Tag Archives: School

One Week Out

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I took a PowerPrep test over the weekend. The results are mixed. I scored a career high in verbal, but I saw several questions that were straight out of the OG. I did kill the reading section which contained no OG questions. Hooray.

Quant on the other hand was a complete disaster. I ran out of time and had to guess the last two answers. My timing was a little slow and I kept getting tripped up on fundamental number properties and algebra problems. One bright side is that my guessing technique has improved as I managed to get a couple of questions right that I guessed on.

In the end, I got the same score as my real test. In reality, I probably did worse because of the repeats in verbal. The plan for this final week is to drill hard in quant, especially in the algebra, # properties, and percent/fraction sections. I’ll continue to throw in sentence correction and critical reasoning problems. I’ll also need to start practicing the analysis of an issue essay section.

On the app front, I managed to really get started on the Foster essays. I have half draft for the goals essay and a paragraph for essay question number 3. I’ve forgotten how painful it is to write essays. You would think that this would be easy, especially when the essays are about yourself and not about some book you didn’t read for class. The bright side is that all this introspection has allowed me to really examine what I’ve been doing these past couple of years. Despite certain sore spots in my record that I still languish over, I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot that I can be proud of. As the cliche goes, there’s room for improvement, and the good thing is, there’s plenty of time to do so.

A lot of focus has been on the Foster apps these past couple of weeks, mostly because Foster has risen to the top of the list. I’ll need to start looking into the much neglected McCombs app and figure out what is going on with USC.PM. I’m still in search of that fourth school. There are a couple of names floating around like Kelley and Smith, but there definitely isn’t a front runner for that fourth spot. TBD

Labor Day Weekend

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How sweet it is to have a four day weekend. I had high hopes to accomplish a laundry list of errands, tasks, and fun during this labor day weekend. Although I squeezed as much juice as I could out of this weekend, it feels like there’s still some more left behind. Unfortunately, like summer, this weekend is close to calling it quits.

Friday

I finally started on my essay for Foster. After doing even more in depth research, I was able to jot down ONE whole sentence. Talk about getting a major writer’s block. At least I was able to brainstorm and put together a sketchy outline for the three required essays.

Foster’s essays are pretty standard. The first essay is the standard goals essay. The only difference is that Foster asks for a lot of detail, especially in the area of how Foster fits into our ultimate career goals. See

  • “What steps have you taken to assess the viability of your post-MBA goals given your experience to date combined with your intended MBA study plans?”
  • “What do you anticipate will be the primary challenges to achieving your career goals”.
  • “What unique aspects of the University of Washington MBA Program would contribute the most to achieving your short term and long term goals?”

The other two essays are not as bad. Hopefully I can write another sentence or two in the next couple of days. I want to hammer out the first essay by next Sunday.

Given how long its taken me to put together what I’ve got right now, I’ve decided that in order to put together the best app for Foster, I’ll have to submit in R2 (Oct. 15).

Turning to the GMAT, I worked on some CR questions. I felt pretty good about how I did on the practice questions. Hopefully it’ll translate to the practice tests. I also worked on AWA, something that I didn’t focus on enough from the first time around. If there’s a time to not have writer’s block, then the AWA section is it. Practice, practice, practice.

Saturday

I headed back to my mom’s place to do some errands. JJ Bakery opened up a new store on Gale. The new store is part bakery, part restaurant. The food was pretty good. I’d go back for the chow me fun and roo row fan (fatty pork stew on rice). Mmmmmm.

After lunch, I started on the CB radio install that I’ve been meaning to do since the last time I went to Pismo. I bought the Cobra 75 CB that a lot of the guys I offroad with have. Before I got started on the install though, I had to find my tools in the garage. One thing led to another, and I ended up cleaning out one section of the garage that was piled with my junk. Baseball bats, PVC pipes, batteries, tennis rackets, fishing lures, wetsuit, the list goes on. And this was just one of my shelves.

Eventually I got back to the CB. I ended up stashing the connection box inside my glove compartment. The coaxial cable and power lines sneak out through the back side of the center console lid and the microphone cable comes out the front. The microphone hangs on the clip that I had installed for my previous CB. I haven’t connected the power cables yet because I couldn’t find the antenna whip so there’s still some more loose ends with this project. Next weekend, and hopefully pics.

Sunday

What’s a summer without a beach day with the gang? We went out to Dockwieler Beach in what turned out to be a pretty uncrowded beach despite reservations about a huge Labor Day crowd. Parking at the first spot we found put us right on top of a bluff that overlooked the beach. We had to scramble down a dirt hill with all our gear and then lug everything across a 100 yard strand of beach before we found our spot.

The annual erection of the volleyball net went pretty smoothly this year despite some hard packed sand. With some well placed ice chests, the net posts were anchored down in a matter of no time. We ended up playing 4-5 games of vball. Py was limited to one good arm after he caught Drew’s one-armed-bandit disease from playing bball the day before. Vik was continuously seething with anger throughout every game. There was some football and ultimate frisbee action after vball. I think I speak for everyone but Sunil that we’re never playing ultimate frisbee ever again.

