The two key takeaways from that weekend, and the factors that ultimately swayed me to choose Owen, were the general sense of enthusiasm from the prospective students about going to Owen and the number of alumni that I met that spoke passionately, as one would expect, about Owen. It was quality and quantity.

We know where I’m going now, but coming away from that event, I was still conflicted about which school to choose. It came down to Smith VS Owen and it took almost two months of debating, consulting with friends, deep introspection, and over analyzing the situation for me to finally decide which school to attend.

If I recall correctly, my mind was made up about which school I was going to attend somewhere in Bali. It took me about a week  to make it official vis a vis sending  the “rejection” letter to Smith. Ha, I remember sending the letter off while sitting at an internet cafe in KL, Malaysia. I didn’t think deciding on a school would be that difficult but it was.

So what now. Well, I have about four weeks of summer vacation left during which time I need to run down a bunch of pre-school assignments including: financial aid stuff, immunization, quant review homework, resume work, and career/leadership tests. There’s also a bunch of logistical things such as planning out my road trip to Nashville, finding a place to live, utilities, furniture etc. I’m sure I’m missing something in between, but what I’ve got listed has kept me busy since returning to the states.

Exciting times ahead. I can’t wait to get to Nashville!

A bit of luck, a lot of work, and too many lost strands of hair brings the final tally to (listed in order of acceptance):

UMD Smith – In + GA.
Vandy Owen – In.
MSU Broad – In + very generous GA + scholarship.

Needless to say, I’m very happy about the results and couldn’t be more humbled and flattered.

So what now? Well, first I want to thank everyone who had a hand in my app (that sounds dirty), even you peeps who left a comment on this blog. Second, after evaluating my options and revisiting my goals, I’ve come to the conclusion that I will be committing to….. The answer to come @ the end of the week. I know, I know. What a tease. I’ve got some loose ends to tie up first but I’m sure those that know me can probably guess where I’ll be going this fall.

Now that the door to the app season is nearly closed, I’m going to be debriefing my thoughts and takes on applying to bschool in the next couple of weeks/months. Hopefully the process will purge my brain and make room for school. If any of my takes helps someone who stumbles across this blog, all the better. Stay tuned!

Coming back to my desk after checking out a piece of equipment at work, the last thing I was thinking about was my admission decision from Smith. When my Storm alerted me about a new email, I thought that I might have received another junk email from Patagonia telling me about the Winterfest sale. When I saw that it was from UMD, my mind went blank for a second. My excitement mounted with every sentence that I read until I got to the part that said, “Your’e in”.

Needless to say, I was ecstatic. The first thing that I did was email my gf about the news. The second thing that I did was ponder whether I should send a thank you letter to the admin folks and follow it up with a question about graduate assistantship. My attention returned to work however because I had to leave work earlier to take my sister to the airport.

When my Storm went off again, I was once again surprised that the email was from Smith. This time, the email was about an offer for graduate assistantship. At that moment, I got out of my chair and did some fist pumps.

So what now. I’m still waiting for the Owen and Broad decisions to roll in and I want to see what the offer is before I make a final decision. Meanwhile, I’m going to be making plans to attend the Admitted Student Weekend event @ Smith which is scheduled for March 5-6th. And with one admit on the books, I’m going to start looking into an exit plan for work and a plan for how to spend my time after leaving work.

Today was a good day. Things lined up just perfectly. Hell, I even scored a pair of shoes that was 50% off at Patagonia. Score!

The decision has been gnawing at me all week but I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping my anxiety in check. Every message that I received on my BB today made my heart skip a little. As it got closer to COB EST, I had almost forgotten about it all until 1:30 when I got an email from UMD.

Time stood still for split second as I read the email. Long story short, I’ve been recommended for admission to Smith BUT my app has to be reviewed and approved first by the Graduate School (the dept that oversees all graduate programs) because my undergraduate GPA isn’t so hot.

So what does this mean? It means that I get to wait a couple of more weeks as I await a formal decision. All signals are a go and I’m just waiting for a clearance. At least I know I’m in the pipeline which is better than being waitlisted and 100X better than getting a ding.

• The interview was at 9:30 am. EST. This meant that I had to wake up at 5:45 to clear my cobwebs and scratchy morning voice to ready myself for the interview at 6:30 PST. Knowing that my brain is not fully functional that early in the morning, I should have scheduled an interview that was later in the day (although I don’t recall there being any). Instead, I was piecing together my answers as I stumbled through the interview.

  Lesson Learned: Avoid early morning interviews or scheduling an interview as the first event of the day.

