First off, hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving break. Second, can you believe that it’s already the last month of the year! The way time flies never ceases to amaze me.
So I’ve spent the last week rewriting and rewriting my essays some more. A friend of mine gave me lots of good pointers on how to improve my essays. A lot of my flaws centered around not being succinct and concrete in my words. I attempted to cover way too much ground using vague language which really didn’t say much. For example, I want to take part in a study abroad trip so to express that interest, I threw in a sentence in an essay stating that. The problem is I didn’t tie in that interest into a reason as to why I want to go on a study abroad trip.
Having someone else look over your essays is absolutely critical. I wish I had done it earlier, but I wanted to get my essays right before sending them off. Turns out, if I had someone else look at it sooner, I would have probably spent Thanksgiving enjoying my turkey a little bit more.
Right now I’m sitting in my hotel room in Nashville 10-I-C (har har!). I took the red eye out of ONT Monday night, which proved to be quite a painful experience eye yet again. Maybe my ass is too scrawny or the seats on Continental are cut from grass, but the flight was very uncomfortable. I managed to catch some Z’s, but woke up frequently to adjust my sitting position so my ass didn’t go numb. There were also one too many babies on board. They cry every time we land, probably due to the changing air pressure causing pain in their ears. Solution: benadryl or overhead compartment.
Tomorrow is the campus visit to Owen. I took a brief walk-through campus. It’s very small, probably about the size of USC. It’s a very old campus, although the Owen building looks to be very modern. I walked through the building and found a lot of students standing around, studying, talking, doing group work, and mingling. I probably looked a bit suspicious and out of place in my jeans and beanie, walking around trying to random doors and reading stuff on the wall.
I mentioned before that there’s an interview as part of the visit. To prepare, I’ve looked for stuff online and found a bunch of reviews on www.accepted.com regarding other people’s interview experience with Owen. I’ve also been reading through a lot of the school’s online material and view book. There were a couple of brochures that I found while walking through Owen so I’m going to be looking through that material once I’m done here. On a scale of 1-10 for being prepared, I’d say I’m @ a 4.5. Supposedly the interview is very relaxed and straight forward so I’m not too worried, I just need to be better prepared so I don’t sound a stumbling fool.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I went to a USC MBA.PM session down in OC. The presentation was exactly the same as the one I went to in LA in 07. USC has a very strong network, access to a lot of C-level execs, faculty that brings cutting edge research to the classroom, student body is very tight, GLOBE experience is great, etc. I think the presentation was enough to convince me that I should apply, JIC. I’d rather have more options than be limited.