Loan update

This one is going to be short-

The loan has finally been approved, though the rates are ridiculous. I will most likely accept it in the next few days.

Credit Decision:
Approved
Amount:
$95000.00
Interest Rate:
9.125%
Loan Fee:
3%
Offer :
Expires JULY 19, 2010

You win some, you lose some

When I applied for some need based funding, I didn't have much hope but went ahead as I had nothing to lose either. So it was a pleasant surprise when I got an email from CBS saying I got 10K$ off the tuition fee. It's not much but it's still money :)

The joy didn't stay for long though. Just a few days later, I got an email from CBS saying that most likely I won't get the university housing. What a bummer. Now this means an additional 10K expenses per year at least!

I have registered my disappointment regarding this decision via an email to CBS, I don't have much hope but I don't have anything to lose either.

LBS Visit

My wife and I spent three nights in London last week. It was a very hectic trip but was well worth it. I visited  LBS twice, on friday I met my friend at the Windsor pub and on saturday I attended a 3 hour class from 8am!
Some observations-
1. The class I attended was super good. It was an advanced strategy course - Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances by Prof. Phaneesh Puranam. This was the first class for the course so he started with a strategy refresher/pop quiz. I thoroughly enjoyed his way of teaching and didn't find it difficult to concentrate even with my jetlag. Kudos!(I even knew some of the answers of the pop quiz, thanks to reading Competition Demystified by CBS professors heh)
2. LBS campus is tiny, I always sulk about never being able to study in huge university. Carnegie Mellon is small, my undergraduate college is even smaller and Columbia too is about same size. But if I look at LBS, all these places feels jumbo size! To be honest, I didn't feel the university setting, it felt like some corporate training center (may be if I spend more time there I'd change my opinion).
3. The course I attended was an elective so it had regular full time people, executive MBA, some other management programs like Sloan etc. Now this may be considered a plus and/or a minus.
4. London is very similar to NYC, I had no problem finding my way using the subway, I mean the tube. The ticketing system is kind of complex and I'm yet to figure that out. And I got a chance to witness the crappy weather, it's supposed to be summer but it was raining and cold (4-8 degrees celsius).
I also visited Canary Wharf which is like the Wall Street of London. That place is a beauty and it felt great walking around the area.

In terms of academics I liked LBS but in terms of soft/intangibles...I would need more time to make up my mind. Although one thing is sure, I will either apply for campus exchange to LBS if I attend CBS or try to intern in London over the summer (@ Canary Wharf :) ). I liked the city, and would like to spend some time there and travel around Europe.

Before leaving London, we drove to Oxford. Now, that was a class act. What a beautiful town, we had a great time walking around 4-5 hours taking tons of pictures of the majestic buildings. Weather was good and we saw many music troupes in the lanes and enjoyed the student life setting. Now if only LBS was at Oxford ;)

London!

My wife and I will be flying to London tomorrow, yay! I always wanted to see London and finally the time has come. I also got lucky, I will be attending a class on M&A on Saturday morning 8AM! and will be meeting my friend on Friday evening at the Windsor Pub next to LBS.

I'll be leaving London on Monday to India. First trip to India since wedding. :-) I will be back on May 30 and tons of Pre-MBA course work and exams will be waiting for me, ugh.

Oh, before I forget- my wife gifted me an IPad 3G, woohoo and I'm a proud owner of a Nikon D3000! Lot of retail therapy lately hehe.

Over and out then, next few weeks are going to be a lot of fun with family and friends. While in India, I will learn about LBS result as well, fingers crossed. Though to be honest, I am more or less decided on Columbia, especially after the ray of hope I received (that will take care of immigration matters).
Let's see what's in store!

LBS interview

This was the most chilled out interview experience ever. First of all, I prepared zilch. I had made up my mind that I've done enough prep over the last year and I shouldn't require anymore prep to sell the same pitch.

I was asked three questions- Tell me about yourself, Why MBA, Why LBS. My pitch was not as polished as it could be (Note to Self- prep counts!) but I think I did cover most of what I wanted to say but also mentioned some stuff which came to my mind just then. After that came the infamous presentation. I got the topic- a US company decides to outsource some work to Eastern EU country. Justify the outsourcing from company perspective as well as outline my own views on outsourcing/offshoring. I think I did a great job here, I presented my views coherently and with confidence. At the very end we talked a bit about LBS in general and  interviewer also recommended not to apply to INSEAD as I won't be a fit there. He felt I might be better off with a 2year MBA trying different things either from LBS or a USA school. I couldn't agree more :)

Other matters- today was a good day, something my wife and I were waiting for a long time came through. Along with it came some new issues to resolve, but that seems to be the way we roll. We celebrated at Dhaba, one of our fav indian restaurants in the city.

Columbia Admit Event - Act II

For a change, my wife and I made it to the event on time. The deli was overflowing with people and to me it occurred that more people had showed up this time. Well, not being in the middle of winter must have helped. Within a few minutes we were ushered into the hall to welcome our keynote speaker. Dean Hubbard gave a short speech on why we should all come to Columbia. Diana Taylor spoke at length about her career(she never did anything for more than 4 years). It was particularly interesting to hear about her comments on being a board member of Citigroup (the only one with regulatory experience). The most remarkable moment was when she asked the audience - how many of us wanted to go to Investment Banking? A mere four people raised their hands, it was pretty surreal.