• The interview was over the phone. Having visited Broad in November, I didn’t want to drop more cash on another trip to East Lansing. Moreover, getting out of work right now is highly frowned upon by the bosses. But if my last phone interview from several years back was an indication of how I would do today, I should have ponied up the dough and flown out to MSU. I’ve never liked phone interviews because I can’t see who I’m talking to and I can’t play off of their physical reactions. More simply, however, I just don’t like talking on the phone but I thought I could pull it off.

  Lesson Learned: Avoid phone interviews.

• They say that the last interview is your best because by then you’ve already honed your answers to a fine edge. I think I bought too much into that line of thought and underestimated the amount of practice I needed. Needless to say, I was more like a dull knife than a Ginsu.

  Lesson Learned: Practice. Practice. And then practice some more. Did someone say practice?

What happened this morning was a disappointing way to close out the last thing I had to do for my apps. But as my mom would say, “What happened has happened so move on and learn from it”. Now it’s just a waiting game. Tick-Tock. Tick-Tock.

It’s been a while since I last posted an update on my bschool app process. The reason for the long layoff is that I’m quite burned out from thinking about bschool. I knew going into the app season that it would be a long and arduous road. All the introspecting, studying, writing, doubting, re-writing and pondering has left me wanting to take a break from it all. And I only applied to three schools (so far).

Thankfully I’m at the tail end of the entire app process. I’m completely done with Owen and Smith and only have the interview with Broad left. After that, I’ll just be sitting around, crossing my fingers, pulling my hair out as I wait for my decisions to roll in .

Interview with Smith

On Tuesday, I had my interview with Smith at the Palomar Hotel in Westwood. With all the biblical amounts of rain that was coming down this week, I left work about two hours before the interview to avoid being stuck in traffic. 405 + rush hour + rain = disaster. The extra precaution, however, wasn’t necessary because it seemed like god was looking out for me that day. The sun actually came out for the 15 minute drive from my apt to Westwood. And the most amazing part: there was absolutely NO TRAFFIC. I ended up getting to the hotel about an hour early. Thank you God.

My interview was with Sam Kang. I spoke to him a couple of times via email regarding questions about the school and about California (he went to UCB, UCD, worked at Stanford and UCI). Since I was early and he wasn’t doing anything, we started the interview ahead of schedule. I’m not going to go into the details of the interview because I don’t want to jinx anything, but I came out of the interview feeling good about my chances at Smith. I’d say 40% of the questions were the typical MBA interview questions. About 20% of the questions were questions that I had read about from  Accepted and pagalguy. The remainder of the questions were team based questions. Thankfully I had enough stories to use because there were a lot of those types of questions.  I guess that is just a reflection of Smith’s team based culture.

I’m eventually going to do a lessons learned post after all this is done, but here’s a preview of a nugget that helped me out during the interview: research the hell out of the school you are applying to. This includes visiting the school, scouring the schools website, and talking to the students. During my interview, I was able to talk about things that really connected with my interviewer. Concrete example later.

Next Up

After Tuesday, it felt weird that I had nothing bschool related to do. It seems like a lot of other applicants  are going through some form of bschool application withdrawal and rediscovering their normal lives. It’s nice not having to study or write essays but I’ve got to find something to do. Right now I’ve been filling my time with playing Uncharted on the PS3 and cracking open TL’s dusty business books. Whatever happens with my decisions from school, ultimately I’ve got to find the next big challenge to occupy my time. Until then, it’s all about finding Drake’s treasure and reading about market analysis.

For 2010, it all depends on what happens in the next three months. My admission decisions to Smith, Owen, and Broad will basically determine which fork in the road I take, business school or what-next. I know which path I want to take, but it’s not up to me once my apps are submitted.

The common thread between both path is that they’re both uncertain, even the business school path. Although I know in general what to expect, there’s still a lot of unknowns. What is of greater concern is what happens if I don’t get into bschool this year. I still haven’t figured out a solid plan B yet. I tell myself, “One thing at a time. Get through your essays and interviews first, then wait for your decisions, then figure out what to do next”. Sound self-advice, but I want to be ahead of the game here because I dislike sitting idle when it comes to my career.

All I can say for certain is that the next two to three months will be very antsy times. I’m going to try and take my mind off of what might happen by throwing myself at mt biking, reading, traveling and maybe rock climbing/mountaineering.

Weather.com had forecasted rain in the afternoon on the day of my visit, but mother nature pre-empted the exact science of meteorology and poured on the rain in the morning. I wasn’t sure about the dress code for these types of events, but given that I was going in for an interview as part of the visit, I thought I’d put on the nice stuff. I broke out the new blue suit and put it through the ringer as I walked across the street in the rain to MCD for breakfast. I showed up to Owen about 15 minutes early and met this nice Japanese applicant waiting in the lounge area. We chatted it up like we were old friends. He (I forgot my friend’s name already) flew out of Japan and visited a couple of other east coast schools before visiting Owen. I also found out from him that he had just finished his interview so I got the juice on how the interview went down for him.

