About MIT Sloan

I've been rummaging through various blogs and websites about MIT Sloan and these are my 2 cents about the school.

Arguably MIT is among the best engineering schools in the US and anyone looking for an MBA with a concentration in technology is bound to look at it.
Sloan has an advantage of being in the hotbed of technology innovation and with an alumni network that runs really high. But because of it's distance from the Valley, it might not provide as many opportunities as Stanford or Haas would provide.

But the advantage and also a disadvantage at MIT Sloan seems to be that Sloan is very much integrated into the MIT community. That's the reason MIT Sloan is not called just "Sloan". Being so tightly knit into MIT, people do get a feeling that it's more of graduate degree in technology than a degree in management . Likewise, there are people who feel that it's an added advantage for networking with the whole MIT community.

Another general perspective about MIT's student community is that it's not as colloquial as other schools. There' s much more competition among peers than say Kellogg or Ross. And more over , there are visitors who feel that Sloan students are not "touchy-feely" and doubt the camaraderie among fellow students.

And finally the weather, Boston's freaking-cold and anyone not used to those sub-zero temperatures (like me) might feel really irritated with the climate.

I'd like to know opinions of others too as I'm planning to apply to MIT Sloan for fall 2010.

An Idea for a change

An idea, that I wanted to spread in the blogosphere. Let me know if you like it and see if you can implement it

If all popular bloggers who don't really rely on blogging for paychecks, sign up for Google Ads and lend all that money through Kiva (www.kiva.org), it would be a great service. On one hand, you'll not loose any money as that would come back 80% of the cases, and on the other, you'll be doing a great service to the struggling entrepreneurs and micro businesses in the third world countries.

So, all the wannabe-MBA bloggers who get thousands of hits every day, just think about this. Maybe, we could ask ClearAdmit and Kiva to give "Best-of-lending-blog" awards too :)

A thing about GMAT

I've been advising a few people about how to prepare for GMAT and lately, there have been a few more asking the same questions - How to tackle GMAT? How to get a score above 700? How should I start my preparation? What should I focus on first, Quant or Verbal etc etc.
The questions range from too generic to too specific. I thought may be a few others too could get my gyan on GMAT, if it sounds convincing enough !

My answer to all the questions begins with - know the GMAT, know yourself and have a strategy.
I believe that rather than preparing for GMAT (unless you're an awesome test taker and score at least a 700 in your first mock test , unprepared !), it's always better to learn how to prepare for GMAT. It's more of unlearning what you think you know and actually learn and know what's exactly in it. Know more about the areas GMAT tests you in. Quant and Verbal are too broad too classify for the not-so good of us.

Next, knowing your weaknesses and strengths in all aspects of the GMAT lets you prepare better. For example, if you're an Indian from a good engineering school, you're already pretty good at math to score at least a 49 in GMAT Quant but Verbal section may be a big weakness. But if you consider Verbal as a whole, it is sure to give you goosebumps. So learn what you are good at. May be you're good at grammar (SC) but not at reasoning(CR) or you're good at reading (RC) but not at grammar(SC). It helps to know your pain-points so that you can tackle them more aggessively and tread more cautiously.
Let's take my case as an example. I was good at math and never faced a question that I couldn't answer given the generous time in GMAT, but I did it too fast, fast enough to ignore those finer details in Data Sufficiency and used to make atleat 5-6 mistakes in DS not that I didn't know how to but because I wasn't patient enough. So, I made it a point to go slow at the DS questions and double-check that I was right. It helped..it helped to the fact that I got a 50 in Quant away from the 47-48 I used to get earlier.

