The Visa Experience...

I got done with my visa interview and appointment on the 20th of June, 2008. It was definitely a unique experience. Imagine a nail biting 5 hour wait doing nothing but imagine and think of all the possible paths the interview can take and have a 15 second interview, which essentially just consisted of exchanging pleasantries =D, and being granted a visa. I guess given the amount of time to think, you must be surprised that I didn't think of it =P!

Anyway, I got the chance to see people getting grilled at the visa counter, so here's some free advice.

If you would have gone to many "overseas-studies consultants", they would have dumped you with tons of documents, and asked you for a lot of money.. Well, mine did and they were absolutely useless. They made me take the following documents

1. Affidavit of Support: A document that was notarized by a practicing attorney employed with the Government of the state in which you are residing stating that the sponsor would be supporting you in all your finances abroad.
2. CA Summary of Financial Holdings: I paid INR 5000 apart from what I paid the consultant (INR 7000). This was considered apposite by the consultant. It provided a summary of all the financial resources you are using to prove to the US Consulate that you can finish your studies in the USA.

Packing all your original marksheets, your X, XII certificates, originals of all the communication with the college, the financial resources proofs, and the aforementioned documents, you would have a Mahabharatha in your hand by the time you reach the consulate.

Now, there's a concept within the US Consulate called the "Pre Registration", where in an embassy representative asks for the following documents

1. DS forms
2. Original HDFC Bank Receipt
3. Original SEVIS Receipt
4. Your GMAT&TOEFL scores
4. Original Degree certificate
5. Passport

According the consul officer who has been issuing visas for the past 17 years in over 40 countries, this Mahabharatha is NOT going to help your cause.

According to him, the visa officer makes up his/her mind within the first 20 seconds of the interview. The only thing that is going to help you is your first impression. So, here's the tip

1. Smile and say Hello/Hi (DITCH THE VARIOUS OTHER SALUTATIONS LIKE MA'AM or SIR VISA CONSUL OFFICER and other crap)
2. Give your documents, where it says you should put it
3. DO NOT PUT ANYTHING ELSE INTO THE PRE-REGISTRATION FOLDER other than what the first embassy officer decided to put in. (They have grounds to reject your visa as you tried to commit fraud by adding/subtracting any documents to/from the pre-registration folder)
4. It is OK to be nervous. Many people offer advice that you should be confident and answer them. Great!! But when you are telling a lie / trying to pass off as someone you are not, then you are going to muddle up and the visa officer is trained to catch on to such signs of weaknesses, so IT'S OK TO BE NERVOUS!!
5. The important thing is that you give only what you have, do not try and commit any form of fraud, as they may issue a visa, but have you arrested as soon as you reach the USA. Then you just get mothered =P!

Anyway, that's all from my observations, which I did aplenty while I was waiting for 5 hours @ the Embassy in Chennai. My passport should be given back to the VFS guys in the evening on Monday. I hope to get it back in the next couple of days

The Ultimate GMAT Guide - References

After a bit of time, here is a single link that will contain all the reference materials I used for preparing for the GMAT

It's an esnips account, and you may require an account to download it.

There are 4 self-explanatory zip files that you can download, unzip and use. Please note: I am not sure of the copyright of these things. So, please be discrete!! =D!

I might take these down at any point, if I receive a subpoena *looking here and there*

GMAT Reference Material

Preparations for B-school - Part 2 - Software - Note-taking

This is Part 2 of an ongoing series of articles - Preparations for B-School. Click to see Part 1 of the series...

Software
Your B-school education requires you to be on top of your studies, your activities and have a complete picture of what's happening around you all the time. To aid you in these tasks, there are a few software packages, both desktop and in the cloud that can aid you in this process. Today I will be concentrating on Note-taking software.

Why note-taking software?
During school times, one ingrained habit that was followed without much thought was note-taking. Students usually used a notebook for each subject. Of course in the Indian system of education, you had a myriad of notebooks to struggle through
Class notebook
Rough notebook
Assignment notebook
Project notebook
and this was for each of the subjects.