We ended up back at my place to eat because we couldn’t decide whether to risk bbq-ing at the beach. Py and Vik both got the munchies so we went to Ralph’s to buy fried chicken for Py and sushi for Vik. Sunil made veggies, chicken, and steak. We spent the rest of the night feasting and semi drunk dialing Hsu, LC, Mau and SMO. Some of us also discovered “shocking” news regarding some HS friends. Ah it was a glorious and revealing night.

Monday

TL had to work again so I was left to my own devices. I woke up a little groggy and very sore from the day before. My legs, my back, my shoulders, they’re all out of order and have been sent in for service.

I spent most of the day working on math problems that I found from GMAT Club. Some of the problems were ridiculously hard so it wasn’t that surprising that I only got 60% of them right. My weak spot, surprise surprise, turned out to be number properties. So depressing.

Actually what was truly depressing was when I picked up the mail and found my UCI transcript. After reviewing and reliving the disaster that was my undergraduate coursework, all the goodness that I felt from last Thursday was replaced with concern. There’s not much I can do about the past now but to show through the other components of the app that my undergrad experience isn’t representative of my current abilities and achievements.

So ends the final real holiday till Thanksgiving. Good thing this week is a short one.

The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown… Almost

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Well, I’ve set the next date for the final showdown with my archenemy, the GMAT. I still need to get the date, 9/21, approved by my manager but that gives me a little over 4 weeks to study which is plenty of time. 9/21 is a Monday, which gives me a long weekend to rest and study (Friday is an off-Friday, YES!).

Last Sunday’s study session with Guy went well. Both of us were pretty lethargic because we were drinking the night before (my recap in separate post). We managed 4.5 hours of work. I found some tricky PS questions that highlighted some of my weak quant spots, ie ratios, so I’ll be working on that this week.

Guy and I also got to talking about what schools we’ll be applying to and what we want to do after school. One thing we touched on that I’ve been struggling to pin down is the “vision” as Guy calls it of why we want to go to bschool and what we want to do while we’re there and after we leave. Judging from Guy’s acknowledgments, I was able to coherently piece together my own motivations and goals for achieving an MBA and why McCombs in particular would help me get there. Then again, Guy could have just been nodding to stay awake. Regardless, it was good to spit those words out because they’ll eventually have to be polished and put on the essays.

Something else that popped into my mind over the weekend was the cost of an MBA. For a while I had wanted to only apply to part time programs, but then I changed my mind because I didn’t want to do the whole school + work thing again. Disregarding the opportunity cost of getting the degree for now, the cost of tuition plus living expenses is frighteningly high. My guess is that the average cost of a top 30 program is at least $130k. I can probably buy a village and make myself chief somewhere in the world for that! The thought of paying back a massive loan makes going to a part time program much more financially palatable. All that being said, the cost isn’t going to dissuade me at this point from applying, it’s just a matter of figuring out how to finance the cost.

English Honors Don’t Fail Me Now

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The essays, another time consuming yet extremely important, if not the most important, part of the bschool app process. I started taking a look at the essays a few years ago just to see what the schools were asking. Now that the time has come to put thoughts down onto paper, I wish I had done more than just introspect in my head. Oh well. At least there should be no surprises.

I’ve taken a look at the prompts from McCombs, Mendoza, Merage, and Marshall and the only unexpected thing is that Mendoza only asks for two essays. Instead of a third essay, Mendoza asks for an optional PPT presentation. Time to express how I’m a worthy applicant with swim lanes and state diagrams!

<offtopic>I just realized that the four schools I’m interested in all start with ‘M’.</offtopic>

My plan right now is to start off with the standard essay that all schools ask for, the “What are your short and long term goals and how will XYZ help you achieve those goals”.  Then I’ll probably knock the optional essay out since this is another standard essay. The optional essay, usually the third or fourth essay, asks for extra additional info that wasn’t included in the other essays that would help the adcoms in their evalution.

I’m aiming to get these two essays completed, as in tailored for the individual schools and ready for final review, before the end of September. Biting my finger nails!

Woo, and I’m thinking about replacing one of the ‘M’s’ with an ‘F’. Hint: SBUX.

Rankings

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Who doesn’t love rankings? They help us size things up, figure out what/who the best of the best are, and what/who to point our fingers and laugh at. More importantly, rankings give us something to talk about because everyone has a different opinion on how things stack up.

Forbes recently released their 2010 Business School rankings in which they ranked the schools by ROI after 5 years. It’s an interesting methodology, especially if you consider the bottomline for some students who pursue an MBA: how much more money will I be making after school. I think this ranking is great if you’re looking for the school that will give you the best bang for your buck. For me though, Forbe’s ranking only provides a nice place to view a compilation of stats. I’m not sure you can convince many people, especially in southeren California, that BYU (16), is a better school than UCLA (19).

Just for fun, I compared the rankings of the schools I’m interested in from the Forbes with USA Today’s College Football Coaches poll. Here’s how things shook out.

From Forbes:

Texas – 11
UCLA – 19
USC – 32
ND – 38
UCI – 58

From USA Today:

Texas – 2
USC – 4
ND – 23
UCI – No respect (ranked higher than the Bruins – Anteaters are undefeated)
UCLA – Even less respect

Ha! It’s close in order if you disregard the actual rank. I might as well replace the Forbes poll with the USA Today poll. The bottomline, take these business school rankings with a grain of salt. They’re not the best way to figure out which school is the best for you.