But again, it's always better to stress on the specifics - like if you're doing a mistake only in say, idiom-related questions in SC, it doesn't make sense to go through all of SC again and again and not focusing on the issue at hand. So get to the specifics and note them down

So know your weaknesses but how do you tackle them?
That's where planning and strategy comes in. Having a strategy doesn't mean how many hours a day, or how much study material you covered. It's about how you're doing to overcome your specific weakness - what are the steps you need to take to actually overcome them. For example, I knew that inference questions in RC was a weak point of mine, which ask us for an answer based on an excerpt in the essay. So I made of note like this - "Process of Elimination may not work for Inference Qs. Don’t just read the paragraph again from where the inference is drawn from. Read all information related to that subject (might be in different paragraphs and with different names) make points and check with answers." or something like this in CR - "Correct Answers do not deviate from conclusion - Eliminate anything that deviates from conclusion. This made it easier for me to tackle the specifics and not beat around the bush wondering why Iam not good at RC or CR.

So, follow these,make note of your progress, and you won't need to add a mystifying aura to GMAT :) Hope this long long post helps !

Essays and Deadlines are out

I guess Iam probably late in announcing this in the blogosphere but still here I go - essays and deadlines are out for Kellogg, MIT Sloan, Wharton, HBS and Stanford.

I may not be applying to any of the above except Kellogg, my dream school, only next to INSEAD. I went through the essays a few days back and also prepared outlines for them, it's all about giving them a shape now(which, of course, is the difficult part and will take me atleast a month to do so).

You could check some detailed analysis about the essays here. I you ask me, there isn't anything surprising about Kellogg's essays. They're the same as the essays of earlier years but as always they do reflect upon Kellogg's reputation for looking at leadership and collaboration, both inside and outside of your professional life.

So good luck and god speed !

Kellogg Information Session - Chennai

UPDATE : The date has been confirmed as 11th July between 6-8 pm . Please refer to the following link for more information reg the event - http://www.kellogg. northwestern. edu/Programs/ FullTimeMBA/ Admissions_ Events/Off_ Campus_Events. aspx


If there are any Indian MBA aspirants around and luckily land on my blog, please do note that there's a Kellogg Information Session in Chennai on July 04 (tentative date). If you're interested, send a mail across to Karthik Raman (ramankarthik@gmail.com) , Kellogg '09, with your confirmation.

Good luck !!



PS : Pls leave a comment on my blog if you're attending too, we could meet up during the session

Should I or shouldn't I

As is my habit, I've been procrastinating after I dumped the idea of applying to bschool last year and lo ! , this year's application process in on the cards already. The only thought that shot through all my nerves was - "God damn it, will I ever apply to b-school?" and still I can't decide if I want to.

On one hand, it seems to be the right time, and on the other, it doesn't seem to be.
I am the co-founder and a CTO of a tech startup, which is sustaining itself, although I can't say it's profitable. I am in a position where I know that an MBA would definitely take me to the next level, but I am worried about the business at hand. Will I be able to concentrate as much once I start the apping process? Will I be able to contribute if at all I go into a b-school? What if it's a 2-yr MBA, do I have to leave MY company?

I don't know how entrepreneurs decide when it's time for an MBA. Do I need to find a replacement for myself (I mean, can I trust someone to be my replacement, do the things I do the same way I wanted them to be done). Aah.. I definitely need some counselling here.

Ghost Twitterers

I was always skeptical about the use of Twitter by celebrities. Countless blogs and news articles opined about the use of twitter as a tool to bring people more closer than any other social networking site., how you can follow famous people without intruding space and get insights into their ideas and philosophy

But wait a minute, are you really following the celebrity you thought you were following. Chances are that you might not. Apparently, celebrities are employing people for tweeting on their behalf, a third-person to keep their Twitter page live(just like they did with the other social networkig sites) in a new marketing job position that sprung up, what is being termed as a "Ghost Twitterer". Check the article in NYTimes here that dwelves into the issue.

Now this is fine for getting updates about a celebrity's schedules and latest news. But definitely NOT for getting an insight into their thoughts and ideas because they aren't the real person's but a third-person's who tweets just what she interprets and not what she thinks.
I don't see a point in following such ghost twitterers who just tweets continuosly. All she would want is post interesting articles that get re-tweeted and thus increase the followers' numbers and consequently, the popularity.
Twitter has been very careful about spammers and fakes and has been deleting their profiles quite often but can they do anything about this. Definitely not I guess.

So, it's upto you to follow the "celebrity" whose tweets arent always his/her own thoughts