My first Admit invite - Cornell Johnson

I received a phone call from Cornell Johnson today. The result was expected to come on 17th. I had heard that they would start giving the good news from 16th itself. When I saw the 607 area code in my mobile phone, the news was clear :-)

So, finally I am in for an MBA in the USA. Let's see where I end up attending the classes. Johnson offers a good program in my intended area and it was clearly not a backup school. Infact I would love to study in any of the schools I have applied to!

No news from HBS yet, hope they come calling soon...

Catch ya all later :-)

My Cornell Interview Experience

I had my Johnson interview this week with one of the AdCom members. It was good to have an interview after 3 years :-) The interviewer was very skilled and made me feel comfortable. We shared some laughs and also talked about some of our other interests. The questions were pretty standard though at times he asked follow-up questions.

Some of the questions were:-

1. Why MBA? Why now?
2. Career goals and how would Johnson help?
3. Tell me about your leadership experience. There were some follow up questions on this.
4. Tell me about your team-experience. What do you don't like about working in teams?
5. What other activities are you interested in?
6. What other programs are you applying to? what is common between these programs and what are the distinguishing points of Cornell.
7. What are your strengths? Which three of your qualities would you like me to tell the AdCom?
8. Then he passed the ball to me and said i can ask some questions to him. I asked a few questions.

So, all in all it was a good interview. It was very interactive and interesting. Lets see what happens :-) The result would be out on 17th Nov.

Catch ya later...gotta rush to sleep..:-)

My first post-application interview invite - Cornell Johnson

I just received an interview invite from Cornell :-))
I was feeling low as i had submitted my application on Oct 4th and some of the guys who had submitted after me had received an invite! But most of them were from USA, so my hopes were alive :-)

The AdCom invited me to visit Cornell for an interview but as I am not in the USA so I called them up to check if they provide an alternative way. They have alumni interviews but they didn't have any alumni from my city. So he suggested me to get in touch with the alumni in other cities in case I could travel to those cities. If not, then they would conduct telephone interviews.

Let me see what works out best for me:-) What do you guys suggest??

PS: My Wharton status still says "Received" !

Cornell Application Submitted!

So, finally I started the next phase of admission process with the submission of my Cornell application today (Deadline : Oct. 9). Cornell asks for 2 essays ( 1 leadership experience and 1 career goals) of 400 words each. I made it a point not to go beyond the word limit by even one word. These word-limits were not intimidating after writing the HBS essays.

I have my HBS and Wharton essays ready, I would submit them this weekend. The most difficult part was to make sure that I strictly adhere to the word-limits (they must have provided the word-limits for a reason and it doesn't make sense to go beyond the limits.)

2 weeks ago I decided that I would apply to Chicago as well. I had the career progression essay ready and I modified it to fit with Chicago. The other essays were also kool. So, I am done with the essays. I opted for 3 recommendations, 2 professional and 1 community. 2 of my recommenders have submitted their recos. The other one is on leave and would be back only on 14th. So, I have to wait till 14th or 15th Oct to submit my Chicago apps.

The Kellogg essays are ready but I have a little work left on the 3 small-questions and self-assessment essays. I would be ready to submit by next weekend(14th Oct).

So, all my applications would be submitted before the respective deadlines.