700 billion Bailout package

I hate paying for someone else's mistake, and want the greedy to be punished by all means, but this is not the time for that. Though i don't agree with any of the GWB's policy but this time I guess his administration has got it right. The bailout is a necessary evil that we have to undertake, not just to save the Wall Street, but to save the entire social fabric. If anyone thinks that this could be contained by the destruction of Wall Street, then they are out of there minds, maybe they should look for a similar example in recent history, Asian Crisis of '97. This situation is no more crisis of lost money or undervalued garbage securities but rather a Crisis of Confidence with no abyss in sight. What caused the Asian Crisis can be found in the following episode of Commanding Heights @ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/story/ch_menu_03.html Hope that would help people put the bailout in perspective, it started with troubles in economy as small as Thailand, and gives indications to scale of wreckage that we might be looking at if we fail to contain this situation quickly before it further degenerates......

Struggle Never End!!

Ever heard of Newton’s Law of conservation of energy? If no, then you should go and read it, if yes then applying it to the Struggle, we have following….

You can neither create nor destroy the struggle – Manish’s law of persistence of struggle.
When you are born you take on the struggles from other people, make them your own and with your death you pass those on to others.

Overcoming the struggle with a successful effort is just an illusion, caused by warping of the time & space*, due to a strong presence of a superfluous energy called happiness. With each successful effort you reap the benefits of the efforts and in process change the nature of struggle, to one with greater challenges and with greater rewards.

*Here we get a bit into relativity where the end of struggle is only with respect to the person putting in the efforts and those affected by it, but it doesn’t have any effect on the existence of the struggle per say, it just passes on from one person to another.

But anyways, why am I talking about all this?
Well with an admission to Boston University, I was feeling on the cloud 9, walking on the thin air with an air of confidence all around me. I had a feeling of having it all and almost end of struggle in my life and that’s what everyone told me.

Also first day of my school I felt a tremendous amount of the energy (happiness) under my belly but like every other source of energy it need to be replenished or else it runs out. High on this energy I did pretty well in my first semester but with gradual seeping loss of the energy, time & space recovered from the warping and cleared up the illusions, with reality hitting me with a force never experience before, force never heard of, intensity unseen of. While still on the ground recovering from the knock out punch of reality, I realized that the struggle never ends, getting into MBA was just transforming it to another struggle.

Now the new struggle is to find a summer internship in industry of my choice (I Banking), and once I accomplish that the new struggle would be to find a full time job…..and the list could go on to five years plan, and 10 year plan, and plan for all the time that I live, till the time I pass on my struggles to someone else.

Overcoming the struggles can be termed as winning small battles and they say that one should not be happy winning the battles but aim to win the war, but is there any war at all? All your life you keep fighting battles and then leave someone else to continue, and also the battles you won, were in reality not yours, you got them from someone else when you were born.

I don’t know where it all started or where it would end, I don’t even know if I would be thinking of it two days from now, but still I guess it’s a question to ponder upon. To think what’s important in life, is it running after some imaginary war, a construct in mind, or is it taking some time off to enjoy the spoils of battle. It’s an open ended question with no right, no wrong or maybe no answer at all……..

Common interview Questions

One thing to note upfront is that there is no right or wrong answers, all they are trying to see is:

• How much thought have you given to the whole process.
• How much belief do you have in what are you saying.
• Can you back your ideas with some reasoning, if you find yourself under the fire.

Common Questions

1) Tell me something about you.

This is a warm up question, chances are that the interviewer would have already read your resume, so dont waste time saying what's on your resume, at this time ball is in your court, so make most use of it. Give a vivid picture of yourself and a little humor does help to open up the interviewer, make the process lively and establishes you as un-intimidated & confident person.

2) Why MBA?

3) Why a particular XZY school and not WXY school?

4) What career would you like to have after you complete your MBA?

5) (Follow up) Why does this particular career interests?

6) What in your background makes you likely to be successful in career of your choice (management career of course)?

7) In your life till now, give a example of leadership position you have taken. (Preferably from work life, but if you haven't worked anything would do)

8) Give an example when you think, that you were better off following other people's lead rather than leading yourself.

9) What are your other areas of interest or what do you like to do in you free time?

These are just very basic common questions asked in invariably all interviews, apart from this there can be a lot of questions based on your particular background and nature of your experience, so think about your particular situation and try to come up with a list of questions and counter questions to your answers.

A Day after a long night

Cold and dark, uncertain and stark, without any encouraging mark, riddled with dangers of losing all that you cherish, that’s the night I have lived for past few months. Chasing a distant star I started with certainty of failure and little chance of success but now looking back I feel that it wasn’t that bad because I had all that was needed: A strong will to succeed and non-wavering support of friends & family.

