Way2Top

So far 70+ Round 1 Admits have introduced themselves. The diversity in profiles is quite amazing (age, education, work experience, hobbies etc.,). To get an idea of the diversity, have a look at some of the professions of R1 admits.

“Aerospace Engineer, Marine Engineer, Pilot, Doctor, Structural Engineer, Oilfield Services, IT [Banking, Telecom, Retail, Treasury], Copywriter-cum-journalist, Biomedical Engineer, Chip designer, Communications Engineer, Fashion designer, Architect, R&D centre manager, Manufacturing, Automotive, Sales & Marketing, Entrepreneurs [Textile machinery, Defence(?), Education], Auditors, Market Research, Military…”

Many of the students also have sound educational background with degrees from IIT, REC, BITS, State premier colleges etc., The GMAT scores go as high as 780 and strike an average near 700. Profiles of R2 Applicants are quite promising too. Age of students range from 22-36. Overall, pretty good diversity.

A discount of 11,700 Rupees is given, if the payment is made in one installment. So approximately the expenses for one year in ISB comes to around 16 lacs. I am pretty much clear about how much loan to take!

UPDATE: Some of the areas where I have saved (or can save) are laptop (50,000). I am expecting to save around 25,000 - 30,000 in the food expenses. The Miscellaneous expense of 50,000 will never be fully spent, So I can expect to save around 25,000 there. Overall, I think I can deduct 1 lac from the expenditure, which brings the figure to 15 lacs to ME.

22/Feb/2005: The Pre-term course are now costing 9,000 as against the initial estimate of 4,000. Introductory Accounting - 4000. Quantitative methods - 2,500. Business Statistics - 2,500. Also, I forgot to include Rs.20,000 towards the IT support fee. I will update as and when I encounter new hidden costs.

I stumbled upon this funny link today. The person has made some research tools using Google API. Some of the tools are worth trying. For example “PageBoost” displays a computer generated “Review” for your website based on the contents, links, colour scheme etc., Here’s the review for my blog

“…I just saw . Five-star. Don’t get me wrong, I expected the creator to work within these quality standards. If only my aunt would have a splendid page like that. What a high-quality page! It must have taken months to design the page. Seeing Way2Top , I’m simply out of words.
There are 67,700 characters in the source for this page, which is a great length for Chinese users. The URL has 27 characters. This length scores best in usability studies. Very, very good. The color scheme is impressive. The page contains 175 links, a stable amount.
(…)
The document is highly accessible. If God would create web pages, this is what they would look like.”
— John Hamilton, WebReview Online

Funny!

Yesterday I was reading “Ask yahoo” section and came across an interesting question.

“What are the communication code words for the letters of the alphabet (e.g., C=Charlie, V=Victor, T=Tango, etc.)?”

In answer to the question, the website mentions about “Alpha Bravo Charlie” code used by NATO (that we witness in hollywood films and military operations). The 26 code words for the corresponding 26 alphabets are

“..Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, Xray, Yankee, Zulu..”

Hey…it’s nice to see India in the list. The code words brought back memories of me calling the Help Desk of my client in Belgium.

During my initial tenure in Belgium, I had to frequently call the Help Desk and ask for their support. First thing they will ask is my name. I will say “Bharani”, in a clear, well-paused voice. They will reply back saying “Can you spell it please?”. I would say “B..H..A..R..A..N..I”. They wouldn’t understand. It’s because of the confusion in the way Dutch alphabets and English alphabets are pronounced. In Dutch “A” is pronounced as “A” in “Affair”. “H” is pronounced as “Ha”, “E” is pronounced as “I”, “I” is pronounced “E”, J” is pronounced as “Ya”, “F” is pronounced as “V”, and “V” is pronouced as “F”…So, I deviced my own way to clarify the confusion. I started using Country names for each letter. My reply from then on was “B for Belgium, H for Holland, A for America, R for Russia, A for America, N for Netherlands and I for India”. No confusions from then on..I have been using the same whenever I have to call any service in Belgium and whenever I have to spell my name. It works charmingly.

Another difference is the way the say numbers. How would we normally read “EUR 129.38″?. One hundered and twenty nine Euros and thirty eight cents. Here, people read as “One hundred nine and twenty euros and eight and thirty cents” [Exact translation from Dutch]. They say the units digit before the ten’s digit. Another difference is the usage of comma and dot. They use comma and dot interchangeably. “12,49″ is 12 Euros and 49 cents..Different practices in different places.

Raja Banerjee, ISB Class of 2005, gives an account of first 2 weeks of ISB such as Registration, Orientation, knowing your pals etc.,

The ISB Experience:
Day 0: Registration: You get a jute bag with ISB logo, filled with brochures, telephone instructions, class schedules, ID cards and a planner. The planner will become an integral part of your life, adorning the wall of your room. The rest will disappear with time and you will never miss them. You will get your laptops configured and will be done with the formalities for the day. Evening will be free to interact with the other students.

Week 3: First Term: This is the one everyone warned you about. You are under pressure to do class participation, finish assignments before due dates and read up cases. Your very first assignment could be a regression one, and you don’t even know what it means. Well, this is just the beginning. Tighten your seatbelts and get ready for the year ahead.

“…Weighing more than 100 pounds, Flint’s camera captures images at 4 gigapixels — a resolution high enough to photograph four football fields and capture every single blade of grass. When printed at maximum resolution, the images are as big as billboards, but render the finest detail….

