extra-curricular invovements. And since it was she. who recommended me for one of the leadership positions in the organisation, I’m sure she’ll write a gr8 reco here too.
• Transcripts:: Stll trying to get hold of a junior to get these. If anything doesn’t crystallise in next 6-7 days, I guess I’ll have to make a trip to my alma-mater myself.. That has been a dream for long, but I don’t think that I’m in a position to afford that luxury at this stage.
• Goals-essay:: First draft mostly done.. Though need to add the “Why MBA” and “WHy now” part to it in addition to “Why school X” for  each school. This is the essay that needs to undergo a reality check by a few experts. (And may need a good amount of overhaul in case I’m not specific enough.)
• Tuck essays:: Leadership essay and Constructive criticism :::: first draft done.
  Personal deadline for rest of the first drafts:: Sept 13.
• Ross essays::
  Developing outlines for “alternate career” and “most challenging time” essays.
  Personal deadline for all first drafts:: Sept 16.

Hope I’m able to stick to these deadlines. Given the shape of the drafts that I’ve ready, I know that they need a lot of polishing as of now before they can be even sent to be reviewed by some of my close friends.

BTW, if anybody gets to know anything confirmed about Duke Interational Loan, do let me know.

However, I managed to get in one more component to select schools:: the essays!! I remember somebody big (perhaps Senapati at Pagalguy) saying “Thou shalt not select schools on basis of essay Qs.” But I don’t find myself completely agreeing with this. Though selecting schools purely on basis of this would be sheer idiocy, but when confused between two equivalent schools, the essays can be used as an effective tie-breaker:: Based on your profile and experience, how answerable the schools’ Qs are or do the Qs allow you to project the best of you through your answers.  On this basis, I had eliminated MIT Sloan long back;I don’t have answers to most of their Qs..

So based on all this, here’s my (almost) final list in no particular order::

• Stanford:: All depends on Dhirubhai Fellowship. If I get selected as a finalist, Stan will be my top choice. If I don’t, I’ll drop it.
• Ross:: Loved their action-based learning.. Interesting essays, helping me to project the best of me.
• Fuqua (Duke)::  Looks very good. Need to dig more and contact a few students as well.. Qs totally changed from the last year and are quite different from other schools.
• Tuck:: Fierce alumni-loyality. Would love to be a part of such a closely-knit community. My only two concerns were:: Tuck brand in India and the rural life @ Hanover. As I dug in, the second doesn’t appear to be too negative and the first is mostly compensated for by the fact that the strength of the community matters more than mere numbers.
  Essay Qs quite answerable..
• Darden:: As mentioned above, initially I was very apprehensive about 100% case method. Am still not fully convinced about using this method for some subjects.. Still the strong curricullum and the tremendous opportunities in consulting make it too hard to ignore.
  Still waiting for the essays. (I’m expecting some changes from last year.)
• Emory::  the Pagalguy thread on current Emory students taking Qs was very useful.. I read it to the full and at the end of 4 hours, I had finalised Emory in my list.
  Essay Qs look good. (Last year’s; this year’s Qs not released yet) 
• ISB:: The one school taht has never ever left this list:: In fact, it was the only school with which the journey had started 18 months back.It’s almost sure that I’ll be applying to all the seven schools above, though I still need to divide these into R1 and R2 schools. Will try applying to minimum five schools in R1. I do think I can manage that.. Let us see how it goes.  AFAIK, All the schools above offer good program in General Management, provide loans upto costs of attendance without an cosigner and offer decent to excellent opportunities in consulting.  Blog-readers, please let me know if you locate any discrepancy here.

  In addition to above, I’m also considering HBS and Yale. But the latter is very,very selective with its small class size and the former is almost prohibitive with its exorbitant fee (I’m not expecting any schol, even if I pull-off a miracle ad get an admit). The Qs of both are very good and I’ve good answers to almost all of them.. lemme see, if I need to drop any of the above seven or if I need to expand my list for R2, then I may consider taking a chance at these two.

Right now, my list looks something like this:

So you see after applying the final filter of availaility of a no-cosignor loan upto cost of attendance to a trimmed down list (based on criteria that I’ll list in my next post) of my target schools, not many schools were left in my list.. A look at the list above and you know that I perhaps need to add more schools in my list.. That’s exactly what I felt.. And I decided to loosen some of my earlier filters to accommodate some of the good schools that fit most of my criteria along with the all-important no-cosigner one.
And here’s the list of schools that I’m exploring right now::

Am not saying that these schools r already on my list.. Have started exploring them and may be in a week max, I’d have the answers.