It was twilight when I got an admission to MBA at Boston University, I thought that the dawn was just around the corner but I was wrong, it was evening soon to be followed by a long dark night. At the stroke of mid night I found myself looking to arrange for the funding and getting my loan right and as the night grew darker I found myself having tug of war with daemons of Visa office, trying to convince them of my ability to finance my education and my intent to return back to India. I was in deep despair almost on the verge of giving up, but something (I don’t know what, maybe a desire to succeed) was giving me a hope against hope and courage to keep fighting and holding on to my armor.

In the darkest hour of the night I saw a bright star, my uncle agreed to co-sign my loan. It gave me a sword to fight the daemons of the Visa Office but it was a double edged sword, because the loan from a US bank could with the slightest of effort shatter the myth of my intentions of coming back to India, so now I was left with a task not only to fight the daemons but that too walking on the edge of a sword. I was sad again, with no clue what to do and then I fell asleep only to be awaken by a sudden flash of a blinding light, and I realized that I was in front of Visa officer and could only hear him say "Good luck with your studies, you'll get your visa & passport in 2-3 days".
That’s all where the night ends. I walked out in a broad daylight reached back to my office and resigned from my job, 5th august is my last day in office and after that I am off to a new life, in new place with all new people, hope that god helps me always like he had helped me during the night and my friends & family continue to have faith in me.

Loan & Work .....driving me crazy

I am now almost on the verge of throwing it all away, finding the educational loan for graduate school seems much more difficult than admission to MBA, even if that’s not true for everybody that’s certainly true for me and might be for other international applicants too.

Ever heard of 3 months LIBOR or 91-day T-Bill? Even if heard, have you ever bothered to look closely for what they mean or what impact they can have on your life? Well these and few other terms are all what I have been doing for past few days.

Plus if anybody cares I do a full time job too, for those who are not aware of corporate culture I would like to give a typical example…I had a meeting along with my team with my boss on Friday 5-6pm, after that we left day…and had a meeting with boss again on Saturday 2pm and the first question was one for million dollars, “hi everybody we are meeting after 18hrs, so what have we done?”.

Anyways I have been doing a research on loans and interest rates, for anybody who needs this info, here it is…

LIBOR: The London Interbank Offered Rate Index (LIBOR) is an average of the interest rates that major international banks charge each other to borrow US dollars in the London money market. Like the US treasury the CD indexes, LIBOR tends to move and adjust quite rapidly to changes in interest rates.

T-BILL: A short-term debt obligation of the US government that is purchased at a discount from face value--that is, they are bought at a discounted price and mature at face value. The amount of the discount is considered the interest. They are sold in denominations of $10,000 to $1 million and have maturities of 13 weeks, 26 weeks or 52 weeks. Treasury bills are commonly abbreviated as "T-bills".

The way LIBOR varies is beyond my comprehension, at least till I haven’t completed my MBA ;) anyways I am providing a chart which shows some variation, see if any of you can make any sense out of it.

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2005 2.95 3.14 3.38 3.41 3.53 3.69 3.92 4.08 4.215
2004 1.21 1.20 1.16 1.36 1.57 1.94 1.98 1.99 2.170 2.301 2.62 2.775
2003 1.35 1.33 1.26 1.29 1.22 1.12 1.15 1.21 1.18 1.22 1.23 1.219
2002 1.98 2.06 2.33 2.10 2.09 1.94 1.86 1.81 1.75 1.61 1.47 1.383
2001 5.36 4.95 4.71 4.23 3.99 3.82 3.69 3.47 2.53 2.17 2.10 1.983
2000 6.23 6.32 6.53 6.61 7.06 7.01 6.88 6.83 6.76 6.72 6.67 6.208
1999 5.15 5.16 5.08 5.07 5.19 5.63 5.68 5.91 5.97 6.14 6.06 6.136

Trust me according to this the best years to take loan were during the recession of 2000-2002 and people say that it wasn’t good time to go to a B school, I think it was the time when you could have got the education at much less price compared to today.

Anyways all day today I was working on a presentation that I to give to my boss on Monday and also working on the EMI calculator that I intend to use to compare my different loan options, including the interest rates and deferment option.

General questions.....

hi a friend of mine asked a lot of general questions....i thinking sharing them would be very helpful for anybody planning for GMAT & MBA.....

Questions.....
1. When to actually take GMAT.(considering preference of work ex.) n TOEFL if u cud juss randomly outline ur path of progress since graduation.
2.I m currently placed in xyz company, which type of companies(big/small , technical/banking ..others) r preferable to work in if I m prospective GMAT-taker.
3.How r u managing ur finances as expenditure must b around 30-35 lacs ?
4.References n books sufficient for scorin high on GMAT.
5. WHich kind of extracurricular activities or non-technical aspect of Personality need 2 b worked on which a phoren B-School emphasises.