While this was a cumbersome process, it _did_ help organize the content of the class.

The premise behind note-taking software is the same as well. It's a two-fold objective -
a. Serve as a receptacle (a source and a sink if you will) for all the things you need to have for future reference
b. Help you organize the various bits of information so that retrieval would be easy

While you are more than welcome to carry notebooks to organize this thought process, I personally believe that it's redundant as you will be carrying your laptop wherever you go during the various activities. It's lighter on your back-pack and serves as a single point of reference for all your activities.

Personal note: I am organization freak and want the information that I have stored in my fingertips. Consequently, I have tried and tested most of the note-taking software that's available for the Windows, Linux and Mac platform.

Things to consider
As different people want different things from their note-taking software, I will try and keep this as generic as possible. Depending on your needs and my listing of pros-and-cons of the software packages, you might be able to hazard a useful guess =)!

1. The note-taking software should be light on the system: Over the course of 12-24 months, the amount of information you gather will be humongous. Typically note-taking software save the information in their own formats (could be text/binary). Now, this information needs to be loaded and processed every time you run the application. Consequently, the application must preferably keep it in the text format and be fast in loading the information, processing it and be light on the system resources while doing so!
2. The information should be organized easily: As the information increases, the user will typically be forced to bring in an organization method for referencing the information in the future. The application must provide taxonomic methods of organizing the information - tags. It should also preferably be indexable by various desktop searching methods (Windows Desktop Search / Google Desktop Search / Spotlight / Beagle) etc.
3. There must be an easy way to sync the information: The notes that I am taking down should be easily synced across various platforms - Windows / OS X / Linux / hand-held devices / internet. Only this would truly allow me to obtain my information anytime, anywhere.
4. It should handle various types of information: There will be various types of information that I will throwing at the application - serial numbers, passwords, web-urls, pictures, snaps, and the likes. The data should not only be seamlessly organized, it would be preferable if it will be able to store it properly as well

The Contenders
Let's have a look at the contenders. Taking into consideration my requirements and the packages that I have tested, here are the major contenders with platform information

1. Evernote (Windows/Mac/Handheld(soon)/Cloud)
2. Yojimbo (Mac)
3. Microsoft OneNote(Windows)

Now, let's evaluate each of them

1. Evernote Platforms - Windows, Mac, Handheld, Cloud (Internet)
One of the strongest note-taking / personal information holding package that I have seen. Instead of providing a review here, what I will do is give you a quick and dirty glance of its pros and cons and provide links to the reviews as footnotes!

Pros:
+ Multi platform
+ Can store images as well as text
+ Has a very user-friendly Clipper functionality
+ Synchronizes with the cloud - so the information is truly available anytime anywhere
+ Has the image-text recognition capability, which is phenomenally useful!

Cons:
- It's still in Beta (and has some associated bugs)
- The minute it goes out of Beta, it could move into a paid platform
- Tags (if used excessively) can be hell to manage
- No dedicated types - Serial Numbers, Passwords, etc
- Limited number of beta invites
- No way to index the information (only way to search is via the application)
- Cannot handle .pdfs, .docs, and such information types

Update (2008-May-12): With the latest version of Evernote (1.1.0) you can manage .pdfs as notes. Furthermore, Spotlight also indexes all the note contents!! (Yay!! This rocks)!!

2. Yojimbo Platforms - Mac only
This was the be-all end-all application for information management prior to Evernote days. Furthermore, this does a beautiful job with the interface which allows intuitive running of the application and makes the usage a pleasure. What Yojimbo lacks in functionality from Evernote, is the image recognition capability. However, it more than makes up for that with its robust quality and integration with the Operating System!!