My student host, Brian, came by the office to pick me up for the marketing class he was attending. As it turns out, Brian was from LA too. I wonder if the school paired him with me based on where we were from. Hm…. Anyways, marketing class was fun. The class was probably 30-40 people large. I liked how interactive the class was; there was a definite sense of energy throughout the class. The professor was entertaining as well which made time pass by more quickly.

After class, I headed down for my interview. During class, I was going over the interview questions that my Japanese friend had clued me in on so I felt ready albeit still nervous as hell. I was interviewed by one of the associate directors of admission. After asking me some stat questions (ie GPA/GMAT), we broke into the real questions. Most of the questions were pretty standard. Why MBA. What skills from work will you be able to use at Owen. What make you unique from applicants with similar profiles. Describe a situation where you had to deal with a difficult teammate. Talk about an international experience you had at work/school. There were a couple of other ones that I don’t recall now. My interviewer scribbled a bunch of notes during the entire process and responded with “uh-huh”‘s and “excellent”‘s, so I’m not really sure how I did. I felt like I was able to represent myself pretty well in most of my answers and express how I “fit” in @ Owen. The “unique” question was the only question that I hadn’t prepared for, but I was able to give an answer, after some thought, that connected with the interviewer.

I had about an hour to kill after the interview so I walked around campus. Vanderbilt seems to almost the same size as USC. Most of the buildings look ancient, but thankfully the business school building is very modern. One of the owenbloggers commented how Nashville isn’t a hotbed of diversity. I can attest that his statement is true. There were a couple of international students, but for the most part, most of the students that I saw were white. The med school has a really big presence on campus and is leveraged by Owen for its healthcare concentration. Since I started off my career in the healthcare industry, it’s something that I’d consider going back into.

Brian and I had lunch at the Oak Room (I forgot the real name of the place). I asked him a lot of questions regarding his experience with his application, school, curriculum, clubs, etc. Some of the things he kept reiterating was how insanely busy he has been since school started, how the team work aspect of Owen is really important, and how everyone is very willing to help each other. He also mentioned how Nashville, and the south in general, is still influenced by its racially segregated past. He said that even he gets some weird looks from the locals when he goes out even though he’s white. He surmises that it’s due to his wild mane of hair. Am I concerned about this? Not too much. Growing up in LA, it’s usually hard to be considered the minority when you’re asian. It’ll be an interesting experience, good or bad, to go to a place like Nashville and really be in the minority. I guess the new and different factor of the experience appeals to me too. Brian also revealed that drinking plays a part in the MBA experience. Apparently Owen donates free beer kegs for events such as football tailgates and Thursday night mixers. These events are a great way to mingle, network, and blow off some steam after a long week of studying. That’s great and all, but he had me at free beer.

By the time we were finished with lunch and had walked back to Owen, I was tapped out of questions. I thanked Brian for being a most gracious host. The last event of the day was a meeting with the Career Management Center. I sat with a couple of other Owen hopefuls and listened to one of the career advisers talk to us about what the CMC does. I asked a couple of questions and found out that Owen and CMU Tepper have a joint west coast tech fair program for students interested in joining tech companies, the internship hunt doesn’t get into full swing until the end of the first semester, and that the CMC is going to evaluate our apps based on how realistic our future goals are. I could have asked some more questions, but I needed to rush the airport to get back home.

So what now. Maybe because I’m easily influenced, but Owen went up a couple of notches in my book. I’m still not sure where it stands between my other choices but it’s safe to say that if I had a choose a school now, it would be really tough. Rather then ponder about situations like that, I need to get back to business and finish off the apps. Time to get crackin!

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.

My recommenders are also (slowly) finishing up their letters. The score right now is 3-8 (complete-incomplete). I’m hoping that they’ll all be done by the end of the Thanksgiving break, as one of my managers indicated that that is what she would be working during the break. Bless them, though I don’t think it will happen, but cross my fingers, hope to die, eat a big turkey drumstick thigh.

I scheduled a school visit for Owen and Marshall. Owen sent me a personalized itinerary which included an “evaluative interview” that caught me off guard. As if this coming weekend won’t be hectic enough with finishing the essays and other parts of the app, and gorging myself with food, I now have to prep for an interview. The visit is slated for next Wednesday and I haven’t booked my travel arrangements yet. The Marshall visit is scheduled for next Monday down at their OC campus. It’s a two hour info sesion that includes a brief on the program and a Q&A session with current students. At least that was the format of the last one I went to about two years ago.

The goal is to be done with everything by Xmas at the latest. I took the last two weeks of the year off and I want to be able to enjoy it. The end of the app process is coming close to an end and I can’t wait. Time to buckle down and power through.