From there, we moved to the Cluster welcome. I was part of Cluster 3 and our peer advisors made sure we had a great time. We played the quiz again and our team (Party of Five- yeah we couldn't come up with anything nicer heh) came close to winning it. If only we remembered CBS was founded in 1916, oh well!

Next up was the lunch reception. Unlike last time when we all went to different
restaurants nearby, this time around we all assembled at the magnificent Low library. The tables were divided based on different clubs, so we could decide where to sit based on our interests. I chose to sit with the people who do god's work ;) and had a great time listening to Ryuji (current student, IBC co-president) about recruiting for banking. According to Ryuji, IB recruiting is better now, and should be even better for us. He impressed upon us how quickly the banking recruiting starts, the events begin around
late September. He recommended buying a few good suits, there were times in the first semester when he wore a suit everyday. One thing I figured is the fact that being in NYC is a double-edged sword. One thing it gives access to recruiters like nowhere else but it also means we spend more time on networking than others. Another takeaway from him was- try not to get Low Pass in any subject (Honors, High Pass, Low Pass...) as banking recruiters ask about our grades. We also had a representative from Deutsche bank (Sean Gupta)
who remarked on how perfectly all of us timed our admits, he was very optimistic about the markets and was pretty confident about great recruiting seasons in the future (yay!). All in all, a good lunch and a great conversation with Ryuji. I left for the first class visit session in an upbeat mood.

Prof. Usher spent an hour discussing a very interesting case on Finance and Sustainability. As a stark reminder that we were signing up for further studies, a week ago Prof. Usher had sent everyone a 20 page case to read for this class. The topic and the case were interesting enough, so I didn't mind :-). But to be frank, with all that food in the stomach, I badly needed a coffee...After the coffee break, we got started with the E-cademy awards. Prof. Cliff Schorer did an outstanding job presenting the different ventures,
I think everyone was sold on how great CBS's Entrepreneurship program was. Here are a few interesting ones- 1) PayPerks,  a debit card which is preloaded with the paycheck amount so an employee (without a bank account) needn't spend money on cashing the check. 2) PilotVault- a website for showcasing unaired pilot shows and audience testing 3) 99- a comic book based on virtues mentioned in Holy Quran, this one is already a big hit in middle-east and one interesting fact was that the entrepreneur's
class themselves invested a million $ or something in the venture! (my favorite) 4) Recyclebank- this one is making big bucks as well, it's like a rewards program for recycling and many others which were equally interesting and with great potential. All the presentations were great and I felt immensely proud about the network I'm going to join :-)

Prof. Bruce Greenwald didn't waste anytime getting into the core of the financial crisis. He said it was not a case of any single bad actor but an inevitable conclusion to the way international finance players carried out its business. With couple of interesting statistics backing him up, he also showed how Alan Greenspan's office was irrelevant in context of how Fed could/couldn't improve the economy. It was a very
informative lecture and I for one absolutely loved his wisecracks and many things he mentioned made more sense as I recently read a great book on the crisis- Too big to fail. In his view, the economy was going to be like this with less or no growth for many years with unemployment around 8-10% as it is now. He mentioned there will be enough jobs for MBA graduates but many others won't be so lucky :( He got a lot of cheers
when he mentioned USA needn't worry about China- as per him China is stuck with US$ and unless they move a large segment of their people out of manufacturing, they had no other way but to keep increasing the $ reserves. Many valuable insights, hope I would be able to sign up for his class(es)!

As an indication of how CBS and NY went hand in hand, the evening ended with a reception at Bloomingdale's with a brilliant speech by Michael Gould (CEO). Mr Gould, frankly mentioned how we were all destined to be successful no matter whether we went to Wharton or Chicago or Columbia.
He encouraged everyone to follow our passion and mentioned how NYC is the best place to be! His passion for NYC was amazing but then he supported Red Sox! Everyone had a good time munching on hors d'oeuvres, drinking some great wine and interacting with other admits at the end of
a very long day. When Mr.Gould asked how many of us had decided on joining CBS, I noticed a huge majority raised their hands.

CBS had done a good job with the event, showcasing some of its best professors, best students/alumni entrepreneurs and the best of what NYC offered. I left with my wife and a couple of others to a nearby restaurant- Serendipity where an outrageously yummy 'forbidden broadway sundae'
was waiting for us.

INSEAD

 I had thought a lot about INSEAD in the past few weeks and talked to a professor and some current students. I figured out that I won't be a good fit. And with god's grace studying @ CBS might just work out. I don't want to jinx it, so will post once I actually know for sure :-)

In other news, I have applied for London visitor visa, for two of us it's costing ~$500 (incl. travel agent fee). Never paid so much for any visa. Phew. If all is well, I will be checking out LBS and meeting my friend @ LBS on May 7.