Pros:
+ Amazing integration with OS X and applications
+ Synchronization with iCal, Mail, iTunes etc
+ Intuitive, easy to use interface
+ Dedicated types of information - Serial Numbers, URLs, Images etc..
+ Amazing range of information data types - You can throw anything at it and it will store it
+ Indexable content - Spotlight can be used to search for the information stored in Yojimbo

Cons:
- No Image recognition system
- No true Windows application so there's a platform lock-in
- No synchronization mechanism other than .Mac
- $39 for a single user, $69 for 5 users

3. Microsoft OneNote Platforms - Windows Only
Part of the Office suite, Microsoft OneNote is a very professional note-taking application. It stores the notes in its proprietary format, which is non-indexable. However, it has a very rich feature-set, and a very professional interface (albeit Microsoft(y)).

Pros:
+ Uses a traditional 3-ring binder approach
+ Can take a wide variety of rich information to make up a note - text, graphics, web-pages, audio, video etc
+ Has this ability to attach scribbles to main notes (via side-notes and labels feature)
+ This is more of a note-taking application and less of an information management tool
+ Powerful sharing features in the Office eco-system

Cons:
- A copy of OneNote costs somewhere south of $100.
- Windows only
- No presence in the cloud (Have to confirm with the Live Workspace / Mesh tho)
- Not indexable

My Take
I prefer Evernote to any other note-taking / information management software as of now because of the powerful synchronization capabilities and the slowly maturing feature-set. However, I would love it if the clients for Evernote were a bit more robust and they continue to maintain it as a freeware.

Do you have any other note-taking software which you use in class? If so, please feel free to share the information in the comments!

More software packages will be analyzed in Part 3 of Preparations for B-school

Preparations for B-school - Part 1 - Specialization, Resume, and Hardware

There are quite a few things that one needs to consider when one prepares to embark on a B-school journey. It's usually a 12-month to 24 month period of intense activity. The activities furthermore are varied and have different impacts on your life and career at the end of your education (experience ;-) ). Anyway, here are a few thoughts that I have been mulling over..

Your major / specialization
This forms a crucial part of what you will be doing in your time at the school. It's best that you are aware of the various options and the opportunities / career paths that it provides. It also determines your experience at the B-school. For e.g. a major in Consulting would also demand that you attend workshops / activities specific to the specialization. It determines the networking that you would try and put in place during your time at B-school apart from garnering as much information as possible from your professors and recruiters during career fairs etc.

Suggestions:
Read about each of the specialization your B-School provides.
Typically, your college would also provide you access to the various groups that are related to that specialization mentioning the various activities that they usually indulge in.
Vault Guides: Read about the career opportunities and the nuances of each type of career from these amazing guides. Don't forget to check out the companies who would think of hiring you and the life within that company as well. Your school would typically provide you a special code to access these guides (else you have to pay to access them legally)

Revamp your resume
The Career Management Centre (or equivalent) of your b-school is your sanctum-sanctorum for your career after your education. So, make sure you contact them ahead of time. They would need your latest resume and an idea of what you want to do after your education. So, make sure you reformat your resume to their specifications. Furthermore, also read up as to what all they want and be prepared with the necessary information.

For e.g. I have been a techie and have ~36 months of technical experience. Now, I have to formulate it with a business flare and furthermore, implement some very important tips I recently read
- Use active language
- Give specifics and activities you did than a general outline of what you did

Your IT infrastructure - Hardware
Every B-school today demands that you have a laptop and required paraphernalia which will aid your education. Now, the hardware part of it one part of it. Rahul Gaitonde has an interesting piece on the various hardware devices which would render themselves useful during your period @ a B-school and beyond here. I have a few additional information.

For the Mac enthusiasts: If you are a Mac hardware enthusiast like me, you would often find yourselves at ends with what the IT department of your B-school would usually provide you aid with. If you are not capable of solving problems yourself (with/without the aid of the net), then as much as possible, be in line with what the B-school suggests you do.

Operating System: Typically all B-schools suggest that you have a Windows version (2000/XP/Visa) as your main Operating System. Before I say what I say next, let me say that I work on both Windows machines (at work) and Linux (as an enthusiast) and OS X (as an owner of Mac hardware). If you don't understand how to get things done on your own, please install a copy of Windows visa Bootcamp.