The biggest prints could theoretically measure up to 48 feet long and 24 feet high — all from a single shot. But for practical reasons, Flint’s biggest print to date was 21 feet long. “Most places don’t have enough wall space to hang them,” Flint said. “It’s as high as you can get. The only way to get higher is to stitch multiple images together….” [Wired]

Take a look at the gallery yourself to see how much detail is being talked about. We are seeing 6MP, 10 MP digital cameras in the market. And we see here 4 Giga pixel camera!! That’s 400 times more resolution than consumer digital cameras!

Cool! BTW, Today I received username and password for accessing the “new admits” page from Indian school of business. The link currently hosts couple of FAQ’s regarding accommodation and IT as well as a discussion forum.

Apprentice 3 has begun. 3 Episodes are already over. This season has been tagged as “Street smarts Vs Book smarts”. Somehow most of the people get a feeling that Street smarts are real smarts. Well, I’ll tell you, Street-smart being a book-smart is the deadliest combination.

Some of the candidates that I think will make it to to final 4 are [in order of preference]. Let’s see how my Judgement is. Ofcourse, If I see two more episodes, I can say even more authoritatively..but anyway..

John
Craig
Kendra
Audrey

Many candidates who were impressive on their biography have disappointed. Most notably, Brian. Man, he is such a abrasive person that he blew himself out.

As usual, “lessons learned” are archived in NBC website.

1. Training is Key: Broad-based and Job-specific
2. Communicating in Stressful Situations.
3. Dealing with Negative Team Members.
4. The Creative Brief: The first step in Marketing

BTW, from the fourth season Donald Trump will not be starring. The fourth season will have “Martha Stewart”, another person living the “American Dream” [Read rich lifestyle]. It’s interesting to note that Martha stewart was sentenced for 5 months in September 2004 for her fraud in stock trades!

UPDATE: Looks like there will be two versions of Apprentice from next year. “Apprentice 4″ starring Donald Trump and “Apprentice : Martha stewart” starring Martha stewart. Interesting!

Today, I was chatting with my father. During the conversation, he became silent. I didn’t hear any voice from him. Then he started speaking. He said he remembered about his tough childhood days. My grandfather (Father of my father) is such irresponsible person (Even today, no one in my family respect my grand father to the core of heart. They respect him just for his age and importance in the family hierarchy). He received Masters in 1940’s. But still very irresponsible. He wasted all his money in Gambling and Horse races. All this inspite of being father of 5 children. He didn’t educate his children and he insisted on sending his children to work. My father somehow studied on his own while working and received his diploma. He was telling how he used to celebrate his Diwali. He will receive some bonus(will be one or two rupees) from his shop he work and that will be taken away by grandfather. No sweets, No new dresses and no crackers. Just Prasadam from temple. Amidst heavy struggle he received his diploma and started his job as a simple Electrical repairman. I have heard many times how he would have loved to study a lot and how his intelligence has been wasted (My father is very intelligent). He spent his own money for his marriage. Well, he said he is very happy to see me in good position and he is proud about my decision to leave my job and go for higher studies. This brought his memories back. Normally he wouldn’t say anything, but I was moved to hear these words from my father. My mind is engrossed with thoughts of family back home from then on..

Only I know how much he has sacrificed in his life for us. The great thing is he takes care of his father better than all other children. Even when my grandfather met with a painful accident damaging his ankles, my father did everything for him right from cleaning up daily his wounds after surgery to paying all his hospital bills (I didn’t complete my education then and we were in real tight financial conditions). My father has been a real role model for me (My mom too, but that’s another tale, To me she is the greatest mom in the world). My deepest motive since my childhood has been to take care of them both with utmost comfort. To say that many of my decisions in life happen with these memories in the background is understatement. These has also been my fuel behind my endeavours.

Also, I was honestly thinking about following the footsteps of Ramkee and Raja. But after some thinking I think I will not commit myself to anything. Just blog whatever comes to my mind and at my own convenience. May be someone else in the ISB PGP will do that…I will blog random ramblings, as that is what is giving me happiness…

Have a look at the high-resolution Image of ISB entrance. You can clearly see the student villages on either side. Infact it is the blown-up pic of the image I have at the top of my site.

The Original Image

An alumnus shares some thoughts on how to successfully tackle the admissions interview at the Indian School of Business.

“…Have a long term plan laid out for your career, and try to connect your work experience & need for an MBA with this long term plan. This communicates that you want to join business school for the right reasons. You would be surprised how many candidates think of an MBA as an end rather than a means to achieve long term goals. You must have a great reason for

1. Wanting to do an MBA

2. Wanting to do an MBA from the institution you are applying to.

Highlight what is different about you, and communicate it effectively. This difference can be in terms of companies/industry you have worked in, or in terms of unique challenges/situations you have overcome. It could include hobbies and personal attributes, amongst others. Just remember to back these up with solid examples.

You are applying for a business management degree, so respond like a manager. Think big, and give examples of how you have demonstrated leadership and initiative. No one wants to hear how you spotted a missing decimal place in a thousand lines of software code.

You will be asked at least one question where you have to state your opinion on some world/current event. Choose your opinion, and stick to it. Do not change your mind half-way through because you feel the interview panel disagrees with you. There is no wrong answer. The interview panel wants to see that you can hold your own, and communicate your point of view maturely.

Be prepared:

1. Go through your application and resume, identify your weaknesses, and be prepared to address these. The interview panel will know what your weaknesses are and grill you on these.

2. Take mock interviews with friends/colleagues.

Be consistent in your answers and try to remain calm.

If you don’t know something, do NOT bluff.

Dushyant Khare graduated from the Indian School of Business in 2003…”