Chinese GMAT cheating

Recently, an article came in Business week magazine which mentioned that the Chinese were cheating in the GMAT exams and there were many cases reported. There was an instance in which a woman had impersonated persons and took the test for eight different persons. There were touts who went to the exam just for memorizing the questions which appeared in the test and later reporting the questions to the companies generating some money for both the parties. Also, a website in China was giving ACTUAL GMAT questions to students who paid a few dollars to them. That company was sued by GMAC for some thousands of dollars and the website was ordered to display what happened to it due to its cheating and similar actions would be taken on other companies. One of the things to be noted from this incident is that GMAC had got access to the database of the students who had registered with the firm. Some students scores were cancelled - those who had reported that the questions which had come for them was also there in the website. I remember getting an email sometime back where a similar incident had happened elsewhere with GMAC taking similar action. It is good that GMAC is taking this action so that only the deserving students will get an admit. Also, the business schools too do not place too much emphasis on GMAT and differentiate the levels of competencies of students by their GPA, leadership and extra-curricular skills and an interview too.

Questions from prospective MBA applicants

It has been quite some time since I published my last post. The amount of work that I am doing in my college and the time I am spending to prepare my applications was keeping me away from blogging. Anyways, I thought I will publish one more post before I break off for semester exams.
Yesterday, we had an event conducted by our professor of entrepreneurship class. In that event, we were paired up with a random partner and told to come up with a viable business for one day. I chose the idea of mentoring but at the end of the day we shifted to food as it was much more demanding and we earned the same amount of money in 1 hour by selling food as the amount we had earned in 6 hours of mentoring.
Anyways during mentoring I came across some important questions which I thought I would put in this blog so that people are more aware at least of the basic things (though some of the things I might have already covered in my previous posts). All the statistical data are taken from the blog by the director of the admissions and financial aid (http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/blog-all.html)
I must also say that the opinions that I give here are entirely my own and opinions may vary among people. All the information that I give in this blog are based on my experience and my interaction with different kinds of people.


Q) I am very interested in this HBS 2+2 program. Do you recommend me to write the GRE exam or the GMAT?
A) The admission committee for the HBS 2+2 program as well as the director of admissions tell that they accept both the tests and they don't give any preference to any of the tests. The average GMAT score for HBS 2+2 class of 2014 admitted applicants is slightly below 730 and the GRE score is a shade below 1450. But the range of GMAT score is from 510 to 790. So whichever test you take, ultimately you being selected or dinged (rejected) depends upon your overall application including your essays, recommendation letter, GPA, extra curricular activities etc... If you are very interested in doing an MBA, I would recommend you to take the GMAT exam as its score can be used for other b schools too. Some top colleges like Harvard and Stanford does accept GRE scores but not all b schools.



Q) When is the latest that I can take my GMAT / GRE to apply for the HBS 2+2 program?

A) I booked for my test dates quite late and this turned out to be a mistake for me. I booked my test dates earlier this February to write my exams in June with the dates being as follows
June 21 -TOEFL
June 24 - GRE
June 25 - GMAT 
This turned out to be a mistake as the last date for submitting a score was July 1st. So, I didn't have my AWA scores to report, also I didn't have my percentile scores so I just rounded off my percentile scores to an approximate figure as I couldn't submit my application without entering my percentile scores.
I will highly recommend a candidate to write the GMAT / GRE sometime in February, so that you will get everything in hand before submitting an application. Also, if you happen to score lesser than what you were expecting you can always write the exam once more in the month of April / May. 



Q) I have a low GPA. Will it affect my chances of getting admitted?
A) The average GPA of the HBS 2+2 class of 2014 students is around 3.75. So one has to be really exceptional to get admitted into the program. The grading system is different in different parts of the world and what is 3.75 in the US may be a slightly lower score in some other part of the world. So you need to see how you have performed with respect to your peers and how you have best utilized the chances that are around you. Most of the students who have been accepted to the 2+2 program did their under graduation in colleges like Harvard, Stanford etc. So you will be competing with those students. Therefore, I will say the GPA does matter and you will have to try to be the best or at least in the top few students of your class if you are not from colleges like Harvard or Stanford. However, if you have a very good reason to say why you didn't do very well in your under graduation then you probably have a slight chance to get called for an interview.


Q) I am going to apply for the HBS 2+2 program next year. What can I do in the next 8 months to get admitted?
A) This is a question which most students asked me and I never give a direct reply to this.
The students must do whatever they are passionate about and see that what they do matches with their career vision. You should not do anything just because you think that will help you to get an admit. I am very sure that the admission committee will be able to see right through your essays or at least it will be evident in the interview if you did some things just for the sake of doing it without showing any real interest.
The things you can do to improve your chances are study well for the GMAT and get a high GMAT score, research well on the colleges and apply to those colleges which fits you, visit the campus if you can (you tend to learn a lot more than just browsing through websites)

Harvard 2+2 Program

If you want information about the HBS 2+2 program, you will be interested in a specific post on HBS 2+2 by me. The following post is about my experience in applying to the HBS 2+2 program. 
The deadline for application was July 1st and I submitted my application for it on June 30th. Looking back, I think I should never have submitted my application because I didn't put a lot of effort in making a nice one. But at the same time, I learnt a lot from just applying to the college. The next application which I would be submitting to Stanford will be polished to the maximum. I am not going to have any slip-ups in the application. If I had been selected in HBS I would probably never have applied to Stanford. So I think this is God's way of telling me that I belong to Stanford, after all I have a strong passion for entrepreneurship and is there a better place to be than stanford?