The IT department usually have valid reasons to suggest this. Apart from the support deal they would have with the bulk-deal vendor on-campus, there may be OS specific software required as part of your course that you _have_ to run. So, unless you want to depend on the computer lab machines, install the required OS (or at least have virtualization software).

Now, for all practical purposes, you can run Windows under OS X using Virtualization software like Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion 2.0, without any serious conflicts. Else you always have the option of running Windows under Bootcamp. (I personally use Parallels as I have a license for it, but have heard some really rave reviews about VM Ware Fusion as well). My suggestion - try all 3 and use the one you are most comfortable with!!

Software: There are some more aspects I would like to discuss specific to software packages which will make your life a bit easier while going through the B-school. Please find the post soon as Part 2 of this series.

How to: Choose the right set of schools to apply to

The decision to opt for a graduate business school is a life-changing decision. The choice essentially moulds your life after graduation, and unless you want to spend the gargantuan amount of money all over again, you better have made that decision after some thought, unless you are adventurous!

There are many aspects to an MBA that you need to consider. For e.g. there are some basic questions that you _just_ have to have a compelling and honest answer for!

1. Why are you pursuing your MBA?
2. Why do you want to do your MBA now?
3. Is there are any area of specialization that you want to pursue?

We can further complicate / move down the ladder once we have the basics cleared.

Furthermore, answering these questions will help you narrow down your choices from the plethora of business schools that are there in the market. They also help you write some of the cliched questions that are asked by the MBA institutes. :D

Rankings
There are many ranking institutions that regularly rank all the MBA schools based on many criteria. You have
- Financial Times
- US MBA rankings
- Business week rankings

There are many more ranking systems as well. From what I have observed though, there are typically the high-fliers, prestigious graduate business schools of the likes of Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, London School of Business, INSEAD etc that always top the charts.

My take is that while these rankings definitely help in choosing the colleges, you shouldn't rely _just_ on them. For e.g. these are all rankings based on various factors! They are pertinent factors, however, they cannot be the only factors as far as choosing the colleges go.

They are not beyond propaganda and are not completely impartial. You should also talk to the admissions committee of each college, interact with the students there and only then make up your decision.

For e.g. the college that I chose - Thunderbird School of Global Management, which I will be attending from Fall 2008, is not ranked high in these rankings. However, it's ranked _the_ best college for International Management. Furthermore, talking to the students and the AdComm, was a completely different experience as compared to various other top institutes including Duke, Darden and a few more. The warmth of response was something that I was looking for and I found that in Thunderbird.

Similarly, you may have a region choice, a major choice, even a paper choice, let alone recruitment choices, international exposure, languages etc! Consequently utilize the rankings to check up on the colleges and then make conscious efforts to talk to the colleges to see if you are indeed a fit there.

I call it the 3-step-process
1. Decide on the area of study
2. Go through the rankings
3. Talk to the colleges you have chosen based on your preferences and then apply!

It saves you a lot of time later when deciding between colleges and furthermore helps you present an honest and earnest file to the Admissions Committee of the various colleges!

Share your thoughts on the process and how *you* chose your graduate business school or how you are going about doing it! And check out later posts on "Deciding on the various offers from Graduate Business Schools"!

My Story

My decision to pursue an MBA may be slightly off the normal distribution. I have been a techie all my life. I pursued my Bachelor's in Computer Science and Engineering owing to my passion to learn more about the high-technology world, especially the computing industry. As in India, I decided to follow the role of a "software-developer" with an international firm, developing medical-imaging products. They are one of the 2 biggest players in that segment. I worked as an IT-consultant/developer to develop 2 major products for them. A year into my work, I was hired as a consultant to develop a new product in Germany. The year in Germany allowed me to glimpse and taste the bigger picture.