Answers.....

1. Normally a min of 2yrs work ex is required, although the averages at most good schools are about 3-4 yrs, but remember that they are still averages, so i think u should be fine if u get a work ex of 2yrs (added up to time of attending the school and not at the time of applying). A GMAT score is valid for 5yrs, but to be safe consider it to be 3 yrs, bcos i know a person who applied with a score 4.5yrs old and he was asked to retake the GMAT, so if u have to apply at for 2008, you can take Gmat around beginning first quarter of 07. bcos Tofel is valid just for 2yrs i would say that u take is 3rd quarter'07.

2. I don't think that the BSchools are moved by the company you are working in, but u have to demonstrate leadership and responsibility (and all the blah blah.....), so u have a choice of being a BIG fish in a small pool or a SMALL fish in a big pool, for me being a BIG FISH is better.

3. I have got some scholarship for rest i would be relying on the bank loan.

4.Kaplan & Princeton review are sufficient for GMAT plus u may want to look at official guide to GMAT, but the questions Power prep software (that u get test practice) are from official guide, so if u work on official guide before taking practice test then I don\'t think it would be that helpful. Apart from GMAT books you may look at books like "How to get into top mba.......(dont remember the name)" by Richard Montauk and "Getting MBA admission edge.....(international)" by Matt Symonds. These two are very good getting u started with your applications and give u a feel for good application.

5. There is no one activity or personality that the schools look for, they look for people with diverse backgrounds and varied interests. So all I could say is that look into yourself and think what do u do which makes u better or at least different from the person next to u, bcos schools are looking for all kinds of personalities........u know what i said in the interview? I said, I like playing table tennis and 'Age of Empires' and the interviewer replied, "ohh that's great, we haven't had anybody with these interest for a long time!! We don't want everybody with business interests."

i hope i have answered all the questions to best of my ability :) if there is anything else wih which i can help u, do tell me........

Admit!!!!

hi
i just got the package from Boston Univ:) which has a letter saying "congratulations", i cant believe this....and i am very very happy....now i just need to figure out my financing options and then i am go go go gone on that 27hr flight.....i still feel that i might be dreaming, but even if its a dream, its worth it.....i am loving it and going for a party tonite. Actually one of my friend has got a new job so he is leaving today.... :( we are all going to his place for my party......
bye bye

I am back

Hi writing again after a long time. Went back to my home for my parent’s 25^th anniversary. Oh yes the interview with Boston was ok (at least I think so). The person interviewing me was assistant director of the Ad comm. I had actually met him, during an MBA fair at Grand Hyatt, in mumbai, the best part was that he remembered the conversation (or maybe not so good, because we had a small disagreement during MBA fair). Anyways the results would be out in about a weeks times and I am keeping my fingers crossed, because I haven’t applied to anywhere else till now, and my applying to any other place depends on the decision of the BU Ad comm. If I get an admission to BU then I may not apply altogether or apply to a couple of schools real high on the rankings, but if I don’t get an admission to BU then I would have to apply to more than a couple of schools so that I do get in somewhere.

A brief summary of interview is:

Actually the ad comm. were to call me but they couldn’t get thru so I after waiting for about 10mins called them, and they were very apologetic about not being able to call me, after few greetings it finally started with,

Tell me something about yourself.

What was in the MBA fair that excited you?

Give an example were leadership was thrust on u?

Give an example were you have felt comfortable following the leads of some one else?

What’s in BU that excites you?

Throw some light on your career progression till date.

Tell me something about your undergraduate school & admission process. (To my amazement he was aware of IITs and knew what it takes to clear IIT JEE!)

What do you do for fun?

Why do you want to do an MBA and why specifically from BU?

After this it was his turn to return the favor :P so I asked a few of questions regarding the availability of accommodation at Boston, and a couple of other questions.

After this we had a short conversation not even remotely related to anything above, things like his trip to mumbai, and itinerary for my way back to my home.

That’s all that I could recall, now just hoping for the best………

A check point

The Boston univ interview is just five days away, and so is my only chance for selection….so I think its high time to get things in order and start working on them. The task list I came up with is:
Research Boston univ (go through it again to find if I missed anything earlier)
Go through my essay answers and develop a theme
Prepare answers to the general questions
Look for any specific questions in my profile and find answers to them.

Apart from these just downloaded “We didn’t start the fire” cool song just can stop listening, and I also got my flight booked for my home, I would be flying the day after my interview…..home sweet home……its after sometime I am going back home. Guess why? It’s my parent’s 25th marriage anniversary...

Anyways I should now get started with my task list taking one item at a time…….