I came across HBS 2+2 program around the same time last year. Ever since I saw the application essay, I would be literally dreaming of what to write about career vision, the three most substantial accomplishments, what have I learned from a mistake and so forth... So any candidate who is planning to apply for HBS should start preparing early for the applications. It is important for a candidate to have a good GMAT, GPA, leadership skills. Though this year an HBS 2+2 admitted student got 510 in GMAT. So thats where the essays and the recommendation letter comes into play. On the whole if you are able to market yourself very well then you will have a good chance of getting admitted.

B schools that contacted me over the past week and entrepreneurship awareness camp in Anna University

Everything, for the big day, has been arranged for the event tomorrow which is conducted by the students of entrepreneurship development (ED) club of Anna University. This event is being conducted in coordination with IIT, Kharagpur. The event includes guest talks by George Anand, Founder CEO, Semantic Learning, Pravin Shekar, Co-Founder, Dexterity Ltd. and Murugavel Janakiraman, Founder, Bharat Matrimony. This is the first time that founders from 3 companies are giving a talk on the same day to the students. The ED club is showing good progress after it was inaugurated on April 3rd 2009. We had the first event called the "First Step" on September 11, 2009 for which the chief guest was Chandu Nair, who is the President and Director of Scope eknowledge centre. He is an alumnus from IIM, Ahmedabad, the most prestigious management school in India. And the event to be conducted tomorrow is our second event and we hope many more will follow. During the "First Step", we not only had an insightful talk from Chandu Nair but also various events were conducted by the members of the ED club for the college students. The events ranged from business quiz, marketing a product to generation of ideas and creation of a business plan to use the money allocated to them judiciously.

Also, last week, since I had taken the GMAT and subscribed to one of its services (GMASS) in which I could be contacted by bschools, I was initally contacted by Jarrod Goentzel, Executive Director, MIT for Master of Engineering in Logistics for a degree in the same. The master program in supply chain management will probably be a good option for me but after some years, considering the fact that I haven't yet finished my under graduation and also the fact that I have been employed in BEROE which is mostly related to supply chain management. So I might probably apply for it after a few years but at first I will have to compare how it will help me in achieving my career vision and whether it will be a better fit for me than the MBA option. A lot of things to be considered!

I was also contacted via email by shealyn.rentschler@chicagobooth.edu for applying to the Chicago Booth summer scholars program. I don't know as of now whether I will be applying to that as the dates of its program are clashing with my starting dates of my job. So I most probably will not apply to that.

One more bschool which had contacted me through GMASS was willamette university which has a specific program meant for college seniors which had really excited me. Moreover there is no application fees for submitting an online application. This was a school which I had never come across. It was nice that they had contacted me. The only fees I would paying for applying to that university is to send my GMAT score report to that college. This college is located in Oregon and the tuition fees and the cost of living are very less compared to other b schools like Harvard and Stanford. The only thing which perturbed me was its ranking and also the schools average GMAT and GPA was much lower than I had which made me think whether this school is really worth applying to. But anyways I have decided to apply to just find out where I stand and whether I will be selected for its program. If I don't get selected for this, I would definitely drop my plans for applying to Stanford and Yale this academic year. I will work for a couple of years and then apply to the top universities across the world.

INSEAD, LBS, IMD which are very good business schools like Wharton, Chicago booth and so on, want work experience which is why I am not applying to those schools as of now. I really wish they start accepting individuals with no work experience but superior academic ability and leadership skills like Harvard, Yale, Stanford at least by providing them with a deferred admission.

I think I have written a lot now. A lot of students whom I have met have asked about time management skills and strategies. So, my next post will be based on it. I remember reading an article based on it some time back in Harvard business review. I will link that to my next post.

The First of many posts in my journey to an MBA degree

Hello. My name is Lokesh and I have started applying to business schools (I turned 20 a couple of months back!). I had always wanted to apply to business schools ever since I was in 6th grade and I have been working towards it. Now, I am in my senior year of my college. Not a lot of students apply to business school with no work experience. But, I thought, I want to be one of the few who gets into a business school with no or very little work experience. After all, Harvard and Stanford are trying to get younger and younger students. I did apply to the HBS 2+2 program. I was 1 in 800 odd applicants for that program. Even though I got rejected, or dinged as many people say, my confidence level has never gone down and I will be applying to at least 2 more programs this year (Yale silver scholar program and to The Stanford GSB). It has been over a year since I started drafting my essays and almost 3 months since I submitted by HBS application. I applied to HBS with my GRE score which I think was a mistake. Now having taken my GMAT and having received my AWA scores, I will submit it for the other b schools. I will be applying before the second round for both Yale and Stanford. Stanford is a school which I would like to get into due to the entrepreneurship culture that prevails there.

My ultimate career goal is to become the CEO of a management consulting company. I would also like to start a venture capital firm and provide help to other entrepreneurs. For this, as of now, I do not have the sufficient work experience and education (in terms of thinking what I would do in different cases for which the case studies thought by the b schools would help me tremendously and also interpersonal dynamics is another course I am looking forward to learn). My short term goal, assuming that I get accepted to a deferred program in a b school, is to work in a consulting firm, earn an MBA, go on to work in the same or another consulting firm and get as much exposure and experience in as many fields as possible to eventually rise up to the position of a CEO. The first step of working in a consulting firm is more or less achieved as I been selected to work in BEROE as a research analyst.

The reason that I want to do an MBA very early in my life is due to the fact that I have very big dreams and to achieve my long term career goals, an MBA is absolutely necessary and the sooner the better.