I had a few realizations:
1. I loved technology from a wholesome perspective - i.e. not just the specific development of software products, but also visualizing and developing new products, analyzing the market, estimate the time lines, target the time-to-market and all the related efforts.
2. I had a strong analytics - I had always been good at Math. But more than crunching numbers, I was good at understanding the crux of the situation, the gist of a problem and tackle it!! It could be a 1000 line C++ code, or a multi page Physics derivation, or the balance sheet of a company, I would be able to analyze it!
3. I had good people-skills: I could interact with a variety of people and be comfortable with them and make them comfy as well. More importantly, I genuinely enjoyed conversing with people!
4. I had already been marked as a star within my company having the potential and capability to lead teams and interact with global customers. This was one of the major reasons that I was chosen as a representative for the assignment in Germany, despite being the youngest member of the team, both in age and experience.

Now, this got me thinking if I am eventually going to end up in management, I want it to be done right and with the right backing. This got me started thinking of a graduate degree. I was still presented with 2 options - I could specialize in the domain that I was working - medical imaging / broader bio-medical engineering - which would be an MS degree or go gung-ho into management by pursuing an MBA.

Deciding between the two was one of the longest time I have had to brood in my life over various options. What it finally boiled down to was if I wanted to continue to contribute as a technical-consultant or as a management-consultant.

Another realization that I had during the course of my work was that I loved variety in my challenges/life/work. Sticking to one thing tends to be too monotonous for me. So, what I was looking forward to was also a variety of challenges, and the world of medical imaging was a tad too slow-paced for my liking. Mind you, I love the work that I did/do, it's just that this is the age where in I have the energy to expend into challenging and dynamic situations :P!

So, all these put together really pushed me towards an MBA.

GMAT: The first step to a graduate management degree.

Over the course of the next few days, I would be describing the steps involved in pursuing a graduate management degree, well at the least the steps that I took to grab an admit with 50% tuition waiver @ Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Please note that this is in retrospection and these must be considered as journal notes and is to be considered neither the _only_ way nor the _best_ way, but merely a way. However the mistakes that I have made must and should be avoided as much as possible!!

GMAT: The first frontier

The first step to a graduate management degree is the GMAT Test. The Graduate Management Aptitude Test is a computer adaptive standardized test. There are a lot of details explained various GMAT resources. To save redundancy in information, I will just link up to those resources in my list of links and utilize the space for giving my perspective/gyaan on how to tackle the GMAT and what are the mistakes that you don't want to do!

All in all, it took me 14 days of moderate preparation to take my GMAT. Now, that's not something that people advice to do. In fact, my own advice is in consensus with the mass that if you are aiming for a score of 750 and above (and yes, the GMAT score has some good results associated with it), please do consider investing at least 30+ days of rigorous and meticulous preparation. Unfortunately, my objective was to cross the 700 mark. Furthermore, I just did not have the time or energy to invest in preparing for GMAT as work took precedence.

Setting a target GMAT score!
Every school has their average GMAT score. It's important that we realize the GMAT score of the schools we want to apply to. Now, it goes without saying that schools are not going to reject you because you have an abnormally high GMAT score (as compared to their average/median). So, apart from the minimum score demanded by the college, make sure you can do your best.

The target GMAT score is dependent on many factors. It includes, your work experience, your international exposure, your GPA during your undergrad and many other factors. For e.g. the required GMAT score of a 10 year old industry veteran would be lower than the required GMAT score of a fresher off undergrad.

Resources for GMAT!
There are many resources available for preparation. The GMAT essentially tests 3 things -
1. Your quantitative analytical ability
2. Your verbal analytical ability
3. Your analytical writing ability

You would have noticed that the key term here is "analytical ability". There are tons of resources available that help you in your preparation, however the first thing to cracking the GMAT is that you need to improve your analytical ability. Once you are familiar with the various patterns, cracking the GMAT is a simple thing.

Now, make sure that while you go through these resources, you are concentrating on the larger picture of improving your analytical ability. GMAT question patterns are set and the way to crack it is to get to the mind of the person who set that question. What _are_ they trying to get me to understand.

Make sure you come back soon to my follow-up post containing links to some resources that I have gathered over the past year!